Good morning and welcome to Gabelli's 17th Annual Media and Sports Symposium. We're very excited to have everyone here today. I'll be kicking off the morning with a brief introduction, and then we'll jump into our first session with E.W. Scripps at 8:30. This year we have a strong lineup with 13 companies or organizations doing presentations, fireside chats, or panels, with an additional six companies participating in one-on-one or small group meetings as well. Just running through the agenda quickly, we'll start our first session with E.W. Scripps and then move on to TVB, followed by Rogers Communications. At 10:00 A.M. we have a media and telecom regulatory expert session with former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell. 10:45 is Nexstar Media Group, 11:15 Ryman.
At 11:45 A.M. we'll take a quick 15-minute lunch break as we prepare for the sports panel, which kicks off at 12:00 P.M., followed by Tegna at 12:45 P.M., Reservoir Media at 1:15 P.M., the Braves at 1:45 P.M., Lionsgate, Sinclair, and then we'll wrap up with Genius Sports at 3:15 P.M. We also have six companies doing one-on-ones: AMC Networks, Gray Television, Live Nation, Madison Square Garden, Sportradar, and TKL. We anticipate media consolidation will be a big topic today. Consolidation remained robust through 2021 with the Discovery and Warner Media deal, Amazon's acquisition of MGM Studios for $8.5 billion, and then Gray and Meredith, as well as Tegna in the broadcast space. However, things slowed down a bit in 2022, primarily as a result of regulatory scrutiny. Last year we saw the Paramount Global and Skydance Media transaction announced, which is expected to close sometime in the first half of this year.
We have a number of these companies joining us today, and we'll be discussing the dynamics and drivers, as well as the outlook moving forward. Diving a little deeper into some of the trends that we see, we continue to see digital media take share from traditional formats, as demonstrated in the chart here. American consumers spend around eight hours of their day with digital media, roughly double the time invested in traditional formats. The shift in consumption towards digital media really started in 2018, and this trend has been growing ever since. Traditional media, while still important, is losing the attention of U.S. consumers. This chart shows U.S. Pay TV subscriber trends through the first quarter of 2025.
The top line in the dark red shows the year-over-year change in total subscribers, which includes both linear and virtual MVPDs, while the bottom yellow line shows the year-over-year change in just linear subscribers. We're seeing improving linear trends, which we think will endure, while virtuals are slowing slightly. This shows another representation of the same data, highlighting how the U.S. Pay TV landscape continues to change through the first quarter of 2025. The bottom red bar indicates linear Pay TV subscribers, whereas the lighter purple bar on top shows the virtual MVPD subscribers. Virtual MVPDs are becoming increasingly prevalent as younger consumers continue to shave and cut the cord, and these services continue to take share from traditional Pay TV. The growth in virtual has helped offset some of the declines on the traditional side, although not fully. These are some of the key virtual MVPDs available today.
YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV continue to lead the pack. We continue to see a proliferation of over-the-top services and streaming platforms. The industry continues to rationalize with content companies pulling back on the growth of spending, and management teams focus more on the path to profitability than growing subscriber numbers. We also continue to see more bundling in the space. FAST services also continue to see growth, led by Fox's Tubi platform. With that, we will be jumping into our first presentation with E.W. Scripps. It will be a fireside chat. Carolyn and Jason, I will do a quick introduction before you guys can join me on stage for the fireside chat. The E.W. Scripps Company, located in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a diversified media enterprise and one of the largest independent owners of local television stations in the United States.
The company's local media segment operates 61 TV stations across the country, reaching over 36% of U.S. TV households. The Scripps Networks division is comprised of eight national news and entertainment networks that reach nearly every U.S. household over the air and are also widely distributed on both pay TV and Connected TV. The company has about 88 million shares, trading around $22 for a $2.0 billion equity market cap, $2.6 billion of net debt, $600 million of preferred equity for about a $3.4 billion total enterprise value. We have Scripps' CFO, Jason Combs, and Chief Communications and Investor Relations Officer, Carolyn McAllie, here with us today. Thank you guys so much for joining us.
Thanks for having us, Anna. Thanks for being here.
Great. Just to get started, Scripps has gone through a pretty significant transformation and reorganization over the last several years. Talk us through how Scripps' strategy has evolved and what the company's most focused on today.
Yeah, so we're a media company that's been around for 146 years, and so we've been through a lot of transformation. We've been in and out of businesses, radio, newspaper, cable networks, cable systems, podcasting. What you've seen over the last five to ten years is you've seen us really double down on TV. You know, Hannah's introduction kind of touched on that. You know, I started ten years ago. When I started, we had 27 local TV stations. We now have more than 60, so significant growth there. On the national networks, really, I would say through both acquisitions as well as some organic investment, we've created this stable of eight national networks that reach audiences from coast to coast.
When you look at our current footprint, our focus is how can we take this really strong group of both local and national assets and how can we drive connection? By connection, I mean connection between the audiences and our brands to provide them live news, entertainment, and sports programming, but also between the advertisers and the audiences, because ultimately that's where the financial benefit comes in for our shareholders.
Great. Thanks. That's really helpful. I want to jump into the regulatory outlook, but just starting to kind of set the stage. Can you talk about Scripps' capital allocation priorities from where we sit today and where you want to be from a leverage perspective? From there, we'll move on to the regulatory side of things.
Yeah, absolutely. I say this every earnings call. For those who listen to our earnings call, our number one capital allocation priority is debt paydown and reducing leverage. I think we've made a lot of progress there. Q2 of last year, our leverage peaked at six times. The most recent quarter, we were at 4.9 times. I think a lot of progress there. A tremendous amount of cash flow was generated last year as a result of political, and we were able to really direct that all towards debt paydown. You know, if you look at since the ION acquisition, which was back in 2021, we have applied 99% of our discretionary cash flow towards debt paydown. When you look at across sort of our other local broadcast peers, you'll see that is sort of an industry-leading number. Definitely progress being made on that front.
We also recently completed the refinancing and extension of our 2026 and 2028 term loans as well as a revolving credit facility. You know, we did so at, you know, what I would view as some really good economics. You know, obviously a really elevated rate environment right now, and it was a very significant portion of our debt that we extended, but we did so while limiting the increase in our average cost of debt to less than one percentage point. Certainly we're pleased with that. You know, we continue to make expense, you know, I would say some tough expense management decisions to continue driving the maximum cash flow we can to apply again towards debt paydown. You know, our long-term goal is low to mid-threes in terms of leverage.
You know, it's tough to say when exactly we'll get there right now, just given the amount of turmoil going on right now. Obviously, with things like the tariffs and everything else, there's a lot of uncertainty in the ad marketplace. What I can tell you is I feel really confident that as we look at the $4.9 we ended the Q1 in, you will see us make continued progress between now and year-end towards that ultimate goal.
Thanks. That's helpful. You're our first session of the day, but I anticipate, like I mentioned during the opening remarks, that we'll be talking a lot about the regulatory environment. There's a lot of optimism right now on the broadcast side for deregulation, which could potentially spur consolidation and really be impactful for the local broadcast group. What's your perspective on Chairman Carter's policy direction so far? When do you think that we'll start to see real progress on relaxing the ownership cap and modernizing other broadcast rules?
I mean, I think we're very pleased with all the comments that Chairman Carter has made. Clearly, he has a view that the rules are antiquated. Also, I think some of his comments have highlighted to me the importance he places on local news, which is a sort of foundational thing for what we provide to the communities that we serve. You know, in terms of the rules being antiquated, I mean, you look just at, for example, the national cap, which was put in place in a time when we were competing against a couple of other local broadcasters. The reality is today, for those same ad dollars, we're competing against big tech. The rules have not followed the way the ecosystem has changed, and that's put us at a disadvantage. We're very supportive of any opportunities to change the regulations.
I think it can be extremely beneficial for our industry. You know, I'm optimistic that I know there's a little bit of noise now with the Simington announcement yesterday. We continue to believe that, you know, as the year progresses, they will fill those seats fairly quickly. Once you have a quorum, once you have a Republican majority, you will start seeing change get pushed through.
I believe there was a Democratic commissioner who also announced he'd be leaving shortly as well. I believe that would leave us at kind of a one-on-one situation. What do you think that that means for some of these rules getting changed, and what would the timeline look like?
I'll give my comments, and then if you have anything else you'd add, Carolyn. Yeah. You know, I think that the I believe that you'll see the next Republican seat filled fairly quickly, and that will give them a quorum, and that will give them a Republican majority. I think they'll move quickly on the other seats as well. I don't know if you have anything else you'd add.
Just how aggressive Carter has been in his commentary. I mean, he even climbed a broadcast transmission tower to make a point about his support for local broadcasters. None of us have done that. I think it's been very aggressive commentary, and we expect things to happen quickly and help replace Simington and get Olivia Trusty in there quickly.
Okay, great. In terms of consolidation and scale is very important in this business, what do you think some of these changes might mean for the broadcast industry? I guess in terms of M&A, what would be the most compelling M&A opportunities for Scripps? How do you kind of envision your role in further industry consolidation? We'll go forward from there.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is an enormous opportunity for Scripps and for the entire industry, you know, ultimately to reshape our portfolios in a way that makes us all more economically durable so that we can continue to serve the communities we support. You know, in terms of Scripps specifically, you know, given our balance sheet, I do not see us being a major buyer in this marketplace. I see us more focused on swap opportunities as well as some select asset sales as well, all towards that ultimate goal of improving our short-term operating performance. I am looking forward to when those changes are enacted, not just for what it is going to mean for Scripps, but the entire industry. Ultimately, I think that our shareholders will benefit as we reshape our portfolio.
What kind of benefits do you see in terms of swaps and those sort of deals for improving kind of Scripps' operating performance? I mean, how big are the synergies and what does that mean?
Yeah, the synergies are significant. We have not quantified anything publicly, but certainly, you know, when you look at the back office support and all of those sorts of things that are required to run a TV station and to potentially have a duopoly in a market, a big four duopoly, there is a lot of overlap and a lot of cost savings that would result, that would come as a result. Also, just from a sales perspective and a market share perspective, it gives you, as you are going in to discuss opportunities with various advertisers in the marketplace, it just gives you, positions you in a much different place if you are bringing to the table two big four stations in a market.
That makes sense. There's been some other potential areas for regulatory relief that have imploded. For example, a cap in reverse comp payments and then a few additional things as well. What are kind of the other regulatory items on the table that you could see changing aside from just the ownership cap?
I would say, you know, first of all, we are in favor of any and all deregulation. Certainly, the ownership cap is, I think, an important one. We also would like to see some changes in the in-market big four ownership rules, as well as the virtual MVPDs. In terms of our ATSC 3.0 aspirations, a sunsetting of the 1.0 standard. You mentioned virtuals specifically, and we get asked that question a lot around virtual MVPDs and potential changes there that would allow us to negotiate directly. I'll say, first of all, my personal opinion is that the cap in the big four ownership rules probably happened before that, but we would be very supportive of that change. Ultimately, if you look at the setup today, the networks are not incented to negotiate in the best interest of their affiliate partners.
We believe that if that rule were to change and we were able to have direct negotiations, ultimately it would drive a better outcome for the local broadcasters.
For those less familiar with kind of the setup for virtual MVPDs currently versus traditional PTV, can you just kind of walk through what that dynamic looks like today and what it would mean, I guess, for you guys if that change occurs?
Yeah, on the traditional side, you know, we have direct negotiations with our MVPD partners, and then we pay a fee back to the network. We recognize the gross revenue, we pay an expense, and that gets us to our net. In the case of virtuals, the networks negotiate on our behalf and then bring essentially to all the broadcasters, here's what we've negotiated. The reality is they're not just negotiating our deal, they're negotiating a deal that encompasses a bunch of owned and operated networks they have and a whole variety of things, and then they're allocating value across that. That goes to my comment on they're not incented. They're not incented to allocate the value out of their own pocket.
As a result, you know, the net outcome is not as beneficial as if we were able to negotiate that directly.
What could that mean for your economics if that change is made?
It's nothing we've quantified publicly, but I would say I think it could be a significant uptick to both the top line and the bottom line. Yeah, I'll leave it at that. I probably can't say any more than that.
The last piece here, I believe Simington had put out an op-ed at one point discussing a potential cap on reverse comp payments as well. He'll be leaving, so I'm not sure how much of that stands, but any thoughts around that and how likely a scenario that might actually be?
I think it was a little unclear. I've never seen Carter come out and talk about that, so it's a little unclear to me what his position is on it. Again, he's certainly been aggressive about support for local broadcast and feeling like the networks are monopolizing our business. I think we're optimistic that that could go forward. I don't think what Jason said about ownership cap as a priority is right.
That makes sense. You discussed some other potential non-core asset sales publicly in the past. I think we touched on them last year when you guys were here. Can you just quickly highlight the progress that has been made there and any other elements that could help accelerate financial flexibility for you guys?
Yeah, so you know, we had given a range previously of a real estate target, selling $50 million-$100 million in real estate. As of now, we've closed on $63 million, and that is five broadcast towers and one TV station building. You know, we're kind of in that range now. I would say nothing else is active, but you know, we continue to look across our portfolio, and if we have a particular piece of property that is driving a lot of interest, we would absolutely be open to entertaining that and again, directing those funds towards that paydown. I think from a non-asset or a real estate perspective, that's kind of where we're at.
You know, I spoke earlier, and it's kind of tied to the M&A discussion, that we do look across our portfolio, both our local portfolio and our national portfolio, and identify which of those assets we view as less core and ones that for the right price we might be willing to monetize. We continue to do that with the heavy lens towards what's happening in Washington with deregulation. You mentioned financial flexibility. You know, I think the other thing is we're very focused on all those things, but we're also trying to maximize the underlying operations of the business. I briefly touched on it earlier, but maybe I'll go a little deeper on the leverage we're pulling within our Scripps network segment.
We gave out a margin expansion target of 400-600 basis points for that segment for the year, which is a pretty aggressive target. We made some really tough decisions as we exited last year, and ultimately we're seeing the benefit of that already. In Q1, our expenses were down 16% year over year. Our margin was up 870 basis points year over year, so kind of, well, you know, above the top end of our full year guide. We're seeing, we believe we'll continue to see the benefit of those decisions. For us, it's about both capitalizing on the M&A environment, but also being laser-focused on improving our ongoing operations.
Last point on that, I believe at one point the company had put your Bounce network up for sale, and that's kind of been put on the back burner at this point. Can you just talk about kind of selling that moving forward or holding on to it and any of the other national networks as well?
Yeah, so I mean, I think that, and it goes back to my comment, you know, for the right economics, we would entertain selling any of our, you know, not any of our networks, but some of our networks over on the national network side. The reality is, you kind of alluded to it, the focus has shifted right now, and everybody's focused on local M&A, and anything else is absolutely on the back burner at this point. We just want to sort of, there's a lot of work you need to do to set yourself up so that when that deregulatory environment happens, you're ready to go. You can't wait until then and then start running. You need to be doing a lot of prep work, and that's what we're focused on right now.
There's some commentary from, I'm not sure if it was you or your peers on the most recent set of earnings calls that swaps and other deals like that could probably start happening before we see actual changes to the regulations. Do you anticipate that that could be a factor?
Yeah, I mean, I think you absolutely could see deals go through or get submitted to the FCC through a waiver process. I think that's a reality, and I think maybe that reality, you know, is even heightened given, you know, the potential for a little bit of a delay given the announcements with Simington.
That's helpful. Hoping to discuss the company's expansion into sports programming with Scripps Sports and your approach to live sports moving forward, both on the local and the national side. If you could just touch on your view of the collapse of the RSN model and how things will play out in that ecosystem from here.
Yeah, so maybe first I'll start by recapping for those who haven't followed our story as much, sort of the two discrete strategies we have. We have our national strategy, which is using the national reach of ION and leveraging that to provide coast-to-coast reach across a bunch of different platforms for leagues that may have been underserved from a reach perspective before. We have kind of two foundational sports properties there. We have the WNBA, 15 weeks over the summer, every Friday night you can catch WNBA on ION. And we have the NWSL, which is, you know, north of 20 weeks on ION as well. That's on Saturday nights. Recently, we've added a couple of other sports properties, more event-driven around that.
We actually announced about a month ago a partnership for the first ever Sports Illustrated Women's Games that's going to take place in the fall. We are really excited about that. It's a week long, six days long on ION. We also announced a partnership to be the TV partner for the Fort Myers basketball tip-off women's college basketball tournament. On the local side, our strategy was leveraging markets where we have an independent station to provide reach to those who were struggling with the RSN model that you alluded to. Three years ago when we started this, we said, look, the RSN model, we think it's really broken. I think we were correct. What we've seen is teams were struggling with two things.
The economic model was breaking and there was very limited reach that the RSNs were bringing because even in a market, if that had 50% pay TV coverage, for example, you know, half of that might not have carried the RSNs. What we bring is a much broader reach and a stabilization in the economics. We have had success there. We have won four NHL teams, and we also have won a local rights for a WNBA team. They are seeing that growth in audience. The Panthers, who unfortunately lost last night in a tough one in overtime, you know, the Florida Panthers, this was their first year on our airwaves. Their ratings were up 149% versus what they had on the RSN the year before.
Wow, that's significant. MLB rights, there's been a lot of discussion in the press about what might happen here. How do you anticipate things will shake out there?
You're talking the national rights versus our view on local rights. From a national rights perspective, I mean, my guess would be they end up with something, they follow the blueprint that several other leagues have followed, which is they have a heavier rights deal rooted in linear with streaming as a complement to that. That's what the NFL has done, you know, for years with their rights deal in their Netflix games and their Amazon games. It's what the NBA deal that was just announced last year is with a heavy linear footprint, but also Peacock and other streaming. It really gives you the best of both worlds. It gives you the largest reach vehicle, which is linear TV and the added economic benefit that streamers bring. That's my guess, but we'll just wait and see.
