LG’s Keith Norman On How Local TV Can Still Matter In An Audience-First World
This is the second of three Innovator Spotlight interviews from our new TVREV Special Report “All TV Is Local Now: Local Television In The Age Of Streaming.” It’s a free download thanks to LG Ad Solutions and our other sponsors, Comscore and PREMION.
“As a viewer, it’s content first,” said Keith Norman, VP of Political Sales at LG Ad Solutions. “As an advertiser, it’s an audience-first world now. Call letters just don’t carry the weight they once did.”
We sat down with Keith to discuss how local broadcasters are navigating the streaming era, and what advantages national CTV platforms bring to the political ad market.
ALAN WOLK (AW): Political ad spend for 2026 is expected to top $10 billion. If the big streaming platforms can already target locally at scale, what is the outlook for local broadcasters?
KEITH NORMAN (KN): It’s a huge opportunity, but also a very tough challenge for local stations. At LG Ad Solutions, we have our own inventory, our own ACR data, and scale in every major market. That lets us reach voters efficiently and consistently.
Local broadcasters often try to piece together scale by aggregating inventory across multiple platforms for a market. That can work, but it’s much harder to execute and doesn’t give them the same level of control or precision. The scale advantage tilts toward the national platforms.
AW: Call letters used to be a big deal. Do they still matter in a world where people are streaming everything?
KN: Not nearly as much as they used to. As a viewer, I’m not checking what’s on my local station at eight o’clock anymore. I’m turning on my Smart TV and going straight to the content I want.
From the advertiser side, it’s the same thing. We’ve gone from buying call letters and dayparts to buying audiences. It’s an audience-first world now. That’s a very different reality than what local broadcasters were built around.
AW: Does that mean local stations are out of the picture? Or is there still a role they can play?
KN: They still matter—especially in news. Local broadcasters know how to do news really well, and that’s the programming most closely tied to their communities. If they can extend that news product into streaming environments and build audiences there, it’s a real opportunity.
The challenge is scale. Advertisers need meaningful reach to make it worth their time and budget. In big markets like Chicago, you can get there. In smaller ones, it’s much harder. That’s the challenge and opportunity local broadcasters are facing.
AW: A lot of the talk in political advertising is about AI and dynamic creative. Is there a way local broadcasters can tap into this, at least on their streaming platforms?
KN: Dynamic creative is becoming a big part of the mix, and it’s an area where national platforms like ours are out ahead. We’ve been working with political advertisers who want to run one core ad but localize the message at the end.
For example, the same spot might highlight environmental issues in one geography and pro-business themes in another. Add in things like QR codes, L-bars, or other calls to action, and you’ve got hyper-local relevance without having to produce dozens of different versions.
AW: Campaigns have always relied on DMA-based buying. But with CTV, those boundaries don’t really matter anymore. How is that shift playing out?
KN: That’s one of the biggest changes. DMAs create a lot of waste. If you’re running a campaign in New Jersey and you buy broadcast in New York or Philadelphia, you’re paying extremely high rates to reach audiences who can’t even vote in your election.
CTV lets you bypass that waste. You can target New Jersey statewide, or even just North Jersey or South Jersey voters directly. That precision is a big reason why more political dollars are shifting away from broadcast and cable and into streaming.
AW: Let’s talk about ACR. How does that technology change what campaigns can do?
KN: ACR gives us a much clearer picture of household viewing. We know if a home is heavy on linear, heavy on streaming, or somewhere in between. That means advertisers can make smarter decisions about where to spend.
If you’re already reaching a household through linear, we can suppress those impressions and redirect dollars toward streaming-only homes. That creates incremental reach. We can also look at what genres households are watching. If a home is already being bombarded with political ads on news, we can shift the spend to sports or entertainment, where the same household may be more receptive.
For smaller campaigns with limited budgets, that kind of efficiency is critical. Without ACR, you’re basically guessing.
AW: LG has put out several reports on what it’s calling the “Big shift.” Where are we now in that transition, and what does it mean for local broadcasters?
KN: The first shift was from linear to streaming. The pandemic sped that up. The next shift has been from paid subscription streaming to ad-supported streaming. Viewers are dealing with subscription fatigue and rising costs, and they’re finding free, ad-supported options like FAST channels attractive.
For viewers, FAST feels a lot like cable: you scroll a channel guide, pick what you want, and you’re watching immediately. For advertisers, it’s a chance to reach audiences at scale in a cost-effective way.
That puts pressure on local broadcasters because viewers can get a cable-like experience, with premium content and even some news programming, without paying a dime. Local stations have to figure out how to bring their own strengths into that environment.
AW: There’s an assumption that CTV skews young. Does your data back that up?
KN: Actually, no—that’s one of the biggest surprises. Our data, and third-party data, show it’s about evenly split between younger and older viewers.
That has major implications for politics. The 55-plus demo is the most reliable voting bloc. They vote in primaries, they vote in midterms, they vote in presidential elections. And now they’re streaming. My 80-year-old dad in Florida is streaming. My 81-year-old in-law in Illinois is streaming.
Local TV used to have an exclusive hold on that audience. Today, they’re just as reachable on CTV. That’s a game-changer for political advertisers.
AW: Looking into your crystal ball, how well do you see local TV adapting as streaming becomes the default?
KN: Local broadcasters aren’t going away. They still play an important role in their communities, especially around news. But the economics are shifting quickly. Political advertisers are looking for efficiency, precision, and scale, and streaming platforms are built to deliver that.
For local stations, the challenge is how to extend what they already do well—local news, community coverage—into streaming environments where data, targeting, and scale are already the norm. The ones that figure that out will be in a much stronger position as the market evolves.
