Broadcasters vs Big Tech: The Streaming Challenge

At this year’s NAB Show, one theme cuts through the noise: local broadcasters aren’t just competing with each other anymore—they’re up against Big Tech.

In the latest episode of In the Vicinity, local media veterans Tim Hanlon and Jim Wilson unpack the growing imbalance between traditional broadcast and the scale of platforms like streaming giants and digital ad ecosystems. As Wilson points out, big tech now commands a massive share of local advertising—forcing broadcasters to rethink not just strategy, but survival.

Against that backdrop, the stalled Nexstar-Tegna merger becomes more than just a headline—it’s a signal of how urgently the industry needs scale to compete. But consolidation alone won’t solve the problem.

From AI-powered ad platforms and unified marketplaces to the push for true omnichannel local offerings, Hanlon and Wilson explore how broadcasters are trying to close the gap—while also questioning whether they’re moving fast enough.

Listen to the full podcast above or get it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Tim Hanlon: Hello. How are you everybody? My name is Tim Hanlon. I'm the founder and the CEO of the Vertere Group here in Chicago, where we consultatively advise tons of companies in and around the media and technology spaces. A lot of work of late. In the local media realm, and you are In the Vicinity this week.

Once again, thanks for joining us where we talk about those issues relating to local media. I am as always joined by my friend and colleague and co-host Jim Wilson. He is the CEO of Madhive, and also the board director of other companies such as GSTV and Audacy. So he tends to know what's going on and what's what in and around local media.

So we're always happy to have this chance to chat with him. And this week we are doing so in the beginning stages of the NAB Show in Las Vegas. We're recording this on Sunday. Where Jim, as you will hear, has just gotten his sea legs there and is getting ready to knock it outta the park with investigatory and a conversational and all kinds of other adventures, meetings and stuff for what is arguably the broadcaster’s Super Bowl. It has changed in nature for sure over the number of years. It is no longer a broadcaster's show, per se. It has certainly taken on a whole new life with all kinds of things like technology and certainly AI and that kind of stuff. But as you'll hear in our conversation, we're gonna be talking about issues that continue to bedevil folks, especially this week as we talk about consolidation and what that means now for the Nexstar-Tegna merger, which we now know is essentially on pause given the new legal proceedings that have happened literally over the last couple of days where we believe advertising might be headed.

The things around AI that this show will either highlight or underline and the functions perhaps that are to be made better by AI's introduction. We'll get into sports as a realm where there's gonna be certainly a lot of activity as well at the NAB show this year in particular, especially as local providers jump into helping fill in the gaps for RSNs, regional sports networks, that are waning as we record this, let's not waste any more time. Here's our conversation. Please as always, enjoy.

We're recording this on the Sunday as NAB in Las Vegas gets underway. Jim, I know you are there this year. I'm not this year. So we're doing this. 

Jim Wilson: Yeah, I just got here.

Tim Hanlon: Okay. And as you enter the fray there, I gotta think everybody's tongues are wagging about where this supposedly done and dusted merger between Nexstar and Tegna sits as we record this. The stay by the federal judge has been extended, and it seems like this is going to be a still ongoing process. You, having worked with part of Tegna and then the spinoff if you will, effectively of Tegna, what do you think is going on in the mindsets of both groups of people, both at Nexstar and Tegna? The day-to-day folks pumping out the stuff. It can't be good for confidence. 

Jim Wilson: No, I'm sure there's a lot of frustration from all levels of the company, down to all employees who feel like they're in a holding pattern. A couple years ago when Standard General had a bit out on Tegna, there was just this holding period. There are activities that seem to get put on hold and businesses aren't moving forward. And that just can't be good for the business overall, just on a day-to-day operating basis. I gotta believe there's a lot of frustration going on. 

Tim Hanlon: I think it's probably also harder, too, because legally this deal was very quickly approved by both of the governmental entities, and the speed by which some of these consolidating activities occurred shortly thereafter. We're talking a couple of hours thereafter, which raises some suspicion as to how much knowledge was going on on the inside to make this stuff happen so quickly.