Yeah, we'll have to see. Could you remind us of Scripps exposure to local versus national core advertising and then talk a little bit about what you're seeing in advertising in general locally and nationally, touching on any core ads categories that are impactful at this point?
Sure, I'll take that one, Hannah. We have our local division in which 70% is from local businesses of our core advertising and about 30% comes from national businesses that want to buy specific geographies. On our national network side, which is a little bit of a differentiator from some of the broadcast peers, we have, it's all general market, scatter, upfront advertising, direct response. We tend to skew heavily toward direct response because of our multicast networks. In terms of what we've been seeing, it's been a tough environment. I was at an ad panel yesterday, all the big agencies over here on 42nd, and they were somber about going into the upfront, what that looks like, certainly the tariff commentary and uncertainty. They talked a lot about consumer confidence and lack of consumer confidence.
Today we had a headline out of Cincinnati, actually, where we live, that Procter & Gamble is planning to lay off 7,000 people over the next two years because of uncertainty about pricing, tariffs, and consumer behavior. All of those are sort of the bad headlines right now. On the core local side, we're faring a little better. The local businesses that are less impacted in some cases by tariffs have been holding steady. We were down about 3% in the first quarter. Looking at kind of the same range for the second quarter, we had guided to down low single digits. Auto continues to be weak, and certainly that's one that both on the national and the local dealer level, you're going to see impact of the economic, you know, commentary out of Washington, et cetera. Retail hasn't been great.
On the other hand, services, which is a big consumer discretionary category, has been okay. It has held pretty steady. Home improvement, thank heavens people continue to want to fix up their homes, even post-COVID. A lot of people working from home. That has been a good story. The other things that are helping us, and still talking on the local station side right now, is the sports. Jason talked about the success we have had with that. The Tampa Bay Lightning is our newest NHL team. That season will start again in October, so we will start to see an uplift from that. We also have the Aces, the WNBA team in Las Vegas that is starting last month in May. We hope to get a little uplift from that.
Haven't guided that in really, just have seen with other local teams that we've done a nice boost in core in those regions. The Pacers, which I have no idea where that stands right now.
Starts tonight. We all are rooting for a game seven.
Yes, please. Yes, that'll help us.
We are in the ABC in Indianapolis, so.
We've seen like nice money laying in because of that. And even though there's been expectations that the viewership won't be as good, we'll still benefit from that.
It'll be very strong in Indiana, though. I can tell you that.
Yes, yes, yes. We have an ABC in Indianapolis that will see benefit from that. On the national side, again, sports is a great story for us. The WNBA, we're in our third season with them, working on the renewal, which is going very well for another few years ahead with them. Also the NWSL. Seeing really nice growth in both the rates we get for that inventory on ION. As you may remember, there is the Friday night franchise with the WNBA and the Saturday night franchise with the NWSL. Really pleased with those. Did you mention, I'm sorry, the two new franchises we're doing?
I did.
Yeah, okay. Those in the fall, when we do not have those two seasons, we will have a nice benefit from the new agreements we have made. Yeah, I think that kind of covers the.
Yeah, that's helpful. Can you just let us know when we should expect to see kind of the renewal announcement with the WNBA or timelines around that?
Soon, this summer, before the end of the season, which ends late August, early September.
Yeah. And then touched a little bit on the national side of the local business. Anything else to comment on related to the national network side advertising that you're seeing in the DR marketplace?
DR has been a mixed bag. Again, that's a consumer, you know, it's an act now to spend category, and advertisers love that immediate ROI that they see from it. I have to cheat and look at my, unless you remember the specific, I have it right here, though. Let's see. In the first quarter, we were down in the high single digits, but we were seeing average unit rates up about 5%. In April, they were up in the 10% range. That's positive. We don't guide to that, you know, that specifically, but generally speaking, it's been holding steady. We continue to, I think we guided to down low singles in national networks for Q2.
Yeah, we actually guided to flat-ish.
About flat-ish.
Yeah, about flat. That's some of the benefit that Carolyn talked about specifically for sports with the WNBA season and NWSL season kicking into high gear.
Great.
We feel fortunate, as Jason said, that we were able to see the sports things coming, especially with women, and have formed a really great relationship with the WNBA. They really like that the over-the-air reach that we give them, that's a unique, you know, value proposition and really has incrementally added to their audience. Even though there's a lot of expensive sports rights out there and a lot of competition, we've carved out a niche that we believe we can maintain.
Given the advertising marketplace right now, that guide of, you know, about flat was, I would say, a pretty extreme outlier to a lot of our peers.
Yeah, that's really helpful. We will be hosting a sports panel later today during lunch, and there is going to be some specific questions on women's sports since we know that is a really exciting area right now as well. Then just continuing the ads conversation, but focusing more on political, it is a focus area for many investors, and the 2026 midterms will be coming up before we know it. Any commentary around political expectations for 2026 and then the next presidential cycle in 2028? How are you guys positioned to benefit?
In 2020, we, of course, did record advertising until the 2024 presidential election. We were up 30% over the last presidential election. We expect to continue to be the place that campaigns want to spend money because the regional reach, it's very efficient dollars for them, and it's also an engaged audience who watch our local news programs. That sort of 50% range, getting about half of the total spend, which continues to grow. Our share is stable and the pie continues to get bigger. That's a good story for local broadcasters. I don't have any. For the midterms, obviously expect the Democrats to try to get their act together and really make a run for it in the Senate and the House. You know, that will obviously mean good things for our spending in our markets. No predictions right now on specific markets yet.
Okay. I want to see if we have any audience questions.
Mario has a question.
There you go.
Give the man a mic.
Thank you. That's a terrific update. You talked about perhaps selling, you know, $53 million of the blah, blah real estate. You have a shareholder that owns your preferred out of Omaha, and there's a lot of financial engineering that you can do. Assuming we're now in October, you've done an extended contract on the WNBA. You're looking into the election for 2026. You've got greater clarity on local. Would you take part of the sports business or ION public and look at accelerating your financial engineering? You can't dismiss that, Jason. You love doing these deals. You're thinking about everything.
I can't really discuss any specific.
No, I would say,
what I would say is, Mario, I would agree. We look at every opportunity we can to accelerate things and are open to a lot of different ideas.
Okay. Any other audience questions before I wrap up with a few more? Go ahead, Jason.
Yes, I was just going to make sure we had a chance to mention our connected TV strategy because I think people think of us as a linear television company, and we've been really aggressive getting into streaming revenue. That was a 42% increase in our revenue. It's over $100 million now. It was nothing a few years ago. That continues to be a good growth area for us. We have a great leader of that business, very aggressive, and he's really helped us to claim our space in that industry despite the big wigs that tend to dominate it.
That's helpful. I guess, what do you see as the primary areas of focus for SSP within the CTV space right now?
The primary, I'm sorry.
Like focus areas within CTV, yeah.
In terms of industry, spend categories? I don't know. I mean, it's sort of all over the map. Our sales teams sell the CTV with other things. We're selling it for sports. We're selling it to pharma companies. You know, it's really across the board packages, you know, where they want a little of everything cross-platform.
That makes sense.
Yeah, I would say the only other thing I'd add there is, you know, we've done a good job of growing through expanding the platforms we're distributed on. Right now, the heavy focus is on how we can improve the monetization on each of those platforms. That's driving a lot of our growth.
That's helpful. Just one more to kind of close the loop on all the regulatory side of things. You mentioned ATSC 3.0 or Next Gen TV, kind of accelerating that transition could benefit you guys. You announced a JV with a few of your peers back in January, EdgeBeam. How do you see ATSC 3.0 transforming local broadcasting and how are you thinking about monetization as well as the opportunities for you guys and the industry in particular?
Yeah, so we were really excited to be part of the EdgeBeam announcement. You know, the four broadcasters who are part of that, we represent 98% coverage of the U.S. with our broadcast spectrum and a lot of depth in certain markets where we overlap. I think there's a significant opportunity there. I think we're very close to hiring and announcing the CEO of EdgeBeam and looking forward to them bringing a team on and really getting things moving. In terms of the industry, I think it's a huge opportunity for the industry. I don't think it's significant dollars, you know, this year or next. I think it's more in the back part of the decade.
If you look at the demand for data and how it grows every year, I know some people say, well, how do you guys think you're going to be able to compete against 5G? You know, we look at it as we're going to be able to provide a complement to 5G to help provide the supply for all the demand that there is right now. I think we'll be really focused on a couple of areas to start. I think broadcast GPS has a lot of traction right now with a lot of proof of concepts we're doing. I think there's a lot of applications in the automotive industry and the digital signage industry. Ultimately, I think that, you know, I've sat in a seat for four years now.
I can tell you we're not putting out numbers because we need the EdgeBeam team to get built out. I'm more excited about 3.0 and data casting than I've been in the four years I've been here. Certainly, that's a regulatory piece. An important piece of ultimately having the success we want to have there is we need to have the 1.0 standard sunset. There's an ask out there by the NAB to do that.
Do you have any sort of timelines around when you would expect that to really pick up?
You know, I would hope that as we get the REHOK and FCC, that that's something that could move here later this year. The target date is the top 55 markets in 2028 and all the rest in 2030, I believe.
Great. Any other audience questions? Do not think so. Is there anything else that, go ahead, that you guys want to highlight before we hop off?
No, this was great.
Okay. Thank you both so much for flying in. We really appreciate it. It was great to have you.
Thanks, Mario. Thank you.
Okay. Great. Up next, we have the Television Bureau of Advertising or TVB. TVB is the non-for-profit trade association representing America's local broadcast television industry. Its members include the U.S. television stations, television broadcast groups, advertising sales reps, syndicators, international broadcasters, and associate members. TVB actively promotes local media marketing solutions to the advertising community and works to develop advertising dollars for the medium's multiple platforms, including on-air, online, and mobile. Today, we have Steve Lanzano, TVB's President and CEO, with us to discuss trends, opportunities, and challenges in local broadcast television. Steve, if you wouldn't mind joining us on stage, we can get started with our Fireside Chat.
Good morning.
How are you
Good. Thanks for being here.
Sure. My pleasure.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Wake up.
I think this is, you've been here quite a few years in a row now, so we really appreciate having you. For those less familiar with TVB, could you briefly discuss your background and all the work you've done at TVB over the last 15 plus years? Then talk to us about your decision to retire at the end of 2025. We'll be sad to miss you moving forward.
TVB, we represent all the local broadcast stations across the United States, to advertisers, to agencies. We work with the NAB on subjects that are, you know, familiar to both of us, like ad deduction, etc. I've been in the business 40-some-odd years, and 30 of those years was on the agency side. When I came over here, I was an agency person running one of the top agencies at Group M before I came to the TVB. I've been at the TVB for, this is my 16th year. It's almost as many years as you have in this conference. I've been here probably just about as many years as you have in the conference, so thank you for having me. I always say we have three legs to our stool.
We have a business development team that goes out and works with the five holding companies on how we can get more national advertising back to local TV, and I know we're going to talk about that a little bit later. We work with local advertisers and stations, mostly with automotive. Obviously, still a big category for us. It might not be the 25% category, but it certainly is 17%-20% category. So it's very important that we retain that business. We work, we do a lot down in Washington, D.C. Every acronym you name, we see. Every super PAC and PAC we see. And it's important that we, obviously, every other year, we retain our 50% share of not only total dollars, but almost 75% share of video dollars still to this day, even with streaming and connected TV. So that's one part of our stool.
The second part is measurement. Obviously, you know, measurement is very important, especially to advertisers. We have basically two measurement firms that do the local TV area, and that's Nielsen and ComScore. We would have liked ComScore to be a little bit farther along. It's difficult when you have one that has, you know, basically 80%-90% of the business, and it's hard to get them to move. But we have some initiatives moving forward. I think that'll help us in terms of being able to compete, especially with digital. I'll give you a quick example. It's quite astounding to me, but we're measured. You're not a viewer unless you watch five minutes on the quarter hour. Now, the funny part is the way they measure it. You can watch the last four minutes, like from, you know, 9:56 A.M.
to 10:00, and then you can watch the next four minutes, okay, from 10:01 to 10:05. You're not counted as a viewer. Meanwhile, if I'm a digital, right, digital viewer, two seconds, half the screen, and you're counted. How do you compare impressions, and how do you compare what's actually moving your business forward when the impression definition is different? We went back to Nielsen, and I said, you know what? Tell me why you came up with five minutes on the quarter hour. I don't understand it. Why don't we average a minute, like national? Why aren't we could be average 30 seconds? How'd you come up with that? This is a true story. No one can answer the question, right? No one at Nielsen can answer the question.
What we found, it was from 1927 when they did radio and did the average five minutes over the quarter hour for radio because that's how long a song lasted. That's how they were measuring us. We've gone back to them to move to either three minutes on the quarter hour or one minute on the quarter hour. What would that mean in terms of the impact on our business? If even they went to three minutes on the quarter hour, we would increase our inventory by between 8% and 14%. If we go one minute on the quarter hour, you're talking 20%-24%. That allows us, again, to compete more with digital. We do a lot on that. We do a lot of, and I know you know, Hannah, we do a lot of our own studies.
We do a voter funnel study about what influences voters when they, you know, are considering a candidate to actually voting for a candidate. We do a purchase funnel study on when people go through the purchase funnel on when are they getting, how they learn about a product and actually purchase a product. And what influences them as they go through that journey. We do media comparison studies, one of our biggest studies. We do a lot. The other one is the Nielsen Gauge Report, right? I, you know, I made a big to-do about the Nielsen Gauge Report being the most irrelevant report for a marketer ever. Because what did they do? They managed all, they basically looked at viewing for all streaming. Well, guess what? Not all streaming viewers can get a commercial.
If you're an advertiser, it doesn't help me if I can't run a commercial and reach you on streaming. What we found was that their 40% streaming viewing number, when you look at ad viewing, ad viewing was actually 20%. And 80%, or between 50%-60%, was being done by linear TV. Those are the type of things we do. I always say we set the record straight, right? Perception versus reality, right? It's not cool that linear TV works, but streaming is out there, blah, blah, blah. We have to set the record straight that it's still linear TV that moves your business forward. Lastly, we do advocacy. We have, you know, our two major conferences in a year. We have 5,000 people now that show up to our virtual sales conference, which we're excited about.
We have an executive summit, which we do with about 200 people. Very high level, a lot more TED Talk type speeches that are being done across a variety of topics from deregulation to what's going on with advertising to political and to automotive. So that's basically what we do.
Thanks. That's a very helpful overview. Starting big picture.
You didn't ask me why I'm retiring.
Oh, yeah. You just didn't get to.
I tried to avoid it, but I won't. You know, it's not with me and people, you know, why are you retiring? You're kind of not as young as I tell everybody I'm not as young as I look. Probably more on my top side. I'll tell you how old I really am. It wasn't an age thing. It wasn't a health thing. I woke up, I said, I told my wife, one day I'm going to wake up one morning and go, it's time. That's exactly what happened about sixth. When I woke up, I go, it's time. I told our executive board and they said, no, it's not time. I go, it is time. I'll actually be retiring at the end of the year. I'm just looking forward.
Now, I said for a year to my wife that I don't want to be on a schedule. And she said a good three months and you're going to be getting anxious again. She's probably right.
Yeah. So starting big picture.
Sure.
What are you seeing in terms of TV broadcast content and local news viewership trends? Who's watching? What are they watching specifically? You touched on a little bit how they're watching it, but that as well.
The world's become news and sports, right? Live event viewing. That's really what advertisers are looking for. I mean, one of the issues we have is a 10:00 P.M. time period before our late local news, which is kind of a dead time period now. Our lead-ins are not as good, which is why our late local news has been suffering. Overall, people have a voracious appetite for news. I mean, from 4:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. to, you know, noon, in some cases, noon to 2:00 to 3:00 P.M. broadcasts on a station. It gets a pretty strong audience. In fact, if you were to look at the top shows in a market, you take out football, okay? If you look at top shows in a market, any market, our news is a top five show in every market, all right?
You include streaming and everything. We're the top five show in every market. That's how powerful the news is. The big question is, right, young people don't watch news, right? If I was 17 or 18 years old or even 20 and I was sitting down and I told my dad I wanted to watch the local news, he thought I was crazy, right? It doesn't matter to me. I get 25 years old and I get married and then I have kids and I buy a house and guess what? The local news is really important. In fact, you know, during the pandemic, our news viewership went obviously through the roof against 18-24-year-olds, went up 150%. Some people say, oh, that's great. I'm going like, it's not going to stay that way, okay?
When things normalize, it'll be, but we've been able to keep about a 4%-5% increase from where we were prior to 2020. That's strong. Now, the big question is, you know, what do we need to do in terms of local news to even continue to grow that? Because people watch it differently. They want little snippets. Some want longer news. You know, I think one of the things that may come out of deregulation, and this is me talking more than anything else, one of the things that comes out of deregulation is especially the ability to own two top four stations in a market. Then you have the ability to not only share content, but now you have the ability to test different content on different stations.
What news works, because a lot of them do not want to do it because it still gets a pretty good number, so why am I going to mess with success? I think that might give opportunities for experimentation, especially against younger people. What you see is the same curve I saw when I first started in this business so many years ago. As you get older, your local news, watching local news does this in terms of your viewership. Even though we can all get everything we want on this little device here, right? I can get the weather, I can get whatever I want. Anytime anything ever happens, our local news numbers go through the roof, whether there is a weather emergency or any type of emergency, they go through the roof. Why?
