Some Assembly Required: Can Consolidation Actually Help Local Media?

We’ve all seen the numbers: YouTube is the biggest thing on TV as of 2025. Young people (ages 18-29) overwhelmingly get their news from a digital device, with only 12% preferring to get their news from televisio

In a media landscape where attention is so fragmented and digital natives flock to big tech platforms, is it possible that potential megamergers like Nexstar and Tegna (or Charter and Cox) are the last hope for building a healthy local media industry that can withstand long-term disruption?

In this episode of In The Vicinity, local media veterans Tim Hanlon and Jim Wilson have a candid conversation about the pros and cons of consolidation—and whether local media companies need to join forces to secure their place against a new generation of competitors.

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

Tim Hanlon: Greetings and salutations everyone. This is Tim Hanlon. I'm the founder and the CEO of the Vertere Group here in Chicago where we consultatively help lots of different entities in and around the changing. Craziness of the media landscape. Welcome to the proceedings this week. This is in the vicinity. It's our weekly podcast focused on all things local media.

It's a conversation that I have each and every week with my pal, Jim Wilson, who is the CEO, not the President as we mistakenly said last week. We've given him a promotion this week. He's indeed the CEO of Madhive, a company that is firmly ensconced in the streaming space when it comes to local media.

And he is also on the board of directors of other local media properties including GSTV, the former gas station tv, as well as Audacy, the audio and radio company in these here United States. And as is our want each week we delve into the various issues intriguing, beveling, flummoxing and potentially providing opportunity for the world of local media, which we know is challenged.

You're not alone out there. And, allow us this week to get into some of the hotter topics as we record this. Certainly consolidation is very much on the minds of a lot of people. We're gonna get into some of the pros and cons of that as well as some other hot takes of stuff going on this week.

And we encourage you to tell your friends if you like what you hear. And let's get right to the proceedings this week, shall we? Here's me and Jim, please, as always, enjoy.

Jim, how are you doing? How's it going? How has your week been? 

Jim Wilson: Oh, the week has been good, a little bit of travel, but back in New York, running a business and sitting on a couple boards. Lots going on when you're involved in a lot of things. 

Tim Hanlon: Look, as we've talked about before, you've got lots of different sorts of irons in the fire, both from board perspectives as well as running, CEO of Madhive. And by the way parenthetically we demoted you erroneously last week. So we're putting ourselves on notice this week for, we called you president in our lead up last week. So sorry for that demotion, but it was only for a week. You've been promoted to CEO, so congratulations on that.

Jim Wilson: As long as I can make an impact. That's all that matters to me. 

Tim Hanlon: A couple of weeks ago you wrote something for AdExchanger that I think is a great sort of tip-off point for this week.

It's a timely part of the dialogue and conversation. And we're gonna be revisiting this topic as news warrants, but you basically, in your column make the case. It's called local media needs to consolidate, to compete, but an outdated legal standard stands in the way. Now, you don't have to paraphrase it, but it's largely, you're basically making a case here that you know these discussions and machinations of television station groups, for example.

To be larger and consolidated is largely a good thing, especially from the advertising sales perspective. Maybe a little sort of insight as to what you meant by all of that. 

Jim Wilson: Sure. I started the article off by actually talking about the fact that I grew up around a small business and, kind of funny 'cause I went down to where I was traveling actually this week. I went to see my dad who ran a small business when I was growing up and he used to take me to TV and radio stations where he was an advertiser. So I've always been connected to it in some way.

And it's funny how it all came full circle after all these years, and here I am. But the look I'm very passionate about local advertising and I'm very passionate about bringing. Resources to local advertisers that you know are equal to what, the resources that national brands get.

That's what the whole genesis in my mind of what Premion was when I started that. And what Madhive is doing today is bringing technology to local advertising, and bringing resources to local advertisers. When I was thinking about Cumulus. They just filed for bankruptcy. And TV broadcasters are a little under strain because of declining trust or radio listening, declining linear television listening. And the article was really about consolidation that will give them the resources, enable them to shift their businesses toward digital and be able to make bigger investments in the communities than they have been making.