So now there seems to be this untangling of, hey Nexstar’s branding had been put on the Tegna newscasts. Literally that day. That's pretty quick for something that had just happened arguably hours before. That's unprecedented, but it is interesting to see just how quickly both sides were if you will, ready or chomping at the bit. That's a kind of start. 

Jim Wilson: I think there's a lot of time here. There's a lot of due diligence going on, I think, and when you're buying a business, you're thinking about all the opportunities in the business and they're already figuring that out. And so a flip of a switch, essentially, probably not that easy to bring the next start name onto Tegna stations.

But certainly there was a lot of time to plan for the Nexstar team. Because look, I've done a number of acquisitions. You really think through what you're buying and what you're gonna do on the other side, and you put together a plan to ensure that you have a successful merger.

So I think they started to implement their plan and they got put on hold and I think we're gonna see what happens in this. I guess it's this court case of ultimately what it ends up being. 

Tim Hanlon: Yeah. Look, I think at the end of the day, is this gonna prevent or stall or lengthen or elongate the process that was effectively thought of as being done?

So it adds some more process and problematic kinds of things and who knows if it will lead to the undoing of it. I don't think many people think it's going to be undone. I think there are a number of people who think that the longer this sort of winds its way through the legal process, you're gonna see things like maybe concessions or spin outs, or divestitures and those other kinds of remedies and stuff. Arguably things that might have been normally done had the process been more, I don't know.

Jim Wilson: Companies that, I mean outside of the attorney generals, the companies that are, anti-broadcast consolidation of the cable companies. So there's the whole concept of retransmission fees and their argument that a consolidation play will put them at a less competitive advantage and negotiate the sort of retransmission rates. So that might be going on behind the scenes too. Is that being negotiated? Is something going on there?

Could there be some divestitures of stations? They've already made these, some, a number of these concessions. I think you're right. It's gonna be delayed for a little bit. Luckily, I know both companies, and the Nexstar team is one of our clients, and it's a really smart group of people who continue to move forward in their day-to-day business and we'll see what happens. We're obviously, we're all following it. We're all waiting for the announcements to come out and see. We'll see what's next. 

Tim Hanlon: I think a couple of weeks ago people would've said, going into the merger, that it probably was feeling like a green light.

That the deal was essentially going to be done or essentially was done, supposedly completed. And that, of course, by extension gives all the other groups that have been going through their own strategic analyses and processes and M&A scenario planning. That how and when and where they're gonna do their stuff too.

So now, arguably now it's a yellow light, maybe flashing yellow light. I don't think the idea of consolidation, as we've talked about for the last couple of weeks, really goes away. I guess though the logistics perhaps becomes a little bit more problematic, but I don't think this slows down the notion that broadcasting, broadcast television in particular, needs to keep moving in that general direction. 

Jim Wilson: And I think it is. I think even behind the scenes, even before the Tegna-Nexstar merger was announced and Cox Media Group was on the market, there was a lot of conversation from what I understand going on amongst the broadcast groups around station swaps.

And so I assume that is all still going on and behind doors, behind the scenes here I'm sure there are a lot of conversations going on, not just about this merger and what it means for other potential mergers, but what are other scenarios and if there are gonna be other concessions. Who knows, maybe that's being talked about as well.

Tim Hanlon: Yeah. Look this, the idea of swapping, it certainly makes sense. That certainly does not run afoul or is nearly as problematic as whole cloth mergers of Goliaths. The idea of now maybe it's not necessarily as much about national coverage as maybe perhaps having, scaled influence in certain markets where you've got a couple of stations and that kind of stuff, which is a different kind of scale, right? Still fraught with challenges, right? How many voices in a market and that kind of stuff. But there are, to your point, there are ways. You've got multiple stations that are in different situations that can be rethought, reimagined, if you will. And to the point too, private equity, right? Private equity in the Cox situation is pretty pronounced, but Standard General is essentially a private equity entity. There are others in the private equity sector that could easily be players either overtly directly or covertly or behind the scenes, if you will.