Because people do not trust what they find, what they are seeing on here or what they are reading on here. What they trust is their local news meteorologist, their local news anchor, and their local news reporters. That is the difference that we have versus everybody else. I always say, you know, people want to, right? They want to replicate what we have, but they cannot. They cannot. That is our big differentiation. It really is a news and sports environment now.
That makes sense. You touched on potential deregulation and the ability to own two top four stations in a market could have a meaningful impact. Any other views on how the regulatory environment may shift in the near to medium term in light of the FCC and the dynamics there and kind of what would be the biggest impactors there?
Three things is, you know, obviously Carr's already show a proclivity to allow two top four stations in a market, which is terrific. Obviously the operational efficiencies would be enormous for the industry and for the local broadcaster. That's one. Two's a cap.
Yeah.
Obviously, a cap makes no sense whatsoever anymore. I think the question is, and when a majority gets back on, now that Simington is leaving, now when the majority gets back on to the FCC, and I think President Trump will, we have one nomination, we'll have a second nomination shortly, so they'll have the majority sooner rather than later. The cap going away, obviously, is a big deal. The question is, can the FCC do it or does Congress need to do it? I could argue it both ways. We believe the FCC can do it because they were the one that set the UHF discount. They basically affected the cap already. We believe they can do it. There are others that think that only Congress can do it because Congress was the one that set the cap initially.
I think that's still a little bit up in the air. I think that's probably at least a few months down the road. Finally, sunsetting 1.0 to 3.0. I mean, that not only obviously the work that's being done by EdgeBeam in terms of data casting and, you know, there have been some numbers thrown out there that could be worth $15 billion, which is what our retransmission consent is. That's a sizable source of revenue. For us, dynamic insertion, targeting, advanced targeting, attribution, data, I mean, that would be a home run for us. You know, the question is how you get that install base up quickly. The only way I see it going up is sunsetting ATSC 1.0.
Which is likely on the regulatory agenda moving forward.
Exactly.
Yeah. That would be great. And then you mentioned that you anticipate a third Republican also being nominated shortly. I mean, timelines around that, we've heard a lot about Olivia Trusty very soon should be confirmed, but, and then any ideas on who might be up for that role?
I don't know who they're, I don't know who they're going to, there are a couple names that are out there.
Okay.
I don't know them.
Yeah.
I do not want to comment on it, but I think Trusty will be quickly done. I think there will be another nominated very quickly right after that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Great. Moving on to advertising, what have you seen in the core ads market over the last couple of months in light of all of the macro tariff dynamics and uncertainty? What are you seeing in terms of pacings and the outlook from where we sit today?
Sure. I mean, Hannah, you know, there's just so much uncertainty in a marketplace. For a marketer, it's very hard for you to spend money with uncertainty when your CFO is looking down your throat and going, why are we spending this money? We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. The core marketplace probably in first quarter was down mid-single digits. A little bit worse than I thought it was going to be. I think a lot of it was because of the tariffs.
Yeah.
That scared people off. The core market is probably pacing a little worse, but I think the question is what's the pacing moving forward? It's very hard to get any type of vision looking forward because advertisers just don't know.
Yeah.
I think the local direct market is a little bit more stable than national market where it's based upon % of revenue, right? It's very simple. Each category is almost, and even any marketer within category, they're near 3%-5% in terms of what they put against advertising. I think the question is, and we'll see what happens with the upfront market. I mean, the upfront market's going to be very interesting this year of how much money is put in, how much are they going to hold back for scatter. The question is how much flexibility will the networks be willing to give?
Yeah.
The more flexibility you give, the more that you'll get upfront. I think it's going to be very interesting to see how that plays out. Nothing's happened in the upfront market so far, which is not unusual. Once you go past July 4th, you know it's going to take a while. I think it's going to take a while because I don't think anyone wants to put their foot in that water right now.
What's the typical split that you see between upfront selling versus leaving for the scatter market?
It varies. It varies by year and what's going on. It's usually 70%-75% is upfront and the remainder is scatter because nobody wants to be caught with paying more money and not getting the inventory they want.
Yeah.
Upfront market is based upon fear.
Yeah.
Right? That's it. How do I scare advertisers knowing there's scarcity out there? It's going to cost you more. Especially agencies and your clients are going to go berserk because they're not getting the shows they want and they're not getting at the CPM they're looking for. Now, some of the things that the agencies have done is principal buying where they take basically the risk, right? You already set a base. I'm going to meet your base, okay? You're happy about that. Now, whatever I get above that base, I get to keep. I think you're going to see more and more of that going on. Some of the agencies are doing it more, some are doing it less, but it is the way they're making money now because it's very difficult on the agency side of the business to find money.
Obviously, the tariff policies and those dynamics hit certain industries much harder than others. You mentioned auto. Can you touch on what's going on specifically within the auto market and then any other categories that are being impacted more significantly?
Sure. I mean, the auto market, obviously you all know, people pull forward in terms of buying because they were fearful about pricing of cars going up because of the tariffs. The industry had about 90 days' worth of inventory back then. As you got into, I'm going to say February and March, it went down to about 70 days. Why? Because people pull forward to buy cars. They pull back, a lot of the dealers and the manufacturers pull back on incentives because people were rushing into the, if you had the cars, people were rushing into your dealership to purchase the cars. In fact, first quarter was not bad. We did a little better with tier one, which is the manufacturer, right? The manufacturer doing advertising, you know, buy Dodge or buy Stellantis or buy whatever it might be.
It would be, then it's tier two, which is, you know, your local Toyota automotive dealers. Then there's tier three, which is the local dealer direct advertising to the consumer. Actually, tier three started to pick up recently because now there's about 55-56 days' worth of inventory. Some of that inventory is becoming tariff priced inventory, if you will. What do they have to do? They have to drive people to their dealership. Incentives are going to start to go up. We should see some advertising from that. It seems to be coming to fruition right now. I do not want, you know, in comparison to last year, we're doing okay. I would not say that we're back where we were in 2019. We're not even close. It is getting, it's not as bad as we thought it was going to be.
I think moving forward, if tariffs stay in place, dealers, they're one thing when I go see a dealer, I just saw one recently, he's a dealership in Cincinnati with 26 rooftops. He told me, "Steve, it's the price of the car. I mean, this is what's going to kill us. People just can't afford a car. The average monthly, everybody knows what the average monthly cost is if you, whether you buy a car or whether you even lease a car, it's about $800. That's a lot of money. It's twice what I paid for my first apartment. It's a lot of money." That is the big fear the dealers have. Now the fear on the manufacturer's side is the magnets from the rare earth metals, which really, you can't build a hybrid or an EV without it.
In fact, even an internal combustion engine car, you cannot build without it. Your windshield wipers will not work. Your steering will have a problem. It is important that you have those. That is their real fear because some of those rare earth metals, 90% come from China. Right now they are restricting it in terms of allowing it for manufacturers, especially U.S. car manufacturers. That is a real issue. I recently was talking to Toyota, I was talking to Stellantis. That is what they are really concerned about, being able to produce the cars, not only on top of the tariff situation, but even being able to produce the cars because they just do not have those rare earth metals, the magnets from the rare earth metals to actually do that. That could be a problem.
Any other categories that you'd highlight on either the positive or negative side in light of the current environment?
Sure. Lawyers, we love them. 10% of our revenue now. Great people, lawyers, by the way. Great people. It was a non-category when I started 16 years ago. It is our number two category now. It is just amazing. Why is that? Because people call those numbers, right? I always say lawyers, whether things are really bad or really good, guess what? You need a lawyer. There you go. It is just incredible how that is. I know your earlier panel talked about home improvement and, you know, whether you buy a house or whether you stay in the house, you improve the home. Home improvement is still done well. Retail is kind of a little shaky. Department store is not where we like it to be. Pharma's gotten better. We will see what happens.
I mean, there's been some thought by our friends in Washington about limiting pharma advertising. I don't think that's going to happen, quite frankly, but pharma's gotten better. On the categories where, you know, a little bit of a problem child. I mean, I wouldn't call sports betting a problem child. I mean, we make money now when a market opens up. Like the next market that'll open up will be Missouri at the end of the year. There are three big markets that we hope open up one of these days, and that's Florida, Texas, and California. That would be big money. It's still a 3%-4% category, right? It's not what, I mean, it was a godsend during the pandemic because it made up for auto advertising. It's still going to continue to grow.
One of the things, you know, is when sports betting first came out, it was betting who's going to win the game, etc. Now there are so many in-game betting that's being done. That's one of the things the streaming service have problems with because of the latency factor of, you know, 70-80 seconds. Right, not going to take a bet if it's 80 seconds after what happened. I made some money on my kids on that, by the way, when they were watching downstairs on streaming and I was watching upstairs on linear. That's one area where we're seeing some money coming back because if you want to bet in-game, you got to be watching it on the linear product. Otherwise, you're not going to get your bet in.
Yeah. That makes sense. Can you just touch a little bit more on why you don't think that there will be any changes to pharma advertising?
I think the pharma lobby is pretty strong.
Yeah.
They give a lot of money to politicians. I think that'll be rethought. Yeah.
What would the process look like if it were to get banned? Who would be able to?
Oh, it would start with, it would start obviously with Kennedy.
Yeah.
His department would bring it up and then they would probably try to do it as an executive order if they were to do it. I do not think Trump will do it.
Yeah.
I don't think it's going to happen. That would be the start of it. It would come from them.
Would it have to go through Congress?
Not necessarily.
Okay.
Not necessarily. It's like cigarette advertising was banned. That was banned, the industry banned themselves.
Right.
Right?
Yeah.
The alcohol industry banned themselves. Now look at all the alcohol advertising. In fact, two areas. Alcohol advertising is okay. Non-alcohol advertising, mocktails is really the new hot category right now.
Yeah.
It's not a lot of money, but it's a new hot category. Especially on a national level.
Any other hot categories or emerging areas that you think could become meaningful in the next couple of years?
There is one thing that we are doing to try and bring back national advertising. With the agencies, especially the major five holding companies, the issue is not the efficacy of our medium, it is the efficiency of buying us. We are really expensive and difficult to buy. It is true. I mean, if you are an agency, you have to have 40, you want to do a 40 market buy, you have to have 20 people doing the buy. That costs them a fortune, right? What are the agencies? When you look at their cost structure, right? Agencies are people, real estate, and now data. They are not going to run the data because that is their differentiator. That is how they are able to compete with the other agencies in the market, okay? Real estate, they are trying to get, you know, they are getting rid of as much real estate as possible.
at one agency has asked people to come back full-time. I think that's going to be a complete disaster. Most of them are saying you can work remotely, maybe hybrid two or three days a week, and they've learned how to do that. The question is people. And how do we save money? What we are doing is, again, national advertisers want our inventory, but they can't get access to it because it's just too difficult and agencies just push back, right? It's very easy. I mean, to buy digital, it's about hands-on keys, right? I have a 25-year-old with their AirPods on, on a long desk, right? What they're doing is doing this. If you're not on their screen, they ain't buying you, all right? We're not on their screen.
We are actually, I announced it last week, we're actually building a self-serve platform with all of our, with the backing of all of our members, with the backing of all the agencies. We are actually going to our executive board as we speak, as soon as I get out of here, to actually do a recommendation from the RFPs. We got really strong responses on the RFPs to build that platform. It is not about building, we should have built the platform six years ago, right? It was, you know, well, things are good. Why are we doing this? We should have built it six years ago. We are building it now. The timeline is pretty quick. I mean, we are going to want to be in testing in the fall and having it a go by January 1.
What I got back from all of the Chief Investment Officers at the major holding companies was, if you build it, we will come. If you make us as easy to buy, if you make you as easy to buy as digital, we will buy your inventory. We hope that that will start bringing back CPG, where we get 2%-3% of the dollar. I mean, that's nothing, right? If we got 3%-6% of the dollars, that's pretty significant. If the interest is there, now we've got to give them the ability to buy us as efficiently as possible because, you know, I can't put my fingers together as close as I can in terms of what, you know, agency profit margins are.
Yeah. Yeah. That's helpful. Any questions from the audience? I have a few more as well. There's one right here.
Hi. Great presentation. I was just wondering if you could touch on programmatic and how, I know you talked about local versus national, and maybe is programmatic kind of changing the dynamics between how local interacts with national? On a separate note, the sports betting, I do not do it, but I have a lot of friends that do. Do you think TV still really has that latency advantage when it comes, you know, to sports betting?
One, I'll take your last question first. One is absolutely. I see it every day. I mean, in fact, when I speak to my son, you know, like Mario, I'm watching the Yankee game and I'm speaking to my son and I'm screaming at the screen and he's going, "What are you screaming about?" The latency is there. I don't see it changing overnight. It's just not enough, you know, there's just not enough spectrum out there to make the latency go away, quite frankly. I think that's going to stay that way. Regarding local and national, I think it's really more on, you know, you did hit on something. The national marketplace is, as I said, hands-on keys and buying it that way.
In fact, one of these days, it'll be not only hands-on keys, it'll be an AI that's going to be planning and buying inventory. It's just a fact from the agency side. That's actually going to happen. We need to get in that game, and that's why we're building this self-serve platform in terms of programmatic. We are hearing from some local direct advertisers saying, this is actually a big regional grocery chain saying to me, "Steve, I can go on, you know, I can go on my computer or have somebody who works for me go on the computer. I can buy all this connected TV inventory." You're not there. That's why you're seeing us move more and more in it because I don't need an agency. I don't need 50 people. I need one person that's going to buy it.
That scared me more than anything because 75% of our business is local direct and 25% is national on average. Obviously, when you get to smaller markets, it is probably 90% local direct and 10% national. That scared me more than anything else because if that starts going that way and if we are not in the game, it would be problematic. I hope that answered your question.
Any other audience questions or I can, here's another one.
Everyone here, thank you for joining us today. I had one on the just easing the friction on ad buying. How long do you think it'll take to build a new platform and what do you think that looks like in reality once it's created? Is it some aggregated platform all the companies are using or each company will have their own platform in-house?
Great question. We obviously are pushing that it's one and what we got through our membership is it's one aggregated platform, right? Because you don't want somebody, I call it the swivel chair. Well, I got to buy Sinclair here. I got to buy, excuse me. I got to buy Nexstar over here. I'm buying one market and I'm trying to do it across four different screens. That makes us even worse in terms of trying to buy us. It really has to be one aggregated platform. That's not to say that one of our broadcast partners may decide that they want their own platform. To me, if we're going to make this work, it has to be one aggregated platform.
As I said, the timing is we want to be in testing and we've got five holding companies as well as a company that we are recommending to build the platform ready to go probably mid-September to test it. We're going to test it across about 15 markets. Across all markets, be ready to go by January 1. It will not include political. Political with LUR and all that goes on there. Did not want to get into that yet. It will only be linear inventory right now. We are going to plan on adding connected TV, social video, streaming, whatever you might have. You will put all of your video on the platform ultimately.
Great. Thank you so much. I think we're about at time. Obviously, you could go on for hours with everything going on, but we really appreciate you being here and we'll miss you moving forward.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for my pleasure. Thank you.
Next up, I'll be passing the stage over to my colleague, Sergey Dluzhevskiy , who will be hosting Rogers next virtually.
Thank you, Hannah. Good morning. I'm Sergey Dluzhevskiy, portfolio manager with Gabelli Funds and a communication services analyst with the firm. Next up, we have Rogers represented by CEO Tony Staffieri. Rogers Communications is a diversified communications and media company that owns the largest national wireless service provider in Canada and the largest cable operator in the country. It also has a media business with a focus on sports and regional TV and radio, which includes ownership of Toronto Blue Jays baseball club and a sizable stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. Rogers has 538 million shares outstanding, including 111 million voting A shares, with A shares trading around CAD 41 and B shares at around CAD 37 for an equity market cap of CAD 20 billion, net debt of CAD 47 billion, other assets of CAD 9 billion, and price value of CAD 58 billion.
We are delighted to have Tony Staffieri, President and CEO of Rogers, joining us virtually. Tony has served as the company's Chief Executive Officer since January 2022. Prior to that, he held the Chief Financial Officer position at Rogers for nine years. Do we have Tony online?
Yep. Hopefully you can hear and see me, Sergey. Thanks for having me and good morning, everyone.
Thank you, Tony. Good to have you. Tony, a lot has changed both in the U.S. and Canada since we spoke at our symposium last year. Trade relations between the two countries are being reassessed on both sides of the border. Canada, just like the U.S., recently had important federal elections, and immigration flows into both countries are declining. You are running the largest wireless service provider and the largest cable operator in Canada. Given your scale, you have a unique perspective in the Canadian consumer and the Canadian economy broadly.
Before we get into individual businesses, maybe to set the stage, if you could share your thoughts at a high level on the state of the Canadian economy, Canadian communications market, the position that Rogers has in the market, as well as your view of the regulatory environment and how it plays into your growth and investment objectives.
Okay, that's a good start, Sergey. You know, a couple of things I would say at the outset. You know, our telco business, cable and wireless, is largely driven by population growth, whether it's home construction on the cable side and certainly on the wireless side. Immigration and the new-to-Canada category has been a big driver of growth. If you were to look at, you know, over 18 months ago, wireless in terms of volume was growing over 5%. That's a combination of population growth, which would have been half of it, and the other half was just penetration gains. We continue in wireless to be underpenetrated in terms of when you look at mobile to population relative to other countries and in particular the U.S.