And so they've been struggling. Many of them have been struggling financially. Again, like we said, we had a bankruptcy yesterday. And I think with the consolidation that's happening in streaming and the consolidation that may be happening in cable. If broadcasters are gonna be at a disadvantage, if they're not able to leverage scale, and I define scale in the local advertising businesses as the ability to reach all 210 markets with ads, tailored ads for those markets, and the ability to go deep in those markets.

That's why I wrote the article. 

Tim Hanlon: Look, there are a couple ways to skin that cat. I remember as a baby media buyer planner back in the late eighties early nineties, the dynamic of dealing with a multitude of local station reps and rep firms in the midst of buying television and considering radio plans and that kind of stuff.

And over the decades the consolidation of those entities and maybe we're looking forward or not to another wave of that on the television side, if various political and regulatory winds continue to blow in a certain direction, there is a certain ease, right? From a buyer's perspective and frankly, certainly from a seller's perspective, to have multiple properties with multiple brands and multiple target audiences, if you will.

That can be, and not unlike the Premion thing in the CTV space is the ability to aggregate those and offer more of a panoply of choice. And from a buyer perspective, it's a little bit easier, right? 'cause you have three or four different entities to mix and match and choose from versus say, I don't know, in a big market like a dozen.

So I guess there is some uniformity and or simplicity by that kind of scale. I guess that's one of the elements of your internet, right?

Jim Wilson: Yeah. Again the consolidation of local broadcast. It's not arguing for obviously, one major provider in markets. You still want competition in markets.

I think competition always drives better products anyway. But again, when I started Premion, it was fragmented demand from advertisers and fragmented supply from a whole bunch of streaming services. Those streaming services ended up consolidating and they're continuing to consolidate.

Most likely, the Paramount team pulls out potentially a big win with the Warner Brothers Discovery deal that will enable them to better compete against Netflix. Now you've got Netflix, now you've got this combined Paramount, Warner Brothers, and you've got a handful of big streamers.

And then you've got big tech. You've got Meta, you've got Google, you've got emerging properties like TikTok. There's so many opportunities. There's so many opportunities for consumers overall. Why not give the broadcasters an equal opportunity to consolidate and build out their digital businesses.

Because that's what they're gonna need to do. Broadcasters are gonna become digital publishers as well. And so you want them to have the resources and I want local media to still exist. Do I want my local news from TikTok? I don't know. Probably I will get it from there, but I want a healthy local media market and I think consolidation will lead to a healthy local media market. That will lead to the development of digital, local digital content, local digital news, local digital sports. All of the things that we've had in the past that are just running on different platforms now.

And that's good for advertisers. 

Tim Hanlon: But you also know the counterweight to that? Which, so take it outta the business and advertising perspective too. I wrote a little column in TVRev this week. Hint, hint.

Another sort of salvo about broadcast ownership.

There's basically an exception that was made for Indianapolis, the marketplace there. That's some unique issues related to this. But in essence, the local entity there is buying a station from Scripps to create the first of its kind, what they call triopoly. It's not even a word, but duopoly is a word and it's certainly something that broadcasters have gotten comfortable with, familiar with, and anticipatory about as these new waves of consolidation come about.

I think really what you're starting to see, and there's an expectancy of, is truly a station group being able to own not only two, but possibly three. And in certain cases, some smaller markets, even four TV stations in a marketplace, right? Which sounds a lot like where we went with radio in the last 20, 30 years, where you had multiple stations in a market, different formats, different audiences and stuff.

But yet with a unified, backend unified sales organization, that kind of stuff, I can see the benefits there. But you also have to question, frankly, the output part, right? If I have three TV stations, am I gonna have three separate local newsrooms? Highly unlikely. 

Jim Wilson: Yes. Probably highly unlikely.