Taking things private and that kind of stuff, so private equity is certainly an element to all of this as well, but clarity and, I don't know, some kind of blueprint for allowance of what can be combined and what can't be, I think would certainly help the situation. I think we're still not kind to really there yet, given what's going on now.

Jim Wilson: Yeah, it's such an interesting time. Again, I've talked about it over the last couple of weeks. I've been fairly vocal about being pro consolidation here because of the health of the overall industry. A healthy local broadcast industry is better than an unhealthy one, and big tech owns such a significant, and I'm just gonna say on the advertising side.

I don't know what's on the eyeball side, right? There are eyeballs, I'm sure, are being dominated by streamers at this point. The advertising market is 44% of the local market is big tech now. And how can the broadcasters compete against, again, I've said this before, these large streaming mergers, the Netflixes of the world, the TikToks of the world, that are bringing their own local voices to market.

These three or four broadcast signals in the market are not the only local voices in any longer, especially with new generations. Again, I have three teenagers who don't watch broadcast television. And so how are the broadcasters gonna compete with big tech and the streaming and the big streamers?

And then you've got cable consolidation happening. And so these rules need to be changed in my mind. Okay, so then there's, maybe there's some concessions, some additional guardrail. But hopefully that all is getting worked out and that's what's happening. 

Tim Hanlon: Alright. Let's talk about some of the things at NAB thematically that you're walking into as we record this.

Certainly consolidation has a role to play. I guess there's a couple of different sorts of sectors or sub segments of this, right? You mentioned advertising, so maybe we should talk about that. I think, yeah, we are starting to see a lot more intelligence around the advertising piping and processes that I don't think it would anticipate as much as they are catching up to the broadcaster's reality about not only digital, but streaming and trying to make those a little bit more holistic, a little bit more interoperable, shall we say.

And in particular, literally in the last week, I know Hearst has been creating what they're calling a unified ad marketplace to simplify their news products, right? So it's not necessarily the stations and the papers and the magazines and the other things that they offer but specifically news, right?

So if news runs in certain segments, say locally, and they own a paper and they own a streamer and they own a TV station, there's a way to buy that. And I also see a bunch of stuff going on the tech side for no particular reason other than I just saw this the other day, Gray Media is touting something this year.

With their new relationship with Quickplay, which is essentially trying to help aggregate the inventory across Gray's, what, 110-plus markets to similarly do that across all of their stuff. That's the streaming, that's the TV station stuff and all their digital stuff. So what I'm starting to hear a little bit more aggressively, maybe more than I have in a while, is this move towards trying to create hubs, if you will, for advertisers to buy local.

Across all of the local offerings in a much more either seamless or integrated kind of way versus by channel, so to speak, overdue? No. 

Jim Wilson: Yeah, no, Hearst is a great example of a company that has so much strength in the market based upon the fact that they've got various divisions. They've got newspapers. They've got magazines. They've got TV stations and their ability to use data across all of those verticals in an advanced advertising standpoint is a great opportunity for them. And they've made some changes in the business to really advance that and put a new leader in place for that. So they're in a great position. So this opportunity to look at various content verticals or formally content silos and data silos across businesses that have that sort of variety of business creates a new opportunity to maximize the ROI on those assets. And then there's, obviously there's the advertising side. There's so much opportunity and Madhive has been in the business of being a platform for broadcasters to bring those synergies and opportunities for 10 years now.

And now you've got the introduction of AI into advertising platforms, which is only going to create more opportunities for broadcasters in a way, while we're waiting for this consolidation to happen. At least consolidation can happen around key platforms. That is a big opportunity.

Tim Hanlon: It's also though, it's important to recognize too, that the history, from a CFO perspective, from a revenue recognition perspective still hangs over that. So for every omnichannel unifier of inventory. From a local, let's call it media company, not a TV station anymore. So an equilibrium, if you will, across all of the local inventory.

Not just broadcast, but also all these other things. There still is the legacy rollup financially of broadcast generates outsize. This digital is still a small part, but the growth of that CTV is depending on which CFO or group you're talking to is in one or both of those funnels or maybe a third thing and an asterisk at that.