On the cable side, because of construction, home construction, we had that business in terms of size of market growing at 3%. Over the last six to nine months, the government took a position to curb the new-to-Canada category combined with a slowdown in the economy. Housing starts have slowed. Whatever was in progress continued to go through. In the first quarter in our cable business, you would have seen year-on-year homes pass growing close to 3%. Both of those are slowing. Overall, we expect the wireless business to grow roughly 3% this year, which is largely driven by the penetration gains. In the long term, we certainly expect the government to resume immigration and new-to-Canada category. In the near term, we still have a growing economy. As you mentioned, Sergey, we went through a federal election recently.
The new government, while it's not a majority government, is certainly acting like one in terms of how they're thinking about public policy, how they're thinking about long-term policy for the telecom sector. We're encouraged by that. Our new Prime Minister is certainly very experienced, having been a central banker here in Canada and in the U.K. He has a very, very good, I would say, broad economic mindset. We're encouraged by that. We're looking forward to, as he issues and develops policies for our sector, something that continues to encourage facilities-based investment and competition. We'll see how that plays out. That's how we're thinking about the regulatory framework. In terms of specific decisions, we haven't had anything recent that has changed much. We're not expecting anything in the near term that would be detrimental to our industry.
Rather, we're expecting things to be positive given the amount of investment, capital investment, and employment that our sector has for the nation.
Great. This is an excellent overview. Maybe we could start with the wireless business, which is obviously your largest business by revenues and EBITDA. You have been leading the market in postpaid net additions for several years. With that said, as you alluded to earlier, I mean, market growth has been slowing. I think promotional discounting in the wireless industry has remained elevated for quite some time. I think on the first quarter call, you mentioned that over the balance of the year, you see opportunities for growth in ARPU and price discipline. Could you talk a little bit about the factors that give you confidence in that expectation? What are some of the factors that you can control and what are some of the industry-wide dynamics that you think would lead to greater discipline in the market?
Out of the last few quarters, and in particular in the first quarter, what you saw is the impact of contracting growth. We're still growing here in Canada in terms of volume on the wireless side. We expect, as I said on the call earlier here, for the year growth to be in the roughly 3% range in terms of volume for Canada. Q1 was, it's usually a very cyclically slow quarter. We do about 10-15% of the total year's volume in the first quarter. What we saw was a combination of the industry looking to reduce promotional intensity in the beginning. In some cases, we saw price increases. Certainly, we launched a new range of prices for the Rogers brand. While we all have what I would call flanker brands, Rogers has been focused on the Rogers brand, the premium 5G unlimited plans.
We launched a new value proposition for that. We were pleased to see the market follow that. Nonetheless, there was quite a bit of promotional activity in the back half. Our sense is, and based on the comments made by other industry players, our competition coming out of Q1 is they were adjusting to a much lower volume and probably caused some behavior in the marketplace that was driven by the lower volumes. Our sense, given that the other players just have not had significant players, have not had revenue growth, they seem to be very focused in the second quarter on resuming ARPU growth while we still have volume growth. The industry in the last little while has really been impacted by lack of ARPU growth. You know, the two main players have had negative ARPU.
Our sense is, one, what we're seeing in the marketplace, as well as what they have said, they seem to be focused on reducing promotional activity. That gives us optimism that the industry fundamentals will continue to evolve and be strong as we head to the back half of the year, as we're all focused on not just volume, but the value proposition and getting back to ARPU growth for the industry overall.
Got it. Great. Switching to cable, since acquiring Shaw two years ago, you achieved your $1 billion synergy target one year ahead of schedule, and you continue to look for incremental cost efficiencies. You have been improving the rate of decline in cable revenues, and I believe you are targeting break-even level and eventually modest growth in the back half of the year. In your opinion, what needs to happen for Rogers to get to consistent moderate revenue growth in cable? What are some of the primary drivers for that? How would you rank them in terms of magnitude, in terms of impact on your top line improvement in this segment?
Our focus on the cable side has been to, as you point out, Sergey, focus on revenue growth while continuing to eke out efficiencies. Certainly, post-Shaw, very good head start on synergies. There are additional, what I would describe as efficiency plays that we continue to pursue. We have industry-leading margins at roughly 57-59% in the cable business, and we're pleased with where that's trending. The focus for us in the last little while has been taking that business and driving to growth. The headwind, not unlike the U.S. market, has been the loss of video subscribers. That revenue, albeit it's at a roughly 50% margin, has been an impact to our top line. With Shaw, we also acquired the satellite TV business, which is a declining business. Notwithstanding those headwinds, we were very much focused on overall growing this business.
We have been doing it through a combination of things that resulted in taking a business that over a year ago was declining at 4%. In the fourth quarter, we got that business on top line to break-even year-on-year. A slight dip in the first quarter to negative 1%, but that was because of some seasonal things in terms of timing of pricing increases. In the second quarter, you'll see us return to positive growth in the cable business. We continue to be very optimistic about the growth potential in cable that has really been driven and continues to be driven by a few things in terms of top line. One is focusing on market share where we have a cable footprint. We pass about 10 million homes, which is about 60% of the population here in Canada.
Within that, really focused on internet and having the best internet. We were looking for a branding pillar of best internet. Through various third-party assessments, we have the best, most reliable, and fastest internet overall in the country. That has been a good platform for us in increasing market share where we have the cable footprint. We are not leading yet, but we have made substantial strides in increasing the penetration of internet, while at the same time moving the market up in terms of internet pricing to what we think is the right value proposition for that segment. On top of internet, we have relaunched the Rogers Xfinity platform here in Canada, together with the products that come with that, including StormReady Wi-Fi internet, ProProtect for the home, and a few other products that have resonated with customers.
It is interesting, post-close of Shaw, British Columbia and Alberta are now our fastest-growing markets. It is good to see on that front. Penetration gains are certainly one anchor point in getting cable revenue growth. The second relates to the launch of fixed wireless access for us. We have the largest wireless network in the country. We cover 99% of the population. We have the most spectrum. We have capacity. We decided to launch nationally, particularly in those markets where we do not have a wireline footprint, notably Quebec and southwest Ontario, Kojiko territory. We launched our fixed wireless access product about a year ago, and we priced it competitively with wireline product. Given we are both a wireline and wireless operator, we were very disciplined in coming to market with that product, not in a disruptive way, but just pricing it at market.
We have had tremendous success with that. To give you a sense, the fixed wireless access, the wireline market we do not cover with our footprint today is almost 7 million homes. We now address that with fixed wireless access. Through network slicing, we are now about to launch the ability to put our complete Rogers Xfinity products on that network, fixed wireless access. Since launch, we have raised the price twice, and the elasticity on the product has been extremely good. We are very optimistic about the growth potential with fixed wireless access. The third pillar of growth for the cable business is the business segment. We have done extremely well, and we knew coming together with Shaw was going to give us the ability to offer a national footprint on wireline combined with wireless.
We're seeing that business growing double-digit, particularly in the small to mid-market. We're seeing some large enterprise, but our sweet spot seems to be in the mid to small, which is the larger enterprise population here in Canada. It is those three primary pillars that have been contributing to our turnaround in top-line cable revenue growth.
Great. This is a great overview of cable. As you know, one of the focus areas for this symposium is sports. Rogers owns a collection of premier sports assets in Canada, including your ownership of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club, Rogers Centre, as well as a 37.5% interest in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which in turn owns the Raptors, the Maple Leafs, Toronto FC. You're obviously in the process of purchasing another 37.5% interest in MLSE from Bell for CAD 4.7 billion. Yesterday, you got news on league approvals. We estimate that pro forma for the Bell transaction, your sports assets could be worth CAD 12.5 billion or CAD 23 per share of Rogers. Management has mentioned on the call that they could be even worth CAD 15 billion.
Regardless of what the number is, I think we could both agree that you're probably not getting credit for sports in your current market valuation. The company continues working on surfacing value from your sports assets. On the first quarter call, you mentioned that you received interest from institutional investors in acquiring minority stakes in your sports portfolio. Could you discuss a little bit how you're approaching overall this potential value surfacing process from your sports portfolio? What are some likely steps or range of steps that you're considering, and what is the timeline for this process?
Sergey, as you point out, we have significant value of assets on our balance sheet, and the value is not reflected in our share price today. We're largely valued, almost exclusively valued on our cable and wireless business. Notwithstanding that when you look at the set of assets that we have, which includes 100% ownership of the Toronto Blue Jays, it includes our media assets, the most significant of which is SportsNet, which is the largest sports distribution network here in Canada by far and has been consistently for the last 10 years and a good producer of cash flow. We're about, given the league approvals that we announced yesterday, we're about over the next month or so to buy out our competitor on MLSE. And so we'll own 75% of that. Our strategy here is to consolidate sports.
I should, excuse me, highlight for the group, MLSE owns the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC, and MLS Soccer Club, as well as a concert business and a few other things in, you know, what I would describe as the third largest city in North America. So the value of the assets is significant. It's not reflected in our share price today. Our approach on this is really to make sports and entertainment a meaningful second pillar of value beyond the telco assets of cable and wireless. There are a few things we're doing. We've already started work on the synergies. These businesses, besides the asset value and the increasing asset value, which has been growing double digits, we want to make it a meaningful EBITDA and cash flow business for us as well.
We aren't disclosing the numbers, but it's meaningful, and it'll be self-sustaining in terms of being able to be well capitalized with a combination of equity and debt and produce cash flows. We are working through the synergies as we put them together. In the near term to midterm, we're looking, just given our balance sheet debt leverage, to monetize some of the assets through a minority sale, through a private equity infusion. We have quite a bit of interest, as you would expect, in these assets in the marketplace. We are looking at what's the best for us in terms of getting liquidity. You'll see through that us putting a marker in terms of what the near-term value is of these assets, which we expect to be well in excess of the Forbes value and the $12.5 billion that you mentioned, Sergey.
In the longer term, we're looking to meaningfully surface this value for the Rogers shareholders. That's really the end game for us with respect to sports and entertainment. We haven't ruled out any options. It could be a continuation of equity investment to pay down debt for our shareholders. It could include an IPO for some of it, or it could include a complete spinout of sports and entertainment to the Rogers shareholders. We continue to look at those options. Those will take some time. There are probably two precursors to those. One is buying out the remaining minority shareholder in MLSE, which we have a right to buy out a year from now, which we expect to do. The second is structuring the transaction in a very tax-efficient way, which will require advanced rulings from the tax authorities here in Canada.
That's the direction of travel with respect to sports and entertainment.
Got it. That's a great overview of sports. Maybe before we get to the audience, one more question from me. One of the company's objectives since acquiring Shaw has been returning leverage to 3.5 times within 36 months of closing. You have recently taken a significant step in this direction by agreeing to sell 49.9% minority interest in your original wireless backhauled transport business to Blackstone for $7 billion. Could you talk a little bit about the main reasons for that transaction, why it makes sense for Rogers, and what are some of the other steps that you've taken already or plan to take in the near to medium term to further reduce leverage?
We've been very focused on getting our debt leverage. At the time of close, we were sitting at 5.3 times debt leverage ratio. We said within 36 months, as you pointed out, Sergey, we would get down to 3.5 times. We're pleased that following the structured equity transaction with Blackstone, we'll sit at 3.6 times. It will go up slightly as we close the MLSE transaction. As I said earlier, as we bring in private equity investment, that will bring it back down. We like the progress we've made, both through some of the balance sheet transaction as well as through organic cash flow. The organic cash flow side has slowed because of the top-line slowdown in the industry and for us, but it's still growing.
On the organic side, what we are doing and what we have communicated is we continue to look to increase efficiencies and continue to grow EBITDA. We are also focused on efficiencies in our capital programs. This year, we will come in at closer to the bottom end of our guidance, so about $3.8 billion compared to the almost $4.1 billion last year. That is really two things: one, to improve efficiency, and two, to increase cash flow so that we can organically continue to reduce our debt and our debt leverage. There are these transactions. There is the structured equity transaction that was led by Blackstone. There are other institutional investors involved in that, and also the hybrid securities that we did earlier in the year as well. A combination of factors to continue to focus on reducing leverage.
We continue to have a longer-term target to get our leverage below three times. We're getting at a stage where we have more optionality as we head into 2026 with respect to capital allocation and doing what's best for shareholders as we consider options in next year and outer years in terms of dividend increases and/or share buybacks. We do not want to get too far ahead of ourselves. Right now, the focus is on continuing to deliver the balance sheet.
Got it. Great. I have a few more questions, but I wanted to open it up to the audience to see if there are any questions for Tony. Okay. Maybe a question kind of on M&A broadly. Obviously, you have successfully integrated Shaw. While near-term focus might be on execution, deleveraging, and sourcing value from sports assets, as you look out over medium term to longer term, what types of assets could be of interest to you from an M&A perspective? What potentially could accelerate or amplify your strategy?
Over the next three to five years, we continue to be focused on Canada, to be clear. We're not looking to expand outside of Canada because we continue to see opportunities for growth here. Certainly on the wireless side, through both penetration as well as our expectation is the resumption of population growth. We see good growth opportunity there. On the cable side, both where we have the wireline footprint, we expect to see with population growth very good housing starts in the outer years, good growth there. In particular, with the fixed wireless access technology, good growth in the markets where we don't have wireline. That's our primary growth. I've talked about sports and entertainment as a second pillar of growth.
In terms of M&A or asset acquisitions, we would focus on small tuck-ins for those core businesses, but we're not looking to move into any meaningful adjacent sectors and make investments in that. We are focused on our core businesses, maximizing cash flow, and then making the right capital allocation decisions with respect to those assets.
Got it. Maybe a question on the cost structure. As we mentioned, you achieved your $1 billion of synergies one year ahead of schedule. Now that the synergy target is in the rearview mirror, I guess what are some of the meaningful cost-saving initiatives or cost-efficiency initiatives you're working on right now that could become more sizable contributors to margins over the medium to longer term?
To put it in context, as we think about our cost-efficiency programs within the company, we've moved from the vocabulary of integration synergies to just efficiency gains. You see that in two meaningful ways. One is our overall margins. We lead the industry here in Canada and more broadly. Our wireless business has about 65% margins with a very good flow-through rate on incremental revenue. Cable, as I earlier said, hovers in the 57-59% range in terms of margins. We continue to see opportunities to move those margins up. The other one is capital CapEx efficiency. That is one we've been working hard on recently to look for efficiency gains in doing that.
The broad categories of how we're getting those items, certainly labor efficiency, as you would expect, which when you look at capital, is about 40-50% of our capital spend. There have been very good improvements in that. More broadly, we look to AI and digital and the work we've been doing there as meaningful movers of the needle on cost efficiency. More and more, when you look at traditional call volumes, they've come down substantially. Nexstar call centers two years ago was a cost center of in excess of $1 billion. We've been able to materially reduce that number and continue to reduce it. One is we improve service, but two, as we provide alternative ways of servicing the customer, whether it's acquisition or it's a technical problem that they have through a digital experience. That's been very good.
We have been doing that at the same time that we have been reducing churn. We like what we see there in terms of cost improvements. Very broadly, those are two buckets. Of course, the last one is continuing to work with our vendors and our suppliers and continuing to move costs down. We made good progress there. One of the approaches we had was to consolidate our vendor list meaningfully from many vendors to a few global leaders. That has allowed us to have better service, better product, while at the same time reducing our costs.
Great. I believe we are at the end of our session, Tony. On behalf of everyone at Gabelli, thank you so much for participating in our symposium today and sharing your thoughts on the company and the industry. Thank you.
Thank you for having me. Have a good morning.
Thank you. Next up, we have our media and telecom regulatory expert session with Robert McDowell. My teammate, Chris Marangi, will provide the introduction. Thank you.
All right. We're on to our next panel, which is a new one for this conference. It's regulatory expert review. For those I don't know, my name is Chris Marengi. I'm co-CIO for value at Gabelli Funds. Cut my teeth as a media analyst. Our current lead for media is Hannah Howard, who you've seen before, and Sergey Dluzhevskiy, who you just heard from, who's a portfolio manager and also focused on telecom. So our honored guest today is Rob McDowell. Rob chairs the global communications practice at Cooley LLP. Before that, he was a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, nominated by George W. Bush in 2006, renominated by Barack Obama in 2009.
He unanimously confirmed by the Senate both times and did many things at the FCC, but is in particular known for leading the efforts to auction two larger spectrum auctions in history, as well as playing a key role in the digital TV transition, which we can barely remember now in 2009. The dookies in the room will be pleased to know that he's a committed Blue Devil Class of '85 as well. Sports is another panel. We'll start with regulation, far more interesting, and a lot of interesting news developments over the last day with, as has been mentioned already, Commissioner Simington, a Republican, and Commissioner Sparks, a Democrat, both stepping down as of tomorrow. The latter was, I think, known, but will be one-one until we get presumably a second Republican sometime in July.
Maybe you could just start by talking about how effective can the commission be at two-one? What's the timeline to a full five-person commission? And maybe just broadly outline priorities for Chairman Carr. I know it's a lot there.
Other than that, yeah, that's all I got. First of all, thank you very much. Great to be here. Many thanks to Gabelli and many thanks to the Harvard Club. I did bring my U.S. passport just in case that was required. And thank you, Harvard, for knocking Duke off as being the most hated of all modern America. So really do appreciate that. Yeah, there's a lot going on at the FCC. A surprise announcement by Commissioner Simington to step down suddenly as of Friday. We assumed he'd be stepping down maybe by the end of the year. He had long said that he would not leave Chairman Carr without a majority, but here we are. A one-one commission means nothing new or novel. That's a commission term, which I don't like because new and novel mean the same thing. But new and novel can't be done.
No new rulemakings, no M&A that requires a waiver of the national TV ownership cap. I see people hit their keyboards.
Yeah.