But again I think the idea here is you've got declining linear broadcast, and you've got this opportunity to create multiple brands in a market and multiple brands of content. And maybe they're like radio, that's a really good example, but I'm really focused on the fact that I work with a lot of broadcasters and there are a lot of broadcasters that have made strong inroads in their ability to generate digital content. And then there are broadcasters that have not yet, and those broadcasters who have not yet, I feel, are definitely more at risk.

And I think you see this with cumulus. Bankruptcy. I think they're at risk, and I don't think we want an unhealthy local media market. And I think that, the consolidation of local broadcast, even if there is more than a duopoly in a market, I'd prefer if it was just a duopoly, but that's not up to me.

Again it's not just broadcaster against broadcaster anymore. It is broadcaster versus streaming services versus a potential consolidating cable market versus big tech. And all of those platforms run content that can include local news. And so why not let the broadcasters consolidate so that they can compete?

Again, I don't even know if you're gonna call 'em broadcasters in the future. They themselves could be digital content companies or walled gardens in and of themselves.

The whole market's changing. You can't think about broadcast the same way that you have before. If you've got strong streaming, large tech giants consolidating cable all producing content and then you are putting broadcasters at a disadvantage. It just doesn't make sense to me. 

Tim Hanlon: So this is a classic sort of consolidation regulatory defense.

Mechanism. It's the defense on, we've seen it with the satellite radio industry, right? When Sirius and XM were competitors and they were claiming, Hey, it's not really just the satellite radio industry 'cause they're only two co competitors. We're in the audio space, so we need to scale in order to compete.

Same thing here. The NAB has been claiming this for months and months now, especially as. A new regulatory environment over the last couple of years is essentially signaling that, that very logic that hey, it is a bigger, more competitive world out there. It's hard to deny though that and look there's something to be said from a business perspective that consolidation and efficiencies and backroom office services and all that kind of stuff can make for a much more efficient business.

In a typical local media market, you have three, four, maybe five or six, depending on how big it is, local news operations. In certain smaller markets, I think there's some discussion, some idea whether it's consolidation driven or not, that maybe you create a news service for a particular city where each of the stations or groups participate, like a local news service.

And they take turns doing like they do in Washington, DC with the pool. Covering each entity, certain press conferences and that kinda stuff where you share those resources, share those burdens, and not pound each other into a pulp, four or five, six stations deep, chasing the exact same story with the exact same news model. So there are certain efficiencies that can be very beneficial to that, but I think there's definitely gonna be a large part of cynicism that would say for every positive, business opportunity that comes with that. There's the, what are we sacrificing in terms of say, quality or true local provision of content?

Because again, let's talk about the radio groups, right? Audacy, which you're on the board of, right? They're, they just have emerged from a bankruptcy. This is the second time cumulus has been in, in this strait for the last five or six years. You could make the argument that a lot of these ihearts certainly too part of this mix, that the commitment to localism as these companies have scaled has actually waned.

It's really just brands that are. Smattered across, and there's actually less local voices that certainly hear it in the news stations. There's a lot of repetition of stuff. And I guess the point is, at what point does localism reemerge because of all these cost efficiencies or will that not happen because of this consolidation?

I get it on the ad front. I worry. 

Jim Wilson: Yeah, you can look at it the other way though. You can look at it as if you don't. If local media companies are not in a healthy state, they're not going to have a high quality of local content because they're not gonna have the budgets to do it.

Part of one thing that's important to me is, again, like local media companies exist in my mind to deliver news, entertainment, information to local markets and and promote local communities and local advertising. And so that, again, that. That changes it's not the model that it used to be.

It's gonna evolve to a new model. And if they're not healthy, they're not gonna put out good content. If they're not healthy, they're not gonna promote local communities. They're not gonna be actively involved in local communities. And so I, and I see companies like Audacy who are active in local communities and producing.

Strong content and, they have a real, across the board they've got strong content, but also specifically in that, in the sports space, which is a very important space and highly desired space. But. I just wanna say one thing, like we're talking about media today at one point in time, and think about how media has changed in the last 20 years.

