By Stephanie Matthews, EVP, Executive Director
I spent 15 years in broadcast news — producing for local stations in Dallas, Tampa, Charlotte and Austin, along with a network stint at ABC’s World News Now. So, when I saw the news that Nexstar plans to replace affiliate network content in its local newscasts with programming from its own cable channel, NewsNation, I didn’t just read it as a media industry story; I read it as a PR strategy story.
First, a quick explainer on how local news actually gets built.
A local newscast — especially the longer weekend and morning shows — aren’t all locally produced content. Not even close. A significant portion of any given broadcast has historically come from feed services: shared content pipelines that pull stories from network partners and stations across the country. Think of it like a wire service, but for video. A health story from a station in Phoenix. A consumer investigation out of Atlanta. A tech piece from Seattle. Stations in every market contributed, and stations in every market benefited.
That model gave local news real breadth. Your health reporter in Austin could be sick, on vacation, or simply working another story — and the feed filled the gap. More importantly, it filled that gap with reporting from journalists who covered those beats, in markets where those stories originated.
Now here’s what’s changing.
Nexstar has begun directing its stations to replace those affiliate feed segments with content from NewsNation, its own cable channel. CEO Perry Sook has been explicit about the vision: NewsNation would become “ultimately the exclusive wire service and national news partner for all of our local news operations, replacing the third-party and wire feeds and other news services we currently use.”
On paper, Nexstar has scale. The combined Nexstar/TEGNA entity will have stations in 132 markets, reaching 80% of U.S. television households. That sounds like a lot. But scale of distribution is not the same as depth of reporting.
NBC’s affiliate network, by comparison, spans more than 222 stations across virtually every designated market in the country. Those aren’t just distribution points — they’re newsrooms with beat reporters embedded in their communities. That’s the sourcing diversity that made the affiliate feed model work.
Nexstar’s 265 stations are concentrated differently. The merger creates overlapping ownership in 35 markets — meaning in cities like Austin, the same company could now own both the NBC and ABC affiliate in the same market.
What this means for your media strategy.
If you pitch broadcast news — and especially if you rely on story syndications across markets — pay attention to a few things:
The content mix is shifting. Segments that used to move through affiliate feeds (health, consumer, tech, lifestyle) may not have the same distribution pathway they once did. A story placed with one NBC affiliate no longer automatically travels the same network. Don’t quit pitching the NBC News Channel, ABC NewsOne, CBS NewsPath, FOX NewsEdge and CNN Newsource. But you also need to think about how to push your story out to the big broadcast ownership groups, too.
Local context is thinning. The affiliate feed model worked because it was genuinely local — stories from reporters who knew their markets. A centralized cable channel content strategy, however well-resourced, is a fundamentally different editorial operation. Viewers may not notice immediately. But the texture of local news will change.
The independence question is real. When editorial sourcing is consolidated under one corporate roof, especially one with some documented political alignments, the range of perspectives in any given local newscast narrows.
This isn’t a eulogy for local news. Strong local journalism still exists, and good reporters are still doing it. But the infrastructure that amplified and distributed that journalism is being reorganized — and that has real implications for how stories spread.
For those of us who build earned media strategies around broadcast, it’s worth understanding what’s actually inside the machine we’re pitching.