Until you get a majority. There is something called a board of the commission, which can be assembled. It has not been done since the 1940s. I'm getting a spam call, so let me hang up on them real quick. No, it's not. It's actually a very important client, but he's going to have to wait. There is chatter about that in the trade press today. I would discount that heavily. We think Olivia Trusty could be nominated or confirmed by the end of July before the August recess. The Senate is very consumed by the reconciliation measure right now. While the FCC is the center of my universe, it's really not the center of Congress's universe. There might be other nominations that have to be processed. The Democratic senators are putting holds on almost everything, including the ambassador to the Vatican. Who cares?
They're putting a hold on him. They're certainly going to do that for Olivia Trusty. That consumes time and energy, and it has to rise towards the top. Majority Leader Thune was asked yesterday, does the Simington resignation and abrupt departure mean that the Trusty confirmation will move towards the top of the pile? He gave some vague term that the trade press is trying to make work very hard, those two words that he said. We'll see. Hopefully, by the end of July, you'll have a two-to-one commission. If you're Chuck Schumer, you're going to really demand a Democrat be nominated. There's the whole question. I know we don't have time regarding will there be any Democrats on what used to be called independent agencies.
It's too insufficient to make changes to the cap, for example.
It is. It is. Anna Gomez, who I know, she was my law partner at a law firm, knows that she does have the nuclear option. I was in this position myself as a commissioner when it was two-to-one. I was in the minority. You cannot show up and deprive the commission of a majority. There is this board of a commission type thing you can do. She can try to gum it up if she wants, or will she play ball? If she just disagrees with something, she dissents. Hopefully, that is the case. For everyone in the room, you have to bake in these weird contingencies too, because we are in the era of weird contingencies actually becoming reality sometimes.
Hannah?
Yeah. So I think we'll talk through some of the different priorities and focus areas for Commissioner Carr and the FCC at this point. Deregulation and M&A are obviously coming into focus, especially on the broadcast side of things. What do you view as the top priorities and issues for the FCC from where we sit today in terms of broadcast regulations, modernizing those, and then from there? I have a few more follow-ups.
Sure. Cut me off because I know we have limited time, so if I blather on, each of those questions could be an hour. The commission, let's assume for many of you, have a fully staffed commission, which we do not, but is waiting for the Eighth Circuit to rule on the 2018 quadrennial review of its ownership rules, broadcast ownership rules. That is, we think, a late summer, August, September, maybe timeframe, maybe as early as July. We are not sure, you never know with the appellate courts. The commission needs to know what the court is thinking and what the mandate is from the court before it can proceed with the 2022 quadrennial review. Here we are in 2025. That has got to wait. Chairman Carr has enunciated publicly a lot of thoughts regarding a deregulatory agenda.
Loosening of the local ownership caps, that's just either radio or TV, but we can focus on TV for the time being. How many stations can one owner own in a market? How many stations do they have to be in that market? He, I think, is probably in favor of pretty loose rules. I think he understands that broadcasters' lifespans can be extended and have to be extended through consolidation. The twist, which you did not ask about, but is relevant, is where does the U.S. DOJ antitrust division stand? Gail Slater, I know quite well. She, I think, understands that over-the-air TV broadcasters compete against other media for eyeballs and end dollars. The career staff at DOJ has this religious belief still that they do not, that a local TV spot ad revenue is you only compete against other TV stations in your geographic market.
If you wanted to have two or three stations in the same market, the career staff, I think, is going to have problems with that, and she's going to have to do a bit of a cram down. That hasn't been tested yet because we haven't seen a major deal like that come through. That's really noteworthy. There is the national TV ownership cap. That is a separate proceeding from the quadrennial review because it was set up separately statutorily back in 2004. There will be rulemaking questions regarding how far the commission can go to loosen that or just get rid of it. The chairman has said he wants to scrap it altogether, that it should not exist at all anymore. I wrote up in the Wall Street Journal about this years ago. It does not matter public policy. I think it is really stupid.
We'll see because that'll get appealed by so-called public interest groups.
Okay. So looking like there's a lot of optimism that that 39% cap will probably get eliminated. Local ownership rules will get relaxed.
Correct.
Could you talk a little bit about what the implications would be for the local broadcast group? I mean, obviously, consolidation would open up. I mean, where do you think that that space will be in the next three to four years should these rules change? I mean, how many local broadcasters will there be in that scenario?
Excellent question. By the way, I should have said at the beginning all my disclaimers, which I'm not going to reveal anything that's material and nonpublic or privileged.
We appreciate that.
There we go. Yeah, we're all your compliance people. Not talking about any specific deals or specific broadcasters here or any clients, certainly. There's a lot of chatter. You've seen a lot of press about various station groups that are either going to swap stations and/or combine or get pieces of larger station groups consolidated here and there. There's a lot of pent-up demand. The last FCC was very hostile towards broadcast M&A, as you may have known through the Standard General Tegna deal that was effectively killed by the last FCC for really no good reason. That chilled, completely inhibited M&A, not just for broadcasting, but anything FCC approved. You're going to see a lot of activity soon.
I think one reason you have it as of June 5th, I thought it would have been sooner, but there is now public, there were a number of network affiliation agreement renewals underway that sort of delayed things. What your costs are, how much you're paying the networks, et cetera, has a lot to do with that. I think, and also there was volatility in the capital markets for a while, which delayed thinking for a while. I think you're going to start seeing more deals emerge. I do not think there's going to be any coordination as to who goes first or which deal comes out first. You might see smaller swaps first because that's just easier from a business perspective to negotiate. Then the larger, more controversial ones come a little bit later.
Do you anticipate that a lot of this will start to pick up before the 2026 political cycle or when, kind of timeline-wise?
Yeah, it would be my hope, and it's certainly our plan to have those all consummated and approved well before the 2026 cycle.
Coming right up. Then sticking with broadcast, but moving towards retransmission consent and negotiating authority, some commissioners have floated the idea of allowing broadcasters to negotiate directly with the virtual MVPDs. What would this mean for the legacy broadcasters, cable networks, and distributors? How realistic are potential caps to reverse network comp? I know there was an op-ed that went out.
It was Nathan Simington.
Yeah.
He's now leading.
Yeah, exactly.
We can maybe delete that from our files. The Chairman, Chairman Carr, has spoken out several times in the past few months, especially about network affiliate relationships. There was the letter to Bob Iger he sent December 21st, for instance. That is noteworthy. There is a CNBC interview about a month ago where he mentioned this several times during the CNBC interview. He is concerned about that. He is concerned about the effect on local news in midsize, smaller markets, rural markets. The only newsrooms there, he says, are because newspapers are gone, are local TV news. If the tornado is bearing down on your town in Oklahoma, you only have one source or maybe two sources to find out where to hide. I think it is going to continue to be a priority for him. How he gets there, and there is a lot there loaded in the word it.
There is the right for individual stations or station groups to negotiate directly with streamers, let's say like a YouTube TV. Right now, the networks take that in their contracts with affiliates and do that for them. I think he wants to try to do something there. I think it is sustainable on appeal, by the way. The commission under Section 230, for those playing at home, actually has, in a Supreme Court case from the 1940s, pretty clear authority to do that. There is also the notion of are the networks effectively controlling, and this is something he's talked about again, the affiliates. The FCC has legal authority there too. There is a lot that he can work on, but it's going to take some time, and that's a next year thing. He's got to have a majority GOP commission.
I don't know if Anna Gomez would vote for such things. She may, she may not. There's a lot of public interest arguments to be made to go forward there. Carr himself, now on reverse retrans, which is a bit of a misnomer. There's really affiliation fees because retransmission consent is a per sub of the MVPD thing. These are flat fees that the affiliates pay to the networks. I don't sense that that's really actually a priority for most broadcasters to cap that as much as it is for them to be able to negotiate their own rates.
Okay. That's really helpful. Chris?
Yeah. You touched on deals with respect to station groups. The higher profile deals before the commission, of course, are Paramount and Charter's announced acquisition of Cox. I do not know if you care to share any perspective on those. In particular, I had to add this last night. Can Paramount even get approved at 1-1?
Paramount can get approved at 1-1 because it could be a bureau action. The commissioner thinking, which is inaccurate, is that you need commission votes of either high-profile mergers only if there's something new or novel. The Skydance proposal is a simple transfer of control of licenses. They're not already a broadcaster. There aren't other issues at play. It should be approved on bureau action. That's something that you do not need an FCC vote of the commissioners to get done. Obviously, as I read in the newspapers, there are some political elements surrounding that deal, and we'll see how all that plays out. Also the patience of Skydance, right? How patient are they going to be? If this is not the deal, and we don't represent either one, but if this is not the deal for Paramount, then it's a melting ice cube.
What will be the next price? Who would be the next buyer? What was the other party?
Charter Cox.
Yeah, Charter, Cox. Yeah. I haven't seen any problems with that one, right? Cable mergers, by definition, you're not buying a competitor. You're in other territories. It makes a lot of sense as a business matter, for sure. Back to the antitrust division, I don't know what the antitrust theory would be to block it, but it's still a legitimate question to start asking. From an FCC perspective, I don't see an issue there.
Just speculating here, obviously in the realm of possible, you're going to have the chessboard changing a bit with a spinoff from Comcast, a potential separation at Warner Bros., maybe some other things. Is this commission, you think, more open to vertical consolidation?
I think so.
More open?
Overall. I mean, the big X factor, just to talk about the elephant in the room, is the Trump factor, right? What's going to be out on Truth Social here within seconds, perhaps, to change my answer. So bake that in, obviously, and I know all of you are. But I think as a general matter, especially with traditional media, I think the FCC is going to be a little bit more laissez-faire and allowing different experimentation and combinations because that's how the marketplace has to evolve.
Great. Rabbi Khaled, a few questions from Telecom. My first question is on spectrum. Obviously, the budget reconciliation bill includes several provisions around wireless spectrum, including plans to auction at least 600 megahertz of spectrum over six years and also restoring spectrum auction authority for the FCC. As you look at the tasks that the FCC, NTIA, Department of Commerce have in front of them, which spectrum bands do you think are going to make the 600 megahertz they are planning to auction over the next six years? Which bands might be auctioned sooner rather than later? There is an expectation that a lot of it will come from the governmental agencies, including the Department of Defense, who has been slow to part with spectrum. Maybe your thoughts on how this administration would do things differently to speed up the process?
Excellent question. By the way, interrupt me because that was a huge compound question. There is a lot to it. The House version, as you said, targets 600 megahertz worth of spectrum to be auctioned. The FCC auction authorities last for about three years. One would think that a uniparty control of the House, Senate, and the White House, regardless of a Democrat or Republican, historically, this has been a bipartisan issue, would want to restore FCC auction authority. We thought that would happen in late 2022, and strange things happened. One of those strange things, though, was this growing divide that is at least a decade old between the Department of Defense and other federal users of spectrum and the private sector. The Department of Defense sees it as a one-way ratchet. They have only been losing spectrum and have not gotten anything in return.
You have the Armed Services Committee members really dug in, and in the Senate in particular, where it's easier to do that. Senator Rounds, Senator Fisher, Senator Wicker, and he serves on both. Senator Sullivan, I put him in that camp as well. He serves on both the Commerce Committees and the Armed Services Committee. It's really unknown. I mean, I think there will be auction authority restored. Will it be just a simple clean reauthorization, in which case there's not much to auction in the pipeline, as we call it? That lowers the Congressional Budget Office score, the yield of money, the estimated yield that would come into the Treasury for these auctions. That's the fuel that drives the hopes of passage of a larger pipeline.
The Cruz bill, which Chairman Cruz, Ted Cruz of the Commerce Committee, is much more ambitious regarding how many megahertz have to be enumerated at auction. I do not know which ones will get auctioned first, right? I think that, I mean, if we, I do not know how many spectrum mergers are in here, but there is a lot of talk of the four and the seven. The lower three is out. I just do not know. That could segue, and I will plant the seed later if people want to talk about EchoStar, I am sure, which I would love to talk about. I do not know which ones would get auctioned first. I think the ones that do get auctioned first are not going to be that big a deal.
Yeah. Great. Right. Another important topic for the industry and for investors is focused on broadband subsidies. Obviously, we have a large $42.5 billion broadband subsidy program bid that is on hold, reviewed by the Department of Defense. They are doing a detailed review to remove "unnecessary rules and mandates, improving efficiency, taking a more technology-neutral approach." I think most recently, yesterday at a Senate hearing, Commerce Secretary Latnick made some comments, but basically the program has been in review since March. What is your take on where things stand with this program? What are some of the rules or rule changes that you are expecting to materialize? Also, how states would respond, what the timeline is, and what are some of the factors, I guess, that would influence the ultimate split between fiber, fixed wireless, satellite?
If you care to provide an expectation, what the split could be?
I think there is a sense, a priority from this administration to get going with the bid, right? There were a lot of strings attached by the prior administration. I think they would like to remove some of those strings. There are a number of states who are further along than other states, let's say Louisiana, which kind of was out of the gate first. Let's get political here. That was a red state or Republican governor who worked really hard to get that done, right? There is still pressure from industry to make it all of the above and not just fiber. Wireless, fixed wireless, or whatever, even mobile. I think you might see more of that. I think there's an understanding that, look, you had J.D.
Vance when he was in the Senate and other Senate Republicans pushing for extension of the ACP, which was the subsidy program during COVID for your wireless connectivity or whatever, your telecom connectivity. These subsidy programs for broadband have had bipartisan support over the decades. You will see money start to flow again into these areas. Will it be less restricted, less regulated? I think so. Exactly when or what the split will be, I can't predict. It was encouraging to see the Latnick testimony yesterday that he's aware of it. He does not have his Assistant Secretary for NTIA, the Department of Commerce, Ariel Roth, confirmed yet. This is part of the confirmation fallacy and tree criminology and as to when she gets there. You do have Adam Cassidy, who came from the FCC as the Deputy Assistant Secretary.
He's in charge of that, so.
Great. To get even more into the bids, I think my last question is going to be on USF. Obviously, in March, there was a Supreme Court hearing on the case where plaintiffs are basically claiming that the Universal Service Fund tax levy or the mechanism of collection of USF is basically unconstitutional. I mean, it has to deal with the third-party organization, USAC, collecting this or doing the process for the FCC. I mean, we had those oral arguments. I think the court will probably rule at some point this summer. Kind of a similar question, your thoughts on where things stand, what your expectation is of the ultimate outcome.
If the outcome is kind of negative for the existing USF, what are some of the alternatives or contingencies that you think your clients and industry broadly and also Congress would look at in terms of reforming the USF or putting it in a different kind of more sustainable place?
The fact that it's June, early June, and we don't have a decision usually portends with a Supreme Court case that it's a split decision, that they're working on their concurrences and dissents and passing a lot of paper around so they can write against each other. In this case, that may or may not be true because oral arguments weren't that long ago, to your point. Look, I read the Fifth Circuit, and leaving all client hats, I'll take them all off here. I read the Fifth Circuit decision. It was horribly written. It was written by some clerk who did not make law review somewhere in some law school, right? It was horribly written. I was trying to give this person every benefit of the doubt, and I'm not just being an institutionalist with the FCC.
That does not mean the Supreme Court might not agree with the Fifth Circuit. If it does, worst-case scenario, to answer your questions, there is a lot of tools in the toolbox here. Either you incorporate USAC, this is this federally chartered nonprofit corporation that administers the Universal Service Fund Program. You can incorporate that into the FCC. Congress, I think, might actually act pretty quickly. You have John Thune, majority leader from South Dakota, I have known him since he was in the House and served on the Energy and Commerce Committee. He knows this issue really, really well. It is very important to his state. It is very important to big, square red states as well, and others, and blue states. In New York City, the Lifeline Program is administered by USAC, for instance, and that tends to favor urban and rural constituencies.
I think Congress actually would get it to act together. I mean, I know that sounds ridiculous, does it not? Pretty quickly on that, if needed. I would think the court would not just blow it up and say, "This has to stop the second this opinion hits the streets," because that would be very disruptive. I do not think it is the end of the world. I think it will continue on. It has had strong bipartisan support since the 1996 Telecom Act, Section 254, which set all this up. By the way, there are other appellate courts over the years where this exact issue has been before them, which the Supremes are now going to resolve the split in the circuits, but have said, "No, it is constitutional, and here is why." We will see. It could be the worst-case scenario, and there could be complete chaos here soon.
Maybe just one follow-up on that. I mean, obviously, Brendan Carr and the FCC are defending the program, but I was wondering what your thoughts are on how the FCC could potentially reform this program. Assuming there is a positive ruling, everything stays as is, but obviously, there has been movement to reform this program at the FCC level, at the congressional level. How high on the priority list is that for Brendan Carr? What are some of the tangible things that we may see on a three-year or four-year horizon?
Yeah, excellent question. The last time there was any major reform of Universal Service was in 2011 when I was on the commission and worked very closely with Julius Genachowski on that. Or, as he says in the old country, he's Genachowski, I think, maybe that was right. It's a third rail, right? The contribution factor, if you want to get into the weeds, is 36% now. That means all of you are paying about a 36% tax. That's a constitutional issue right there. On your phone bills to support these subsidy programs. It's a shrinking pool of revenue from which the government can derive funds to maintain the subsidy program. It's been discussed many times, including during the ACP debate over the past couple of years, that maybe it should be just something that comes out of the U.S. Treasury.
I don't know if that'll be this really hard to do. No chair has ever really wanted to tackle contribution reform. I tried calling for that. It was easier because I wasn't chair. I was just a commissioner. I could be a rabble-rouser. I offered up a bunch of ideas. There are a lot of ideas to do contribution reform. Will there be reform? He's got to get a full commission first. Look, most of this year for, I mean, he being Carr, most of this year for Brendan is kind of a waste on big-ticket items. That's something he would do maybe at the end of his tenure as chair, so a couple of years from now, after the 2026 cycle and not too close to the 2028 cycle, because it does tend to be controversial, although I don't think people vote on it.