And so we're just, we're in this, we're in a cycle right now and we're in a cycle of consolidation, and we probably can look at different points in time where there have been con consolidation in the past, but what's so great about a free market and is that something else will emerge. And so if. If these companies consolidate, and let's just say that they aren't as locally focused, there's going to be a need for local and someone else is going to emerge in the local space.

And so there's always gonna be a, there's always a need to fill. And right now, having unhealthy local broadcasters to me is not a good thing because it's, I think it hurts local. Local businesses and local communities. 

Tim Hanlon: Yeah, I was gonna say, that's the irony of it, right?

I know Brendan Carr's been saying that localism is important. Of course it is. When you're encouraging consolidation, the business incentive is actually to not commit more resources on a local basis. 'cause to, it's too duplicative. It's too expensive.

So the irony of localism is actually very high in this conversation because in order to truly distinguish a television property, or a video property, or an audio property or whatever the local property is, right? I agree, by the way, a Substack for all the displaced local newspaper journalists that don't have jobs anymore is certainly filling in some of those gaps and quite admirably, by the way, all quite a diaspora. But it's certainly filling in and getting into that hyperlocal stuff that a newspaper, quote unquote, used to do. Radio, maybe not so much, but maybe podcasts are that shedding of skin in that respect.

And there'll be some equilibrium when it comes to that stuff, and maybe TV is just maybe just started to go through that metamorphosis. But I guess my point there is that the irony is certainly very rich here because the way to distinguish a local media property of any sort, especially with news and con community information and community relational stuff is to be locally driven with the content.

It's not replicable in streaming. It's not replicable on network news or fast channels and that kind of stuff. It's like literally the one or the handful of only places you can get local flavored content, news, entertainment, et cetera. Sports too. And that seems to be a lie. All of this big, bags of hot wind talking about we gotta consolidate to, to compete with.

The irony is that the competition is differentiated and I guess that's the thing that I see that's lacking in all of these consolidation conversations and regulatory discussions and M and A is there's no commitment. And whether it's forced by the regulators, which maybe could be a silver lining to what Carr is trying to do. Is to maybe make a mandate, that kind of stuff, right? Some kind of commitment, some kind of guarantee to, and that's not unprecedented by the way, for, in exchange for allowing you to get bigger and more consolidated and stay relevant versus other major cons, consolidated properties out there, you need to commit to X, Y, and Z in terms of delivery of local content.

I don't think that's a bad, reasonable equation. 

Jim Wilson: No. Completely reasonable. Completely reasonable. Again I am a big advocate of, look. Let me just think about my kids. My kids don't even know what network television is, and they don't really even know what cable is. All they know is that there is a screen in, in a couple of rooms in our house that they barely ever watch.

And then they're watching news and information on their phones. And local broadcasters need to, local media companies, I should call them, should, need to have the strength to be able to build enough content that they're getting in front of new audiences. And I don't think they're doing that in today's market.

I think they're limited in their audiences based upon their delivery mechanisms that they are working through today. And what I would like to do is increase localism to new generations, which I think are getting lost. And a strong digital local media company will, I think, reach new audiences and have the potential to reach new audiences because they'll have the level, the quality or level of content or amount of content, or the ability to deliver that content across various platforms.

It doesn't matter. Content is content. Content is, whether it is going over the air, whether you're watching it on, you, whether you're watching a local tv or a local media feed on YouTube, or you're watching it on TikTok or some other distribution platform.

To me, that's local media. 

Tim Hanlon: Yeah. And I think that distinction of your classically defined television or radio or tele or newspapers and that kinda stuff really has to melt away, and pretty fast. Last week I wrote something about how podcasting is essentially becoming maybe the new radio and perhaps even the new television, if you think about it.

Because podcasting and video is having a hot moment right now. And in many respects, the idea of podcasting, whether it's video or audio or both, right? The barrier to entry to that kind of stuff is relatively low. The opportunity for classic producers of news and content on a local basis, they can do it if the economics of the traditional model allow them to.

