IRVING, Texas—Nexstar Media Group has appointed Jamie Calandruccio as executive vice president of platform monetization & strategy,  responsible for developing Nexstar’s revenue management strategy for ad sales, optimizing the  company’s advertising inventory, and strengthening its programmatic business. 

In this newly created role,  Calandruccio will work closely with Nexstar’s sales team to increase revenue and serve client needs  through data-driven decisions, and strategic inventory analytics. 

Calandruccio will begin her new duties immediately and report to Nexstar’s executive vice president and chief revenue officer, Michael Strober.  

“Jamie’s well-established relationships and vast pricing, planning, and forecasting experience across an extensive portfolio of ad sales products, along with her strategic vision, make her the ideal leader for our  sales organization,” said Strober. “She will hit the ground  running and make an immediate impact.”  

Calandruccio has extensive experience in sales management, operations, and marketing and has held  a variety of sales leadership roles across her 25 year career. She most recently served as senior vice  president, product marketing & partnerships, at Operative, where she led a team of sales executives  responsible for commercial strategy and revenue growth across all of the company’s customer markets  and products. 

“I am thrilled to be joining Nexstar under Michael’s leadership of sales and at such a pivotal time in the  company’s journey to transform and evolve its advertising business,” said Calandruccio. “There is a tremendous opportunity to innovate and create unrivaled value for advertisers by harnessing the brand  equity and expansive reach of Nexstar’s diverse portfolio of assets. It is a privilege to be working alongside  such an accomplished group of leaders and I am looking forward to leveraging my experience to help  modernize Nexstar’s media sales business.” 

Prior to her role at Operative, she worked at Channel Media Solutions, providing strategic guidance and  marketplace insight to create advanced advertising go-to-market plans. Calandruccio spent most of  her career leading sales planning and operations with Sony Pictures Television, DirecTV and Xandr, where  she created operational strategies to deliver maximum yield, advanced advertising capabilities and  addressable advertising platforms.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Nexstar is reporting that its digital news operation The Hill hit new audience records for the platform during the midterms, with The Hill’s owned-and-operated digital platforms earning nearly 30 million page views last week and receiving more than 20 million additional views from syndication partners. 

The growth stands in contrast to TV audiences for election night coverage on November 8, which were the lowest since 2014. 

On Election Day itself, readers spent more than 3 million hours on TheHill.com. This represents more readership than any prior midterm election cycle. 

Nexstar also reported that in the days since the election, traffic has remained nearly double month over month for TheHill.com. 

“We’re proud to offer in-depth yet accessible perspectives that help people make sense of the news,” said Jason Jedlinski, general manager of The Hill. “Whether you’re thinking of buying a home or electric car, or planning your business strategy for 2023, The Hill’s reporting helps people make more informed decisions by quickly decoding and translating what’s happening in DC.”

This election is the first for the recently launched The Hill TV streaming channel, which brought The Hill’s essential, agenda-setting programming to OTT (Over the Top) viewers. The coverage on The Hill TV included exclusive interviews and on-the-ground reporting from Nexstar’s local television stations and NewsNation, the company’s national cable news network reaching 70 million U.S. television households.

The Hill is part of Nexstar Digital, the digital business of Nexstar Media Group, Inc. 

PORTLAND, ORE.—Two more stations in the Nextstar Broadcasting Group have signed a deal with Rentrak to provide audience measurement. KASW-Phoenix and KLAS-Las Vegas are the latest stations to join the Rentrak network.

Rentrak currently provides services to 78 Nextstar-owned or operated stations in 46 markets. In addition to Phoenix and Las Vegas, stations in Des Moines, Iowa, Bakersfield, Calif., Roanoke, Va., Waco, Texas, El Paso, Texas and Baton Rouge, La., are some of the markets that agreed to a deal with Rentrak in the last year.

Rentrak is a provider of consumer viewership information for the entertainment and marketing industries.

IRVING, TEXAS—Nextstar Broadcasting Group has announced a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of three CBS-affiliated and one NBC-affiliated TV stations in West Virginia from West Virginia Media Holdings for $130 million. The acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to Nextstar’s operating results.

As part of the deal, Nextstar will enter into a Time Brokerage Agreement with WVMH upon receipt of Hart-Scott-Rodino clearance, which is expected to close in December; this will allow it to receive that stations’ broadcast cash flow and pay an annual fee to WVMH. The TBA will extend until the broadcast assets and FCC licenses are transferred, which is expected to take place by late 2016.

The stations included in this deal cover Charleston/Huntington, W.Va.; Wheeling, W.Va./Steubenville, Ohio; Bluefield/Beckley, W.Va.; and Clarksburg/Weston, W.Va. Three of the four stations being acquired have the number one or number two revenue shares in their markets, according to the 2014 BIA Kelsey Television Yearbook. With these acquisitions, Nextstar increases its portfolio of stations to 115 serving 62 markets in 25 states.

CHAMPAIGN, ILL.—Cobalt Digital and Nextstar Broadcasting Group have collaborated on a new software system with text-to-speech capabilities to serve the needs of blind and low-vision people. The +TTS is compatible with many openGear cards and BBG-1000 standalone units. To ensure compliance with FCC and the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, an optional software license for the cards is also available.

+TTS is a text-to-speech generation/audio insertion system for embedded or discrete audio systems. The software monitors local and network watch folders for new text files, converts text to human-voice audio, and inserts it into user-configured audio channels. The +TTS can prioritize alerts and is designed to be independent of a station’s graphics engine.

The +TTS comes with a built-in, user-definable dictionary to substitute phonetic spelling for hard-to-decipher words and proper noun phonetic emphasis. The software comes standard with an English-language speech engine; advanced engines are available as expansion options. The Acapela Group is providing the voices.

OpenGear users can incorporate +TTS by installing a microSD card. Those without an openGear infrastructure can use Cobalt’s BBG-1022-FS standalone unit for integration into a broadcast facility.

Cobalt Digital designs 3G/HD/SD multiviewer technology for broadcast TV based in Champaign, Ill. Nextstar Broadcasting Group is a traditional, digital, and mobile media company headquartered in Irving, Texas.