When and how does the financial accounting internally also equal liberation? It's one thing for the sales to technically be ready to allow advertisers to buy a cross channel, but how do you go all the way through to the revenue recognition thing so truly?

People are all on the same page and think in an omnichannel fashion versus the biases of the traditional business models. 

Jim Wilson: Yeah, if I'm a CFO of a business or if I'm running a business, I want to grow my top line, but I also want to grow my margins, right? I don't wanna grow top line while trying to protect margins or have falling margins.

And so as someone running one of those businesses, I would be thinking about the growth opportunities, the use of advanced advertising platforms, the use of AI to create exponential growth. And again, one of the issues that I have with the broadcasters is that much of the margin that they're losing is going to big tech or is leaving the ecosystem.

And so what we wanna do is we wanna aggregate content across channels and it's so easy to think about whether we have them, other people have them. There are media mix modeling platforms where you've got top of the funnel broadcast and you've got lower funnel items and how you construct campaigns for advertisers that leverage all the assets.

That just creates such an opportunity for higher growth, expanding customer base in markets and the opportunity to increase margins. I'd be looking at margin uplift. 

Tim Hanlon: But the tyranny of the broadcast business model and margin expansion. Which is largely through cost cutting and program costs oversight and that kind of stuff.

That margin expansion is not necessarily a growth play. Growth is definitely the sort of digital side of things, right? And that's much more fertile ground. Digital and certainly CTV, which is even more nascent. How do you incentivize?

Jim Wilson: Yeah, you have to prove the value of your assets. There's the whole TVB automated linear initiative that's going on right now to really focus on transacting linear and really ensuring a linear market that is flatter than it was before. There are opportunities to find the right audiences to reduce friction and to ensure that there is, look, I still believe in margin growth.

I believe that anyone who's running a business needs to be looking at margin growth, not just top line growth. And so we've switched over from rate card models to cost plus models because as you look at the business going forward as new capabilities that increase outcomes occur you have opportunities to increase monetization opportunities.

So we should all be looking at how we get better at what we're doing. And we can't really rely on a fixed price for a service when there are more opportunities out there to find audiences, deliver outcomes, and create more opportunities for conversion. And so I think that we all live in a digital world.

Whether we have a broadcast signal or not, we all need to be thinking like we live in a digital world where margin increases have to be as important as top line increases. And cost cutting is not, for most of these businesses, you can cut a lot of costs, but still not make a lot of changes in EBITDA margin.

It really has to come from net revenue and gross margin. It has to come from there, and that's where you have to stay really focused. Not that you're not gonna be smart on your OpEx, of course you are. And you're gonna find synergies in OpEx. And over time, we'll all see opportunities for OpEx optimization with the introduction of new technologies or consolidation or whatever.

We'll always be looking at that, but the key is to look at ad net revenue and gross margin. 

Tim Hanlon: Alright, let's gear shift for a second into and this is the third NAB by my account is under the umbrella, the haze of the term AI, perhaps more intently than ever and a little bit more focused than ever.

With a couple of years under the term’s belt and people's grokking of how to approach and or utilize AI. Obviously in the advertising thing, we could talk about that, but what else do you look for or have you heard about that you are personally interested in seeing quote unquote AI make better from a process perspective?

Advertising, but also maybe operationally elsewhere too. In local media organizations, really in any industry, right? There is always gonna be an underlying infrastructure of either CRM companies or demand side platforms or whatever, or just different types of companies that, and I'll just go back to the broadcast industry that don't speak to each other and that are not stitched together.

Jim Wilson: And certainly there are API opportunities, but AI has created the opportunity and, we're building it and testing it, and testing other companies too. The ability to stitch together complex platforms for a broadcaster and to onboard a new platform. Within, I don't know, a matter of days where before it took months or it didn't happen at all because they would look at the months and say geez, that's gonna take months and this amount of money, is it really worth it?