Which is, depending on the, to your point earlier, depending on the company you're talking about, may or may not be part of their mix, but it's certainly an opportunity for those who have no knowledge or compunction or guardrails from a, anything resembling a linear media model that they have to follow.

Because setting up a podcast and having conversation about X or Y or Z is. Relatively straightforward and easy to do and arguably that could be a great source of that hyperlocal content, right? Perhaps with an editorial filter that's arguably what traditional media, local media companies might have the ability to bring into the mix, right?

But not just having every podcaster on there, but could be a filtering mechanism that can be a tremendous contribution to many local stories that maybe the traditional process couldn't get to. And so I guess it's a, I don't call it a pro-am thing, right? But maybe it is a little bit of that.

Maybe it is a bit more of an open-mindedness with some filtering and editorial oversight where this, call it amateur layer of. Podcasting and streaming and stuff from the populace. The higher orders of those could rise to the level of being very substantially helpful as part of a, I dunno, a network kind of dynamic for a local station or formally known as local station to do local news, much more granularly and distinctively.

Jim Wilson: You talk about podcasts, think about that. The explosion of podcasts right there. I'm a big podcasting fan and I listen to three or four podcasts a day. But I also. I don't know. Once upon a time we had, and we still do, right? We've got some great talk radio and I used to lived in L.A. I always had KCRW on in my car.

People never wanted to drive with me for two reasons. One, I always had news radio on, and two, I always went home early. But podcasts have become a significant medium over the last 10 or so years. Podcasts to me are not just talk radio reimagined, they're talk shows, reimagined.

And again, that goes back to the market is always going to find opportunities. And these lower costs, I guess podcasts and the whole scheme of things are lower costs. And we were talking about lip syn earlier and like those types of companies that have probably. Thousands of podcasts, and some of those podcasts may be focused on a local market.

There could be a podcast. Why wouldn't there be a podcast for a local DMA or a local town? There’s local news in the local town, there's local sports. There's, think about like towns, there's, there are companies like best version media that are putting out. Magazines in, in, in towns across the country that have enough content and then they're moving digital.

And that there is another local media company. And so there are, and video is not expensive to create. YouTube has shown us that. And so again, everything gets reimagined. And I think right now we're going through a consolidation phase. More will be revealed, more will be reimagined, and consumers will have options and that's what's important, remains important to me.

What I don't want them to do is lose the option of having a strong local media market. 

Tim Hanlon: Alright, let's segue into a quick hot take before we run. We're gonna try to do some of these as we roll out more episodes over time. But I wanted to highlight something this week that is not complete yet, but the FCC to the extent that it has oversight over this has essentially given its green light to.

A merger between would have been unconscionable just a few years ago, the two, two of the three largest cable operators, quote unquote in charter. And Cox being able to merge in a something like 34-ish billion dollar merger. Now this doesn't mean that all the regulatory things have been cleared yet, but the FCC is certainly, it gives it some wind behind the sails.

Assuming that it continues to go along in this general direction, IEA merger. What do you think about consolidation on the cable front? Is that a good thing? Or is that just more of the same that we're gonna see or we have seen from the radio space and possibly the television space? 

Jim Wilson: Yeah, that's a good question.

Again. What are they competing against, right? So we have all of these big tech companies that have significant scale, significant access to consumer data. And now you've got cable companies that in some ways have cable channels shutting down. Every day it seems like you're hearing about another cable.

Channel that's shutting down. And lower viewership on cable in general, cable companies becoming broadband companies with addressable data. Significant amount of, so you would think, wow, this merger that's a significant amount of market clout. A lot of data, how much.

Do they have a lot more data than big tech? I don't know. I don't think so. And their ability to compete against big tech, I know I'm coming across as this guy who is so pro consolidation, but what I think I am more is just. Concerned about the size of big tech companies and the power that they have over consumers.

Look at a company like Amazon with all that consumer data, all the media that it has, all the information that it has on people in their homes and what not only what they watch, but what they buy, and they're using all that. And Charter and Cox coming together, creates an opportunity for them to compete against big tech. Broadcast’s coming together allows them to compete against big tech.