Great. I'll pass it back to Chris.
Yeah. I think it is Charlie Ergen, who has actually been calling on your phone. He could use the help. EchoStar has been flypaper for controversy, multiple commissioners, both parties. What do you think the FCC wants out of EchoStar? If you were advising Charlie, and we do not want to give him free advice necessarily, what would you tell him to do?
We will only address publicly available information on this. Not that I have anything else. May 9th, for those playing at home, Chairman Carr sent Charlie Irgin a letter saying, basically, "I do not think you should have gotten your build-out extension. I do not think you are building out your network as required by the conditions on your licenses. We are going to examine that." Tomorrow is the reply comment round for re-examining the 2024 extension of his build-out. We think it goes further than that. We think the commission is looking to take back some of those licenses. Meanwhile, you saw last Friday, of course, the default announcement, and we will see where that lands by the end of this month, I guess. That puts a lot of pressure, by the way, both on the creditors as well as maybe the FCC.
The FCC could, so the next best analogy is the straight path scenario. In January 2017, the FCC came out with its biggest fine in FCC history, took back licenses, negotiated a settlement, but took back licenses from Straight Path and basically negotiated or let happen a private sale to Verizon. Verizon paid Straight Path billions, and then Straight Path paid hundreds of millions, I think, into the treasury for its fine. They called them forfeitures. You could have something like that. I think that's a good template. That was all done at the bureau level, did not require an FCC vote. Many enforcement actions can be at the bureau level. I'm not saying that's going to happen with Charlie, but something to learn about Brendan Carr is he'll send you a letter saying he's going to do something, and then he does it.
He sent letters to the heads of PBS and NPR. Those are clients, but I'm not going to comment, but saying, "We're going to investigate you." He did send the letter to Bob Iger, but I'm not sure what he did after that, though, however. Sometimes it means he's just sending a letter. He's going to look at stuff or maybe wait to decide another day. It could be the music has stopped and the game of musical chairs for some of those licenses. Watch closely. I would look at the comments that get filed. Tomorrow, some might not get filed till later in the day, so you might not be able to see them till Monday.
Would Charlie essentially licensing or sublicensing some of the spectrum to the cable companies, say, or signing an MVNO agreement with those cable companies, would that satisfy the FCC?
I don't know is the honest answer. I mean, one could say that's not build-out. That's not what the conditions on your licenses say. You said as a condition of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger that you'd be the fourth and eighth nationwide wireless carrier, but you may only be serving coastal cities and not smaller markets. Is that how you're getting to your 80%+ number of coverage? POPS coverage. I don't know the answer to that. That could be. Maybe there's a settlement to be had, or maybe nothing will happen. I mean, Charlie's been very shrewd and lucky. He also knows the appellate process. We should talk about that for a second, which is he'll have ammo and can delay things for a while, right?
There is the specter of bankruptcy, and I'll let the restructuring and bond experts in the room tell me about that.
All right. We've got a lot of other issues, but maybe we'll take a pause and see if there's anything from our audience here. Any of you want to continue?
They all fell asleep. Wake up.
Yeah. So we have a bunch more topics to hit on, but I guess just taking a pause and everything that we've talked about so far, I mean, are there any other key priorities that you see for the FCC at this point that we haven't already touched on or anything that we should dive into further before we jump to the next?
Sure. I'll pull the pin out of one grenade, which is Section 230. And did you want to talk about that one?
Yes.
That's on the list.
Yes.
That's on your list? Okay. Which is an open question. Certainly, my law firm has clients who would be very concerned about Section 230.
Maybe you can just remind people what that is.
Oh, yeah. Sorry. Section 230, the oversimplification, this came out of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. And some people, it's also called the Communications Decency Act. But it is basically a liability shield for platforms, online platforms, when you're hosting third-party content. That actually applies to more places than you think. It's not just the usual big tech suspects. It could be your local TV station where there are user comments. It could be retailers that have consumer reviews of products. Newspaper sites, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, it incorporates a lot. In the first Trump administration, there was a lot of talk and more than talk about reforming Section 230. The Department of Commerce filed a petition for rulemaking at the FCC in 2020, I believe, saying that liability shields should be loosened. Meanwhile, Project 2025, there's a whole chapter on this.
Brendan Carr, when he was a regular commissioner, talked a lot about this. We have not seen as much conversation about this recently. That could be for a number of reasons. There are other priorities. It could be that the Trump administration is now interested in things like Truth Social or TikTok and things like that. There are two schools of thought on will they or will they not do something on Section 230. Then there is the whole conversation of how much rulemaking authority the FCC has under Title II, which is where Section 230 is housed. You can argue both sides of that. We do not see anything imminent and certainly not with the 101 FCC. Stay tuned.
Do you think that the FCC is the right venue to address concerns around misinformation and consumer protections?
Whoa. Define misinformation.
These sort of issues.
These sort of issues. You can make the argument of Section 230 because it's under Title II of the Communications Act, as it was set up in 1934, that it has some authority here. I don't think the intent of 230 was for the FCC to have rulemaking authority, but then they shouldn't have put it in Title II, right? This could be a congressional mistake. There is a 1998 Supreme Court case, the Iowa Utilities Board case, that says basically the FCC has general plenary authority, rulemaking authority under Title II. The proponents of Section 230 reform would say, "Yes, the FCC does have all that." There is a memo from Ajit Pai's general counsel in late 2020 of the FCC, general counsel of the FCC, Tom Johnson, outlining why he thinks the FCC has all this authority. A lot of it hinges on Chevron deference.
I mean, you asked the follow-up question, so now I'm really going to put the audience to sleep, which was overturned about a year ago by Loper Bright. That does not mean it's game over. Loper Bright says that courts can weigh FCC interpretations of their rules, but the courts are not going to defer to the FCC's interpretations of its own rules or statutes. The courts are still the last referee. They have the last call. If something happens, it will be litigated. It'll cause a lot of disruption in the meantime. There is a question that Ackee woke up.
While we're waiting one second, your mention of Title II gave me some PTSD on net neutrality, which is maybe dead, but I refuse to believe that it's dead. Like Freddy Krueger, any chance that it comes back? In what form? How much of a free hand do broadband operators have to price their service today, you think?
Yeah. That was part of B2. I did not bring that up because I knew that was a long haul vortex we would get sucked into. It could come back to the form of strings attached and future.
Talk about B.
Net neutrality. Is it a condition attached to a merger approval in future FCCs or future legislation? We saw also in the Infrastructure Act too. Anyway, I will not go into that. There is a lot that other future administrations could do and future Congresses could do. The states, of course. You have the California law, which has become sort of the most regulatory common denominator of net neutrality. That has survived litigation. It could come back.
Yeah. If I can go back to 230 for a second. You talked about how Carr, this administration is looking to potentially loosen the shield part of that. Is there a chance that they tie the shield part to the sword part? 230 is a sword and shield. The sword is the moderating. The shield will shield you from doing that. Is it possible that you have to moderate a certain way for the shield to work now? Is that the way that they could be thinking about it?
Yeah. Good question. We do not know for sure. My guess is to kind of simplify it for an audience, the general knowledge is that if you leave content up, you are better off than if you take it down. I think it gets also into political speech, which then is a constitutional issue, right? These are private platforms. They do have, for those who hated the Citizens United case of many years ago, many now on the left are starting to like it for this purpose, which is editorial discretion, right? If you want to take what is hate speech, for instance, what is misinformation, or how do you define these terms, right? It is in the eye of the beholder.
The oversimplification, but to make the point is I think where they would lean is if you leave content up, you're better off, it's more of a safe harbor. If you start taking it down, you have to have a good explanation. If you start making that editorial discretion, then you're just as liable as a newspaper, right? You have the newspaper analogy versus the newsstand. The person at the newsstand, these things do not exist. You're very young. I'll explain to you later what a newsstand is. The newsstand seller or vendor is not liable for the defamatory content of the magazine he or she is selling. The newspaper is because they have editorial discretion, right? If they print something, they can be liable for defamation. Which are you if you're a platform hosting third-party content?
That is at the core, but I think the intent would be to keep political speech up and not take it down. I do not know. Who knows where this ends up? It is hard. It is complicated. That is why it has not happened yet. By the way, you have people on both sides of the aisle for years. Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Ted Cruz, all saying similar things on 230 reform. Joe Biden even on 230 reform. It has never happened. Every Congress, a couple dozen bills introduced about Section 230. It does not happen. We will see. We will see if it happens this time.
Yeah. Thanks. Maybe just a couple quick wireless questions. We talked a little bit about the cable transactions in terms of the FCC. There are also a few wireless transactions, with the biggest one being T-Mobile acquiring a large portion of assets of U.S. Cellular. Is that a similar situation to kind of the cable transactions that you described? The approval could be done at the bureau level, even at 101?
Yeah. As we saw with Verizon Frontier, right? Those are bureau level. Yeah, you do not have to worry about those being held up. I expect approval of those here in the coming weeks. There is the T-Mobile, but also AT&T and Verizon pieces of US Cellular too. I just mentioned a lot of clients, so I am not saying anything forever.
Are there specific types of transactions? We've kind of hit on this from a few different angles that you would expect to face heavier regulatory scrutiny moving forward?
From the FCC perspective, so quote big tech, really the FCC does not have a lot of jurisdiction, really any jurisdiction, only if you have an FCC license. Back to comments I made about sort of the Trump X factor, we just do not know. Three of the big networks, yeah, they might have a harder time.
Yeah.
They might, they might not, but I would put them in the we're not sure yet category.
Okay.
We're almost at the two-minute warning. Last call.
Are you going on with shortwave modernization?
Shortwave modernization.
That's the first time I've had that question in a long time, so. Adam Chase, would you like to explain what that is?
100%.
No. Okay. So not that I know of right now. That was actually a priority for Fisher Simonson and related to that receiver standards, if you want to get totally nerdy with me. But right now, I do not know of anything. I can look into it and get back to you too.
It's like ham radio stuff?
Really, shortwave is a frequency band.
I'm kidding. Now I know what it means when they say it takes an FCC lawyer to unwind some complicated issues. You've done a great job of that here. Really appreciate you for being here. We've gone through a lot. On behalf of everybody at Gabelli, thank you for appearing.
Thank you for having us.
Thank you.
Good job. We're going country next. We're bringing up Ryman. Oh, sorry. Next slide.
Great. Up next, we have Nexstar. Nexstar Media Group is headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest local broadcast television group in the United States. Following the acquisition of Tribune in 2019, the company owns or partners with over 200 broadcast stations in 160 markets, reaching approximately 70% of all U.S. TV households. Nexstar also owns NewsNation, a national cable network, and has a 75% majority stake in the CW Network. The company has about 30 million shares, trading around $165 for a $5 billion equity market cap, $6.2 billion of net debt for about $11.3 billion total enterprise value. Today, we have the company's President and Chief Operating Officer, Michael Biard, and Chief Financial Officer, Lee Ann Gliha, with us here virtually. Thank you both so much for joining us.
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Great. I'll start off with some of the topics we covered last year to see where we are. We discussed the Charter Disney standoff and your broader thoughts around implications for broadcast. Over the course of the last year, we've seen companies with broadcast assets outperform those. We've seen large media companies like Comcast and Disney who have explored ways to create value by spinning off traditional cable network assets, retaining their broadcast assets, things like that. Seems like what would indicate a positive trajectory for broadcast. As we sit here in 2025, how has your thinking around broadcast role in the ecosystem changed at all? With streaming fragmentation continuing, is broadcast scale and reach even more valuable?
Sure. I'll take that one. I think when you look back on the fall of 2023, because you referenced the Charter-Disney kerfuffle, we looked at that and took a few things away, not just from the fact that there was a conflict, but more from the resolution of that conflict. Just briefly, a few of the highlights that we saw was, first, the value or the fight was not over valuable programming, right? You did not see Charter anywhere in their materials. If you recall, they came out with a very thoughtful deck. I did not necessarily agree with everything in it, but it was very thoughtful. There were a lot of great points in there. Nowhere in there did you see them really taking issue with the value of what we considered the premium programming inside the Disney portfolio, right?
They did not attack ESPN or ABC, for instance. In the end, that premium stuff got paid. Second, one of the things you did see Charter going after was the value of the long tail cable networks, or really the lack of value thereof, right? The sort of stuff that nearly every objective observer looks at today and says, "These things really are not providing value into the cable bundle." If you recall, when the deal got done and the Disney networks were relaunched on Charter, there were a few that did not come back. These were largely derivative networks that were sort of derived from their leading brands. They were left out when the deal was struck. The third, and this was really a critical piece for us, was the D2C services were brought back into the bundle for the first time, right?
Allowing Charter to bundle D2C with their linear video that they sell to their subscribers. That was an important milestone from our perspective because it essentially marked the end of an era where programmers could act as if they could sort of benefit from the bundled linear video business that was essentially paying for all the D2C services while simultaneously kind of undermining it with what they were doing with their D2C services. We thought then, and we still do today, that those takeaways were all positive signals for broadcast, right? Nothing is more premium or more valuable to the bundle than broadcast, right? Even versus ESPN, right? We think the culling of those long tail cable networks was really a good thing for us as well.
Taking cost out of the system where there's no value coming back in, good for consumers and, frankly, good for us if it frees up dollars to be reallocated to services like ours that we think are really delivering the value to the bundle. Third, the idea that the D2C services come back in is a good thing from our perspective as well, right? Eliminating the temptation for programmers to take programming away from broadcast and put it on a D2C service. Frankly, it kind of provides the opposite incentive. If you think of D2C services and linear now being brought back together, if I'm a programmer in a major network, I want to put my big programming on the broadest reach. I don't have a temptation to sort of separate it to try and get paid twice anymore.
I'm going to put it where I can get the most advertising benefit. All of those things at the time we thought were good. Nothing in the interim has changed our mind on that. As you referenced at the beginning of the question, what we've seen since has only strengthened our point of view on that development. At Comcast, by shedding their cable networks, kind of refocusing on broadcast as the centerpiece of their video strategy. You heard from the Skydance folks when they announced their Paramount acquisition, that CBS was really critical to their vision of the future of that business. I think finally, if you think about what Fox has announced with respect to their D2C product, they've been very expressive about saying they're not going to chase original programming for that product.
They expect to deliver it as part of their bundled video that they provide to the pay TV business. I'm not sure if they've said this, but we can say that the full-time feeds of their affiliated stations will be included inside that product.
Great. That's a really helpful overview. We've talked a lot about the potential for deregulation in the broadcast space under FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. What's your take on his early policy direction? What do you see as the largest benefits to the broadcast ecosystem if some of these changes go through?
I mean, candidly, it's been a breath of fresh air to have an FCC Chair that understands the value that broadcast, and in particular, the local station provides to the community. We're grateful that he understands that the regulatory scheme around broadcast is really an abject anachronism that needs to go away. Chairman Carr has been refreshingly practical and modern in recognizing that there's something seriously broken with a system that says a company like Nexstar and fellow broadcasters can't grow because we're capped, while big tech and big media, with whom we compete both for advertising and viewers, can continue to grow without constraint of any kind of similar regulatory scheme. The Chairman has brought an urgency to the situation that, frankly, is long overdue, and we're grateful for it.
Great. Nexstar has been right up against the cap for some time now. You're the largest broadcaster in the U.S., as I mentioned in my intro. Share your thoughts around M&A opportunities and areas of interest for Nexstar, in particular, from where we sit today and timing in light of the potential deregulation that you see coming. How do you see Nexstar participating in further industry consolidation from here? What are your biggest focus areas?
Maybe I'll jump in there. Historically, we've created a lot of shareholder value through our M&A strategy. You kind of go back in time and you look at where our stock price was at the beginning of 2011 and where it is today. We did that through, I think, over 20 deals, including doubling the size of the company in 2017 with the Media General acquisition, and then doubling the size of the company again in 2019 with the Tribune Media acquisition. That has really driven a lot of good synergy for us. We have a number of layers of synergy that come to us from M&A, and that includes retrans synergies, in-market operating expense and station-level synergies, and then corporate overhead synergies.
It can be a nice way for us to grow our free cash flow and be creative on a free cash flow basis, more so than just buying back our stock. I think we'll have to see where the FCC goes in terms of deregulation because, as you noted, we are at the cap today. We would need relief in order to expand into new markets that we're not in. The other component that has been talked about is providing some relief in terms of the in-market duopoly rules. Right now, you cannot own two of the top four stations in a market. If there's relief there, that would provide additional ability for us to make acquisitions in the markets that we're currently in and, frankly, provide kind of a new level of synergy if we're able to do that, which would be interesting.
I think that given our success in this in the past, we're going to look at all the opportunities that are out there and try to find the ones that we think are the best for us. Clearly, we would have an interest in markets where we can put more CWs on, markets that are a little bit bigger, markets where we currently have a presence. All of that boiled down, we can want what we want, but there has to be a willing seller and a willing buyer to make a transaction happen and a favorable regulatory environment for all of that to come together. We will have to see. I think the first thing we need to have happen is for the FCC to get in position to make some moves in terms of the deregulation that they've been talking about.
We'll kind of follow on from there.
In terms of timing for that first piece on the regulatory side to get into place, what are you anticipating now in light of some of the developments we've heard this week and the potential confirmation of the next Republican commissioner? What are you thinking about in terms of timing?
Look, I think our expectations are that once the FCC gets into a position where there is a Republican majority, that we would start to see some action, Brendan Carr acting on his agenda at that point.