Should we spend the money there? Especially if we're under pressure and now we have AI ad ops platforms and AI campaign management platforms that are making it so much more efficient to pull together the overall infrastructure. And so those infrastructure companies, I hope, have more opportunities than they did before. Because they can move more quickly, if they can move more quickly. Yeah. AI has a complimentary term as well that I think people often forget once they're on the show floor and stuff. It's the BS part of it, right? So I said having done some floor tours, some senior executive floor tours not only at CES, but also at NAB over the years.

Tim Hanlon: When it came to AI, I also said too, you get, I'm not saying treat all of it as BS, but you have to go into this either as an operator or as a salesperson or as a whatever function or functions you are responsible for, say, at a broadcast station or group or whatever it is you have to ask yourself AI, of course, the idea and the concept and the openness to what it can do, but AI for what?

Because if you're a tech company let's say you're in systems for ad sales or ad ops and that kinda stuff, there's the internal, how does AI make our offering better, faster, stronger, whatever. But this also applies to news gathering and to writing and to dissemination and distribution of content to the measurement, all these kinds of things, right?

So I think the healthy, I don't wanna say BS detector, kind of approach is you wanna be intelligent, literally in a thoughtful way about where and how AI is applied to functions, to activities, to funnels of different revenue sources as well as operations and content and all of that kind of stuff.

I think that's the fun part of the adventure this year at NAB is to see where can AI really help things out and where are, where else are things maybe more assumptive and or fingers crossed about, and just slapping on AI for its own sake because everybody else is doing it.

That really does require some real intelligence to sift through that stuff. And it's not easy on a show floor where everybody's selling. 

Jim Wilson: Yeah. We've talked about the use of AI to stitch together complex systems more quickly. That's very important in the business and creates a lot of efficiencies for us.

If you think about the front end on the revenue side, the ability to organize data and information quickly. So let's start with the seller, right? I really want the job of a local seller to be as fun as it was back in whatever, somebody deemed the glory days of local selling. In my world, local sellers seem like they're running their own business and they've got tools in their hands, and we have a product called Maverick Seller that basically is the tool. I always say to my team, what's really important is putting smart tools in the hands of sellers.

You sit down with your local pizza shop and you can instantly pull in information. Where's the traffic coming from? What are the other pieces? Shops in the area? What are their marketing positionings? What platforms are they using? You can pull all this together so quickly and you can look creative, you can look at all types of things, and you can come up with an advertising plan that you couldn't come up with before.

You would have to spend hours and hours to pull all this information together. You can do that for any category that there is in a matter of minutes or seconds in some instances. And so being able to put a seller out there, because I really believe, and I've said this before, broadcasters have this amazing opportunity to create content for and cultivate their communities and sellers on the ground is a really, to me a competitive advantage when it comes to monetization and what the local mission is. And so tools in the hands of sellers. And then there are ways, we have something called Maverick Audiences. And basically it's constantly optimizing. And if you think that your audience is stay-at-home moms who are 18 to 34, but then you find out that if you add one more layer of pet owners or fitness or something and you test them. It is constantly testing in the background to find which audiences will convert more and more efficiently. And you're doing this in real time, you're not waiting to the end of the campaign any longer.

You're optimizing using AI by pulling in data sets and looking at different audiences. And so I think this is a great opportunity, especially for local, and that's what we're so excited about at Madhive, about how AI is pulling in all these rich data sets in local markets and putting those in the hands of sellers and planners at the broadcasters and at agencies.

Tim Hanlon: Yeah, and I think that's why I alighted to the the Gray Media Quickplay story and the Hearst thing with their unified ad product for news because those feel like a real big step forward because it feels like that's each organization's step towards greater credibility in terms of truly offering quality inventory and environments versus just bolted on audience extension.

There's something to be said for helping local marketers feel more comfortable in that, hey, you're not just a place by which, or a way station by which I'm buying your local inventory and you're also helping me buy extra inventory elsewhere. I can do that elsewhere. I need what's genuine from you and aggregate all that stuff that you are offering in a way that's omnichannel.