And yeah, it would've been something that you wouldn't have been able to consider, this is where the market's headed and I think it ultimately will, again, create stronger companies. That doesn't mean that there are fewer consumer choices. 

Tim Hanlon: Yeah, I do worry about the broadband competition thing because while these two guys largely do not compete with each other in various markets, right?

It would be basically two geographies coming together into one bigger geography. Yeah. Still the biggest issue I think for broadband provision in this country is. A relative lack of competition. There are some over builders out there, there are choices and like for example, I can't get at t Fiber in my office to compete against Comcast, which is really the only choice I have in my micro footprint here in, in my office in my downtown location and stuff.

So I would love to have AT&T Fiber 'cause it would be half the price and better quality based on other people's usage of it, but I don't have that choice. So again, if I'm the FCC or I'm the FTC or whatever, maybe blessing this from one level makes sense. But again, do consumers get benefited by this?

What about opening up these markets, both of them, to more competition in broadband provision? I think that most consumers have one, maybe two choices available to get their broadband. And not many. And they're not necessarily equal in quality. I'm not sure a deal like this does that.

Jim Wilson: Yeah, that is concerning. We haven't had many options. Like you said, we haven't had options in cable. Even though Verizon and at and t have tried to come into markets, they had never really made inroads. And my market in New York has been dominated by Time Warner Cable that became Spectrum Charter, et cetera.

And again it's their ability to compete against big tech. And now, yeah, I mean there definitely are concerns. Again, everything is interconnected, right? So cable consolidates, that means that they've got more scale, so the more scale to compete against big tech, but now they've got more scale.

And if you think about broadcast, you always have this push and pull between retransmission fees. And so you've got retransmission now that they have more cloud against. The broadcast was on retransmission fees. And as the broadcasters, retransmission fees are a significant portion of their revenues.

And so again, it's like this equilibrium needs to happen. You've got big tech companies, you've got potentially consolidating cable consolidating streamers, and then you've got, potentially consolidating. Broadcasters. And so you've got this equilibrium that's happening at a significant scale, which I think most people overall would be somewhat concerned with.

But we do wanna have healthy companies, healthy markets. And the beauty of our country is that something else is always around the corner we didn't know about. I don't know. Let's just say TikTok 15 years ago, right? And so new properties emerge, new consumer patterns emerge, how we consume information changes and we're gonna see more of that. 

Tim Hanlon: Alright, stay tuned next week. Hopefully we'll have a few more comments on the latest. 

Jim Wilson: Yeah, maybe we'll be talking about the effect of a war on the advertising market. Who knows? 

Tim Hanlon: That's a whole episode and maybe we'll devote conversation to that.

Alright, have a good day, and until then, we'll see you. Thanks Jim. 

Jim Wilson: Thank you.

Tim Hanlon: Alright, that's all we got for this week. Thanks for listening and finding us in your various podcast choices out there. We appreciate it. If you enjoyed what you heard, please indeed tell your friends and have them tell their friends, and so on. Many more episodes and conversations and areas and topics to delve into in the weeks ahead.

Hopefully you'll be intrigued by all of them. And perhaps in the weeks ahead too, we will try to include your comments, your letters to the editor, so to speak, and maybe we'll answer your questions, et cetera. And maybe even bring in a few guests now and again, God forbid, but we will soldier on in the weeks to come.

Give us a listen and an upvote if you will, a heart, or a plus one, or whatever it is on Apple Podcast, or wherever else you listen. Not only my thanks to Jim, but the team at Madhive, including Nicole Lewis and Stephanie Newby. Thanks of course to the TVRev folks who under their great auspices we do this each and every week. Thank you to Mike Gasbara and to Jessika Walsten and of course to the big Jason Damata out there in L.A., as well as of course, our pal Jerry Payne in Metro Atlanta for his audio excellence in production. Thanks for listening again and take care. We'll see you next week.