That's helpful. In terms of the three buckets of synergy from consolidation that you mentioned, what do you see as the most impactful from where we sit today? I think you mentioned retrans synergies, corporate overhead, and there's one more.
Oh, yeah, the in-market synergy. To the extent that we or just general operating synergies at the station level, I think they're all very impactful. I think it just depends on the target company and which is going to be more impactful to us. I think if you go back, we've provided a lot of detail historically in sort of the three buckets. If you go on our website, we've got our old investor decks from Tribune and Media General, so you can kind of see how that kind of pencils out. All three of those categories can be impactful to us.
That's helpful. Continuing with retransmission and kind of the scale opportunities, as the largest local broadcaster, you obviously have pricing power to raise your rates, but that's been offset by subscriber declines. Can you share your outlook for retransmission from where we sit today and kind of where we are in terms of the payment cycle relative to where it may go?
Sure. I'll jump in. I don't want to agree that we have pricing power. I think that's a term of art in some circles that we don't necessarily agree with. We certainly have enough scale to be taken seriously. I think the heart of your question is really one about scale. The media business, and particularly on the distribution side, has always been a scaled business. Notwithstanding sort of our ranking as the largest broadcaster, as I mentioned before, we're in a world where we're competing with big tech all the time. More scale is always better, especially if you consider who our competition is. As Leanne mentioned, as we think about M&A, scale not only provides negotiating leverage, but operating leverage as well, which is critically important to us.
With respect to your specific question on retrans, I guess the answer is we'll continue to pursue a share of the wholesale fees that better reflects the share of the value that we deliver. If you just think about it from a ratings perspective, right? If you sort of compare share of wallet, right? What percentage of fees do we pull out of the system versus share of viewership? What do we deliver back in? There's still a disparity there. We think that disparity is on the order of about 40%, right? So there's 40% upside to our retrans if we got those two things to sort of level out. That's kind of been the marker that we've been pursuing for some time. We think there's still upside there, and we'll continue to pursue that going forward.
That's helpful. And then just closing the loop on potential regulatory relief, there's a few other areas that have been floated. I mean, anything impactful or meaningful, likely not quite as meaningful as changes to the cap, but in terms of ATSC changes or potential reverse retrans payments, that sort of thing.
Sure. Let me break this down separately. The notion that reverse retrans payments are what affiliated stations pay to their networks, the notion that that's going to be capped or regulated, that came from one commissioner, one, in fact, who will retire as of tomorrow or resign as of tomorrow in an op-ed. I guess we haven't seen a lot of traction around that idea, and we don't spend a lot of time really thinking about that as being very operative. On the ATSC front, yeah, that is important, right? The idea that, and this is a proposed rulemaking that the NAB has proffered, right? The idea that there'd be a mandatory cutoff date, converting from 1.0, the current technology, to 3.0, making everything that we do over the air a lot more efficient. We think that has a lot of legs, actually should be adopted.
Coupled with that, a pretty quick end to the idea that we have to simulcast right now what we put out on our primary signal on 1.0, that we have to simulcast that on 3.0 as well, right? That is just duplicative. It is inefficient, and it is taking up basically spectrum that we could be using for other purposes.
That's helpful. Moving on to sports, Nexstar's diversified its mix of sports programming, including the Big Four affiliate sports, CW sports, and local sports. Talk a bit about the benefit of broadcast model to sports and how you think Nexstar's strategy around sports develops from here.
Yeah, I guess I'll start with the headline that we think fundamentally broadcast television remains the most important medium for engaging live sports audiences, right? I think you could just look in the last year and see, notwithstanding all of the sort of rumors of the demise of broadcast TV, it just keeps chugging along and actually setting new records, right? You look at the Super Bowl, what it did this year, Kentucky Derby. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Indy 500 set basically a new record for the last, I think it was 19 years or something like that. Final Four, right? The Masters, the NFL Draft, all of these things centered on broadcast. Some of them with a little bit of streaming augment, but you don't see any stories like that written about events that are exclusively on cable, right?
The new records that continue to be set are centered on the cornerstone of their distribution is broadcast. We like where we are in that regard. If you think about our portfolio and sort of break it down into three different buckets, right? One is we get programming from our Big Four affiliated networks, right, on our affiliated stations. We do not really have anything to do with the acquisition of that programming, right? We look at how it is distributed to us, how much of it is exclusive, and so forth through the network. That, of course, factors into what is, in fact, a complex and pretty multifaceted relationship with the networks. The other two buckets, what we have on The CW and what we acquire on a local basis for our stations, of course, we control those directly and look at really the cost-benefit.
We are pretty judicious about what we do in each of those markets. The common thread, I guess I would point to in each of those is that the platform that we offer, our partner, whether it is a league or a team or a conference, in each case, really one of the benefits that we offer them is the unparalleled reach of broadcast, right? There really is no other platform that can match that. Frankly, we recognize that that is an asset, and we use that as consideration, right, in the negotiations that we have with them. I think every league, every broadcast, or sorry, every league or conference out there thinking about broadcast as a distribution platform increasingly recognizes the sort of preeminent place that they hold, right?
That sort of history of alternative platforms, whether that's cable or streaming as an alternative, is now long enough to where every rights holder can sort of look back and see, "Okay, that was a good deal," or, "That wasn't a good deal," right? In the case of MLS going exclusively to Apple, I'm not sure that's turned out to be a great deal for them, right? I think others looking at streaming and thinking about, "Okay, there's a big check available there, but is that really fundamentally going to help me grow my brand, grow my product, grow my fan base," which, of course, is the lifeblood to all of them.
I could go on, but the fact of the matter is when you compare sort of that hit list of successes that I mentioned on the broadcast side against what's happened on the other side where events have gone exclusively to streaming, we see a drop-off on the order of typically around 20%, right? Whether that's NFL on Netflix or NASCAR on Prime or Thursday Night Football, typically you're not seeing anywhere close to the sort of year-on-year comparison. You're seeing a pretty significant drop-off.
Yeah. So you went ahead and answered my next question just about the role of broadcast in sports distribution with some of the streaming players coming in. I think we can start to move on a little bit to the CW, and you mentioned the CW and kind of some of the programming changes you've made there. Can you touch on the importance of the CW to Nexstar and the opportunity that you see there?
Sure. I guess I'll start with the importance of our 54 CW affiliated stations, right? Because that really is a meaningful business for us. If you think about the reason we're in the CW business, it is because we were the largest CW affiliate when that business came to market three years ago. While the CW as a network may not be the most material contributor to the finances of the company, the stations are increasingly important to us. Certainly, the CW as an asset is a strategically valuable asset, right? It gives us the ability to control our own destiny on a vertically integrated network all the way down through. That allows us to, by comparison with the Big Four networks, on the CW, we can control every platform we go to.
We have a seat at the table with every distributor for care of our stations, whether that's a virtual MVPD or traditional one, right? Then having control of the programming allows us to program it in such a way that it benefits broadcast, which, in fact, is the business that The CW has always been in, but its partners were in different businesses, and that obviously drove different strategic decisions for them. By being able to sort of transform the programming away from niche comic book and other superhero programming and into programming that resonates with the broadcast viewer, starting with sports, we obviously have an opportunity to grow our distribution, grow our advertising, and really make it a business that is positioned in a much different way.
That makes a lot of sense. Can you also just touch on NewsNation and the longer-term opportunity that you see there?
Sure. I guess the common thread with NewsNation and The CW is those are businesses that we were kind of adjacent to, and then we've transformed them in a way to make them a better complement to our core business. In the case of The CW, we were an affiliate, as I just described, and then took over the network and transformed it completely. In the case of NewsNation, that came to us as WGN America through the Tribune acquisition in 2019. We looked at that and thought that the world didn't need another general entertainment network that was focused on original scripted programming, trying to compete with big tech and streamers and other big media in that regard. What we thought it could benefit from was a fact-based, nonpartisan cable news network, right? And that's in the wheelhouse of what we do as a company, right?
I think we employ the largest number of journalists across the country, over 5,000 journalists. We do news better than anybody else, certainly at scale. We thought that a cable news network would resonate with the characteristics I just described, would resonate with viewers, and we have the ability to actually execute on that in a way that nobody else does, given the fact that we have local news in hundreds of markets around the country. It is a business that is still growing. If you look at quarter on quarter, month on month, certainly at the beginning of this year, we see growing ratings. If you look at the fact that we have only been 24/7 news for about a year right now, it is still very much in a growth cycle.
Notwithstanding that we had the last Republican debate last year on NewsNation, we're increasingly going head to head with the established brands that have been around for 30 to 40 years. We feel good about the trajectory there and certainly are proud of the product that we're putting out every day.
That's helpful. I just want to make sure that we touch on core advertising trends and then also political. Can you just tell us what you're seeing in terms of your portfolio and the advertising expectations from where we sit today? Any categories that you see as the largest opportunities or risks moving forward? From there, we can talk a little bit about political and how you're positioned to benefit in the upcoming cycles.
Yeah. Just on the core advertising side, our nonpolitical advertising, just to take a step back for half a second, about 70% of our nonpolitical advertising comes from our local advertisers, which tend to be more stable, more call-to-action type advertisers and tend to be more stable than the national side of things. The lion's share of our advertising comes from that segment. If you also sort of look at our overall advertising pie, you've got about our national, or sorry, nonpolitical advertising pie, about 20% of that's coming from digital, which has been on the local side nicely growing for us as we continue to see growth in that area.
When you sort of look at our pie and you break it down by categories of advertisers, you're going to see about 70 or sorry, 60% of our nonpolitical advertising is coming from services-based businesses rather than goods-based businesses. I know there's been some concern about supply chain with respect to tariffs. Really, when you look at our pie of advertisers, it's very diverse and it's segmented, like I said, 60% services and 40% goods. When you look at that, our biggest advertiser is auto, but our second biggest advertising category is attorneys, which is not really kind of supply chain focused. What we've been seeing in the first quarter, I think our nonpolitical advertising was down about 4.2%, and we guided for the second quarter on our last earnings call down again in the low-mid single digits, similar to the first quarter.
We have not really seen kind of a major falloff or a big change in sort of the overall advertising industry or sector as a result of what has been going on from a tariff or a macro perspective. The categories that tend to be a little more difficult for us as of late have been auto and insurance. There is not really anything else to call out as anything that is sticking out as particularly impactful to our overall numbers. We feel pretty good with our overall advertising portfolio and the base that we have and the resiliency of the relationships that we have.
That's helpful. As we move into the back half of this year and then into 2026, how are you thinking about political versus, I guess, the last midterms as well as 2024?
Yeah, I'll jump in there. I think you start with the nature of our footprint, right? And our footprint is so extensive. We typically have a presence in like 80%-90% of the contested markets, right? And that gives us a level of stability and sort of expectation that year on year we're going to garner, typically about the same share of the footprint, I mean, of the spend in our footprint, right? Think of it about low teens, right? And as the overall spend in television continues to grow and we saw it grow in the 2020-2024 cycle, the presidential cycle, our percentage of that pie was consistent. We expect similar trends will continue into next year, both in terms of the midterms and then into 2028 as well.
Great. Any audience questions? There's one in the back here.
Hello. Yeah, thank you. How much of a risk factor do you see for you guys, those standalone streaming services like Paramount, Peacock, and now Fox just announced FoxOne, where they're basically just giving the broadcast fee for a lot of these in a lot of markets? Is that a factor for you? Is it a concern? Forgive my ignorance if I don't understand the model there in terms of if you guys receive any retrans from those subscribers to you guys.
Yeah, I'll take that one. Each of them is a little bit different in terms of how they're structured and both in terms of the business model with us and the role that our affiliated stations with each of those networks plays inside that product. Let's start with Fox because that's the one I know best, given my history. Fox will come out with a product that will include Fox Broadcast, but Fox Broadcast is only expressed in each market today through their local stations, whether that's an O&O station or an affiliated station. When you buy the product and open it up and watch Fox, what you're going to see in each of your markets is the feed from those local stations, assuming they've gotten a deal done with each of their stations.
I can tell you that we expect to have a deal done with them in that regard. You will see when you're watching Fox Broadcast, NFL on Sunday, for instance, if you're in a Nexstar market, you'll see our station. If you're in a Gray market, you'll see theirs, assuming they get their deal done. If you're in an O&O market, you'll see that. There is an economic relationship between us. Yes, we will get paid for each of those subscribers. We have a similar relationship with Peacock. Peacock has a little bit of complexity because they have two different tiers of product. One level does not include the local stations, including their O&Os. The other does, includes the O&Os and includes ours as well. Same with Paramount.
The economic relationship as it relates to the D2C products is one facet, as I mentioned before, of really a complex relationship that we have with our networks, right? There are a lot of moving pieces in terms of the sort of puts and takes in that relationship. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I'll come back to the importance of broadcast because I think your question is, do we see this as a threat? I guess the way I think of it is those products are centered on their broadcast networks first and foremost. If they move away from broadcast, we know what those models look like. If they want to do deals directly with the distributors and make the content sort of bypass broadcast, we know what that model looks like. It's called a cable network, right?
If they want to go directly to consumers exclusively, we know what that looks like, and they can go compete with Netflix, right? They are doing an augmented version of both of those, but to be a broadcast network and reach the entire country. Again, that reach is really the secret sauce to the rights that they're able to acquire and the viewership that they're able to garner. That requires having affiliates in every market. That's where the role that we provide and our scale, coming back to that question, is really a critical asset of the company and all of those discussions.
Great. Thanks. I think we're about at time. We appreciate you joining us again this year, and we look forward to having you again next year.
All right. Thank you.
Thanks so much. I'll now be passing it over to Justin McAuliffe, who will be introducing our next session with Ryman.
Thank you, Hannah. I have the pleasure of introducing Ryman Hospitality Properties, trading under the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker RHP. Ryman is a real estate investment trust specializing in large-scale group-oriented hotels. Ryman has 60 million shares, trading around $95 for a market cap of $5.7 billion, fully consolidated net debt of just under $3 billion, plus a minority interest of $392 million for a total enterprise value of $9.1 billion. Today, we'll be focusing on Ryman's media and entertainment assets, the Opry Entertainment Group, which they operate as a consolidated subsidiary. The Opry Entertainment Group is a preeminent live entertainment company focused on the 150 million country music and lifestyle fans. To give you a sense of their growth, OEG has been growing at an adjusted EBITDA of 17% CAGR over the last seven years. Joining me today is Executive Chairman of Ryman, Colin Reed.
Colin has been with Ryman for almost 24 years. He previously served as CEO from 2001 to 2022 and led the company through a strategic reorganization. He also oversaw the minority investment by Apollo Global Management and NBCUniversal into Opry Entertainment Group in 2022. Prior to Ryman, he was part of the senior leadership team of Harrah's Entertainment. Also joining us is Patrick Moore, CEO of Opry Entertainment Group. Patrick has served on the board of directors for Ryman from 2015 to 2023 when he was appointed CEO. He's been involved with Ryman, though, for almost 18 years, including time he spent consulting while he was at McKinsey, where he was a partner. Welcome.
Thank you.
Are these on?
Yep.
I think maybe for some of the audience that isn't as familiar with the Opry Entertainment Group, maybe let's start with sort of an overview. What does Opry Entertainment Group own and what is the strategy?
Shall I start?
Yeah.
Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for Mario. It's good to see you again. You've been a loyal shareholder of our company for 24 years at least. Hopefully, we've made you a bunch of money in that period of time. Ryman, as Justin mentioned, we own primarily two businesses. We're in the big hotel resort business, predominantly under the Gaylord name. We created that brand back 20-plus years ago. It really is the dominant force in the convention resort hotel market in the United States. We've done very well with that business. Then we have this business, this entertainment business, which is extraordinarily precious. In Nashville, we own Main and Main. We own the Sistine Chapel in the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman, and many other assets in this city, which is, quite frankly, an extraordinary city.
You do not see what is going on in Nashville anywhere else on the planet. It really is the hub of music, traditional American country music. It is where the artists live. It is where the songwriters live, the labels, the management companies, and venues. It is quite extraordinary. What is happening with this industry, this music, is because of technology, because of iPhones, iPads, it is now becoming ubiquitous. When you talked about the 130-ish million country lifestyle consumers in the United States that we are very much focused on, my personal view is that there are probably at least 130 million of them living outside of the United States. We are going to talk about that because we have some very exciting plans for the Opry Entertainment Group. We also own several businesses where we have partnered up with country artists, Blake Shelton with Old Red.
Recently, we've launched a new brand called Category 10 with probably the most successful country artist today in America, which is a guy called Luke Combs, a really high-quality individual who's a very good friend. That's the business. You're quite accurate. It's growing like a weed. Our issue with this business is normally you think about a business where you have a long runway, but the issue for us is the runway is very wide. These country lifestyle consumers touch many different businesses. We're going to talk about some of those in a minute, I suspect.
What do you think differentiates OEG from other live entertainment companies?
You want to take that?
Yeah, no, I'll take that. I mean, Colin referenced some of the assets. I think first and foremost, we have iconic, irreplaceable assets. These are assets that really can't be duplicated. Secondarily, I think there's an element of IP and media related to this business, which is kind of what this conference is about. As an example, we're on 55 million households weekly with distribution in the U.S. and also now in Sky Arts in the U.K. once a week. 2 million people a week watch an Opry show, whether it's through Facebook Live, streaming, or some of our linear platforms. I'll give you a good example. For our Opry 100th Centennial, which is this year, we had a three-hour television special on NBC. We garnered 7 million viewers for that particular show. 50 Opry members played that show.