I can mix and match and stuff and maybe to end our sort of cul-de-sac, our conversation this week, maybe the way that's probably best. Brought to market now, and maybe also a way for your more fun ad sales callback is in sports, right? I think maybe sports is like the ultimate local harmonizer of inventory and those dynamics.

Because you, the team and the game and all that stuff can be the tent. But in that tent could be the linear and the CTV and the digital and hell anything else you wanna bring into the table. Own and operate that inventory and mix and match it with all that data stuff that you've been talking about. Powered by, wait for it, AI. 

Jim Wilson: That's right. Powered by AI and basically the distribution of sports rights. The way it's being broken up now and disseminated AI will create more opportunities for that for sure. And again, I will just say when I started Premion 10 years ago, we were providing reach extension to broadcasters because they didn't have digital content yet.

And yet, there was this appetite for digital content in markets. And frankly, effectively, I think overall Madhive and Ion’s of the world. Premion for Tegna, and I think Madhive for every other broadcaster has really helped teach local sellers how to sell digital. And now as the broadcasters are creating a lot more digital owned and operated content, we're helping them monetize that.

And there's less reach extension, right? Because what we want them to do, and we're helping them do, is monetize, provide a platform so they can easily monetize their own and operate and increase their profitability and margins. 

Tim Hanlon: Oh, margins. All right, oh, margins. As we record this, this is Sunday going into the show. We'll release this in a day or two. You'll probably be in the midst of it at that point. What are you looking for, besides your meetings and stuff, hopefully you get a chance to go on the floor and stuff. Are there things that you're hearing about that you're looking to hear more clarity about?

Particular issues and or maybe solutions that you've heard about that you'd maybe like to learn more about, say on the show floor? 

Jim Wilson: My ear is always gonna be out for advertising technology and AI use in generating content and organizing content. But of course, I'm super interested in what's going on with consolidation and how the players are thinking and what's next and how they think about it.

I really do believe that they all see the threats of the streamers and the big tech companies, and it'd be interesting to have conversations with people on how to address consolidation or not how to address that. 

Tim Hanlon: Alright, here's the big imponderable I'll leave for you as we get ready to segue outta here.

Is this the year where a ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV breaks out and becomes something substantial and consumer ready and part of the dialogue? Given all this stuff that's going on in the broadcast world, it seems like a lot of people from the outside worlds of our little space are paying attention to broadcast TV stations all of a sudden, and it seems like it's an opportunity to finally translate all that 10 years of work that's been around this standard.

What do you think about it? Is it gonna have its breakthrough moment or two maybe from this show?

Jim Wilson: One would hope. There's a long history. There's a 10 year history there for a reason, which is, can broadcasters work together?

We have them all working together on one platform, and TVB is doing some interesting initiatives to get broadcasters to come together. I think more than ever broadcasters are realizing that working together and leveraging common technologies and common platforms has to be part of their roadmap.

Going it alone isn't gonna provide you the scale or the ROI, and I'm not saying broadcasters shouldn't be tech companies. But if there's leverageable tech out in the marketplace, which they already do with us or with WideOrbit or Mediaocean or whatever, use those. And so I think we're definitely inching in that direction for sure.

Tim Hanlon: All right. We're gonna leave it there and we will certainly have lots more to talk about in the days following the NAB Show as well in our little journey into local media as we do each week. My thanks not only to Jim, but also the great Jason Damata and Melissa Hourigan and the fine team at TVREV this week.

Certainly the folks at Madhive Nicole Lewis and Stephanie Nerby, and of course we could not do this without the dulcet, not the dulcet tones, although I'm sure he would be good on the air too. But the knob twiddling and the editorial perfection that is the audio excellence of one Jerry Payne.

Thank you kindly for your help and assistance this week, and thank you for joining us this week. And please tell your friends and your colleagues we'd love to hopefully incorporate maybe your questions and your commentary in the episodes going forward. We'll figure out a way for you guys to do that.

Be part of this conversation as we try to do for you weekly here In the Vicinity. Thanks a lot. See ya.