We had 14 billion media impressions. That is all earned media. It would cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to buy that media through traditional channels. That IP, that flywheel that Colin was talking about, that ecosystem in Nashville is really the Silicon Valley for music. You are now sort of seeing the coastal labels come into Nashville because country music is not just the same as it was. It has always evolved, but now it has incredible elasticity across blues and rock and affectionately called Hip Hop and Americana and bluegrass. There are so many different flavors of it. We always call it now not just a—we were talking about it earlier. It is not really a moment for country music. It is kind of a movement in terms of the strategy.
We're sort of well-positioned to not just grow our business within it, but grow country music as a genre collectively.
Congratulations again on the Grand Ole Opry returning 100 this year. You mentioned the performance that you did in March. Are you planning on doing any other activations for the brand to celebrate the 100 years?
Many, many, many. Actually, Patrick and I, we were in London last week. We had two or three days we were doing a whole bunch of press stuff, BBC and the like, because we are taking the Opry in September to the Royal Albert Hall in London. It will be televised. It will be streamed all across Northern Europe. The reception over there is off the charts. We have got an incredible lineup. Any one of the artists that we are taking would sell out the O2 Arena in an hour, which is a 25,000-seat arena. The Royal Albert Hall is about 6,000 seats. This thing, we put the tickets up last Friday. Things sold out within an hour at a fairly reasonable price. No, this is going to be really good stuff.
We are interested in this because what we want to do is communicate with these consumers all across Northern Europe. We now have direct flights international with British Air. We have them coming from Ireland. We have them coming from Iceland and all of Northern Europe. We want to bring these consumers to the city of Nashville, care for them, love them, spend time with them, put them through the Opry, put them through all of our businesses, and create even more value for our shareholders.
Great. You recently reported first-quarter results. Opry Entertainment Group, which you report as a segment, both revenues and EBITDA was up around 34% year over year. A lot of that was driven by some of the new investments. You mentioned Category 10 with Luke Combs. That opened in November, I believe. How is that performing? Any additional color maybe you can provide on that?
You can do the performance bit, but let me just explain to you why we did this deal. This guy, Luke Combs, is very, very unusual. I've been in this business, as you said, 24, 25 years. I haven't seen an artist in Nashville that has the combined qualities that this individual has because not only is he a great performer, but he's literally like Taylor Swift. He writes all this music. He's had 22 number ones in the space of seven years, 19 of those he's written himself. This guy, most of the early stuff he wrote was all about the woman he fell in love with, his wife, now Nicole. He now has like 6 million TikTok followers. He's the 17 to 23-year-old females. This is extraordinary stuff. This is why we got into business with him.
Not only that, he's a hell of a guy and a really, really nice person. Talk about the business.
Yeah. I'd say we're in the business of trying to create one-of-one types of assets. We haven't talked about Austin City Limits in Austin, Texas, which is the home of the longest-running music television program. The Opry is the home of the longest-running radio television program, not just nationally, but globally. Category 10 is also one-of-one. It's 70,000 sq ft. It's a multi-entertainment venue that has a lot of different experiences. There are a number of different bars in Nashville and elsewhere. This is not that. This is an artist-inspired entertainment venue that has music from 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 A.M. It has a lot of a variety of different programming. It's on the waterfront. It's the largest building, not just in Nashville, but really one of the largest honky-tonks in the world.
I think maybe Billy Bob's in Texas is a little bit bigger, but at 70,000 sq ft. This week is CMA Fest for those of you that know country music in Nashville. The rooftop overlooks all of the stages. It is just really a preeminent position. It has done really well, not just with the audience and fans and the tourists that go to Nashville, but also with private events. It is a very big private event building.
Yeah. No, it's running a little bit ahead of where we pro-form with this thing. And we're very happy with it. We've preempted your next question, which I'm sure is, what are we going to do with that brand? We're going to find locations where the country lifestyle consumer wants to be, wants to frequent, or lives. We'll probably roll two or three of these things out over the course of the next two to three years. It's a very exciting concept. The other thing that's intriguing to me, and Patrick and I have talked a lot about this, Luke was in Australia in January. He played six locations. He played rugby football stadiums, 400,000 people. He's now the most successful, the most sought-after artist in Australia.
I'd like to find a way that maybe we can lift this product, not maybe do it ourselves, but find other people's capital to essentially take this product and put it in the remote location of Australia. I think we have opportunities too because of the demand for this music all across Northern Europe. I think there's opportunities there. Primarily, right now, we're focused domestically here in the United States.
Yeah. If you think about that flywheel, which we kind of think about not just in Nashville, but with the artists themselves. Luke has 60 million listeners across digital streaming platforms and 3 million people in his fan base. Luke is an Opry member. Luke is a business partner. He is also a phenomenal artist, right? When we see the business partnership, the Opry membership, and sort of that engagement that we have with him and his fans, it translates not just to our businesses, but to all of the other artists that work and collaborate with Luke.
That's great. I'd like to talk about Southern Entertainment. You made a majority stake, which brings OEG into the festivals business. Can you maybe talk about what you liked about Southern Entertainment? Specifically, I'm interested in how you're going to integrate that into the artist development program.
Patrick can describe it. He was very instrumental in getting this deal done. To me, this is part of the widening, excuse me, spinning. Part of the widening of the runway. The consumers that frequent these fairs and festivals are the same consumers that come to Nashville. They're the same consumers that go to Vegas and go to our place on the Strip in Las Vegas. It is part of the widening of the runway. Talk about the actual economics of the business.
Yeah. No, it's a terrific business to add. Colin talked about the fans, which are really important to sort of circulate and almost rotate like the hotel business between our venues. There are the artists who are, in many cases, Opry members or Opry Next Stage members. That's that country music component. That's really important, by the way, for the artists themselves in terms of the way they make money today versus the way they used to make money, which is fairs and festivals are a really key component. Southern Entertainment itself is one of the strongest players in country music festivals. There's actually one in Wildwood, New Jersey, for those of you that want to attend a country music festival.
It's sold out, but I can probably find a ticket for you, where there are four or five Opry members and Opry Next Stage members performing at that festival. These are some of the most important country music festivals. This week is a classic example where Jelly Roll is playing, today is Thursday. Jelly Roll is playing tonight at the Opry. On Saturday, he's playing our country music festival in Myrtle Beach. He's an Opry member, or he's Opry adjacent.
He wants to be.
He wants to be an Opry member. He is really a fantastic artist with us in terms of his engagement with Opry Next Stage. He grew up in Nashville. Back to this idea that we have both fans and artists rotate through some of these buildings, it is a really strategic advantage for us and very different than other entertainment and live entertainment businesses.
Are you able to share some of your plans for growing the Southern Entertainment platform? Is that going to be bringing new festivals to different geographies? How large can it be within sort of the overall portfolio?
Yeah. I think the short answer is we want to grow that festival business. It's a very attractive feature of country music, and it's really an important part of both the fan and artist experience. We will look at organic opportunities to develop new festivals in ideal locations. We'll also look at selective inorganic opportunities with festivals to create a nice portfolio of festivals similar to the amphitheater that we just won in Nashville, trying to create a broader kind of highway with which we can add growth to the overall platform. Southern Entertainment, as an example, is a great platform play because we not just acquired those festivals. We acquired the capability and expertise to run festivals.
The other part of this is making what they have today even better because we've spent the last decade building this customer relationship management system where we identify the customers that come to the Opry, the Ryman, all of these other businesses, and we build this relationship with them in a technological environment. Then we're able to push business into the businesses that we're acquiring. This is an important part of our strategy. I think there's going to be some top spin here in making this business even better.
You mentioned you also recently won the contract to manage the Ascend Amphitheater in Nashville. That is another capital-light structure like Southern Entertainment. That is a unique feature. Is that going to be easier to sort of accelerate growth given its capital light? What are the advantages of that?
Let me start on this one because if we had an aerial view of Nashville, and real estate in Nashville has just extraordinarily gone through the roof. A half an acre of real estate in downtown Nashville goes for many multiples of millions of dollars. It is like the strip in Las Vegas. If you look at the aerial view, this amphitheater sits right on the river just up from Broadway. It is strategically an incredible piece of real estate. We have just won the rights to control that piece of real estate for a 10-year period of time. We see an opportunity with that amphitheater, not just to put 30-40 high-quality summertime events through there, but activating that real estate more on a 365-day-a-year basis. I think this is a wonderful opportunity both for the city of Nashville and for our company.
Yeah. Just to add on to what Colin said, this adds an interesting component to our overall portfolio of assets in that city. We have buildings ranging now from 700 cap, so a 700-person venue, up to 1,800, then to 2,400 at the Ryman Auditorium, then 4,400 at the Opry, and now 7,000 at the amphitheater. When you think about helping artists in their careers as they progress, we've actually had members of our sort of artist community start at the bars and graduate almost all the way through that pipeline. We have a program called Opry Next Stage. We're in our sixth year.
We have had a lot of famous artists go through that program, including Lainey Wilson and Megan Moroney and Riley Green, if you know country music, some really, really high-flying and terrific artists who have been with us for all those years. When you think about artist partnerships, not just in Nashville, you think about the festival business, you think about an amphitheater business where we can actually expand that platform as well, then you have multiple venues that you can also engage those artists with. You are always sort of in front of the artists and talking with the artists. You have those opportunities not just on a commercial transaction basis, but because you have a strong relationship, you can create interesting programming for them.
That's a massive addition to that portfolio in Nashville, but also to OEG at large because of the additional vector of potential growth.
You talked about the variety of different stages that you have within the portfolio. Obviously, in the mecca of country music in Nashville, you have the two most iconic venues. You have the Moody Theater in Austin, sort of kind of going down a little bit smaller stages with Category 10 and Old Red. Now you have the music festivals. Then on the distribution side, you have radio, the television with your partner, NBCUniversal, and also on the digital side with Risky Riff. As you look at the portfolio, are there any areas that you think there are gaps or parts of it that you think you would like to fill out more or grow?
I mean, I want to continue to work on the IP and the media component because we get such a great tailwind. That example I was describing of the show in March, to get 14 billion media impressions, it's a really great sort of addition to this business. The Royal Albert Hall show that Colin mentioned is global news. It's not just a music event in a venue. The artists are actually going from the Grand Ole Opry, rehearsing at Abbey Road Studios, the famous Abbey Road Studios where the Beatles and other acts like Pink Floyd recorded, and then going to the Royal Albert Hall and connecting these iconic music assets and venues with all of the intangibles that those sort of signify gives us such a preeminent spot in the music landscape, not just in the U.S., not just with country, but globally.
I have to be a little bit careful here, but we have this incredible IP, Opry shows dating back to the 1960s with some of the most iconic artists that we all know, the Johnny Cashes, the Hank Williams of this world, the George Jones. Two days ago, we did a statue unveiling in front of the Ryman of George Jones. I was talking to his wife, Nancy, how do we bring that music alive? We did this 100th anniversary show a couple of months back that was, as Patrick said, hugely successful. The incredible thing about that show, if any of you in this room watched it, the artists, and we had all of the best, best artists in country music on that stage. They were not playing their music. They were playing music of the 1960s and the 1970s and the 1980s.
Garth did a George Jones song. The issue for us is, how do we bring that stuff alive and put it in front of the consumer? Because the consumer is listening to that music. I think there are some really interesting ideas. I know we are working on some really interesting ideas about the resurrection of this incredible music that was the heart and soul of this nation back in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that we have a unique relationship with. Yes, Mario.
Oh, I was going to take questions. Good.
Oh, I thought you were putting.
I was joining. You did one of the best road shows for an offering of a public company that I've attended in a long time. You own 70%, 30%. 30% put call. What does the 30% say about a liquidity event? Secondly, are you going to compare yourself on a road show to Live Nation? Sony Music in Nashville is taking on everything they can. You don't have A&R. You don't get recurring revenues from all the young singers that you're sprouting. Give me that part of the world. How much money am I going to make for owning Ryman?
Hopefully as much as you've made in the past.
I agree with that. I'm delighted. I may not applaud your efforts, but keep going.
Yeah. No, no. Look, I'm not going to waffle here. This is a very, very interesting time for us. We've talked about this a million times off stream. For us, getting this business ready for prime time, this business, OEG, should not be part of a real estate investment trust. Real estate investment trusts, the investors in real estate do not really truly understand this IP-driven business that we own. We've been really focused on multiple things: the growth of this business, the visibility of this business. This is one of the reasons we're taking the Opry to London because we've got a ton of investors from that neck of the woods that love this business.
For us, we're building the growth curve in terms of profitability. We brought in a really high-level executive to run this business. We made an offer two days ago for a Chief Marketing Officer. We're getting the deck stacked from a structural perspective. The profitability this year will be somewhere around $120 million. We've also got two or three really interesting, I think, growth initiatives that we're working on that we want our investment community to have visibility to. It comes down to market conditions. We all know we're living right now in a very, very tumultuous period of time. At the right time, we're going to separate this business. At the right time, you're going to see a world-class road show teeing this business up. This business will make our investors a bunch more money. That was the waffle.
What about other questions?
Yeah. Are there any other questions from the audience?
Sir.
I'm a small stockholder. The question is, what % of your profits for the last year came from the real estate and what part came from the entertainment section?
Yeah, yeah. The way to think about it, it's somewhere in the region, I would say, somewhere between 80-85% real estate, 15% entertainment. Fortunately for us, and we haven't really talked about it, our hotel business has been growing like a gangbuster. I mean, it's been really, really doing well. Just a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, we announced that we're acquiring the JW Desert Ridge in Scottsdale. We've got a very unique strategy in our hotel business. It's created loyalty amongst the convention customers, and it's really grown so well. Even though this percentage has stayed about flat because both businesses have been growing at reasonably high levels of growth.
We will uncouple this business at some reasonable period of time in the future because my sense is this business, handled properly, could trade at very good multiples. Any other questions? Yes, sir.
I love your numbers. I think your numbers are really solid. You guys are doing very, very well. I'm actually very intrigued about your intellectual property. I think you got some good value there along with the REIT. I'm going to ask a very maybe two to three years down the line approach of this. With your IP, have you ever given a thought of tokenizing it where you can increase, use that IP as a tokenization to kind of digitize some of your assets for the real estate side? I think there's a chance there when you look at it from a digital standpoint. You got the Genius Act that's probably going to be passed in July, maybe July, August. You got some really solid assets here. Tokenization on the on-chain will probably create a secondary source of liquidity opportunity there.
These are things that I'm hearing when I speak to my clients.
Yeah. No, I would say we haven't thought about tokenization in any real way. I think what we're trying to focus on right now is operating the business sort of with excellence and then growing the business. I think as we think about currencies and ways to kind of either monetize or create incremental sort of investment capital for the business, that might be one of the pathways for it. Right now, OEG between Ryman with the 70% owner and then the 30% owner, we're very well capitalized, and we do not have any constraints on growth. That would be more of a sort of a how do you then capture the value of the business? It's a very good question, something for us to consider, but not on the plate right now.
Yeah. The interesting part of your question is something that we spend so much time on. So many businesses today are struggling with all of the external pressures that are coming into them. Our business is, how do we deal with the opportunities we have? You have just laid out an interesting avenue of opportunity. There are many like this in this business, which we are very excited about.
Yeah. This is sort of a tangential comment, but what's really interesting about this business is we're unlikely to be disintermediated in any real way by AI and technology. Live events are really important. You see that live events don't have the same amplitude of sort of impact related to up and down cycles, number one. Number two, people want to connect from a live standpoint. Number three, because there's no physical goods, fluctuations in global supply chains with the current turbulence, we don't have any exposure to that sort of thing. We're insulated in many ways. When you add the artist community and the artist relationships, that flywheel is sort of unlike any other live entertainment company. It's a really special and unique place. Now we're kind of pretty big relative to the pantheon of businesses that play in this space.
Unfortunately.
I have a question.
Please just make it quick. We're two minutes over, so we can squeeze one more in.
Because Ryman Hospitality just announced yesterday to close millions of dollars of senior notes due 2033. What's the financial strategy behind this? That will restrain the liquidity of your cash flow, at least for the short term. I'm not sure what's the financial strategy behind this, like short term or long term. Why is this?
Oh, oh, oh, yeah. When we acquired Desert Ridge, our leverage levels as a company were running at about four times. We peaked up in 2018 during COVID, brought it down with four times. By the way, if any of you in this room are shareholders, you know what we do dividend-wise. We are dividend yielders a fraction under 5%. We are paying very, very good dividends because we are generating a lot of cash. The issue for us when we decided to buy this asset is that we could spend 10 minutes talking about why we did it and why tariffs allowed us, actually, all this nonsense that is going on in the market, why we were able to actually get hold of this asset, an asset that we have seriously chased for about eight years. Okay?
It's a market that we absolutely want to be in because we know this convention customers want to go through this market. We did it, but we decided that we weren't going to increase leverage. We went out and we issued 3,500,000 shares. The reaction from our shareholders, and we did this on an overnight, was unbelievable. This was many, many, many times oversubscribed. It was the same when we raised, when we did a bond offering the next day. We had like $4.5 billion chasing in the space of three hours, $4.5 billion-ish chasing $600 million. Our balance sheet's in great shape. We've got assets generating very high levels of cash flow.
Our leverage levels, as we look at our long-range plan over the next two to three years, our leverage levels, even with the enormous amount of capital that we're spending right now, we've got capital programs going on right now for this year of about $500,000,000 to generate 13%-15% unlevered internal rates of return on these projects. Our balance sheet over the next two to three years looks extremely good. This is one of the reasons why the rating agency, one of the rating agencies, a couple of weeks ago upgraded us. Sorry I'm getting into detail. Thank you for having us.
Very sorry to have to cut it off, but thank you, Colin and Patrick.