IRVING, Texas—Mission Broadcasting and Nexstar Media Group today announced the launch of NextGen TV on WPIX-TV in New York City, the nation’s largest television market. Mission owns WPIX-TV and Nexstar provides services to the station; the two companies worked together on the launch. The New York launch marks the 51st Nexstar-owned or partner market to begin broadcasting with ATSC 3.0.

The CW affiliate joins WCBS (2), WLIW (21), WMBQ-CD (46), WNBC (NBC 4), WNET (13), and WNJU (Telemundo 47) in the Big Apple 3.0 lineup. Those stations launched on a lighthouse hosted by PBS’s The WNET Group in October.

This week, Nexstar also transitioned its local television stations in El Paso and Baton Rouge, as well as WVLA-TV, a partner station in Baton Rouge owned by White Knight Broadcasting. The recent transitions add three more cities to the total number of Top 100 television markets that are on the air with a NextGen TV signal.

Over the course of 2023, Nexstar says it has deployed ATSC 3.0 at local television stations in seven of its markets across the nation, including San Francisco, Dallas, and Des Moines. More than 58 million U.S. television households now receive a NextGen TV signal from a Nexstar-owned or partner station, the company said.

Based on ATSC 3.0, the world’s most advanced television broadcasting technology, NextGen TV can be enhanced with Internet content to enable viewers to get the most out of live sports, live news, and live events in real-time, without looking away from TV screens. ATSC 3.0 gives broadcasters the power to serve their markets with a range of high value data services in addition to improved television broadcasting. Nexstar is a participant in BitPath, a broadcaster-supported consortium creating a network for datacasting, with services launching soon.

“When it comes to the deployment of ATSC 3.0, we think scale is critically important to fostering consumer demand for NextGen TV sets and developing new businesses and services,” said Brett Jenkins, EVP/CTO/Chief Digital Officer for Nexstar Media Group, Inc. “Nexstar is extremely well-positioned to deliver broad-based data services to a wide range of businesses and industries. One study done by BIA suggested that these services could generate up to $15 billion in additional broadcast revenue by 2030, and Nexstar is actively pursuing discussions with potential customers interested in pursuing the new opportunities presented by NextGen TV now.”

NEW YORK—Nexstar Media Group’s NewsNation and WPIX New York debuted two new studios this week, located at The Daily News Building on 42nd St. in New York. The new studios will host operations of both stations. The NewsNation cable and OTT news service went 24/7 on Monday. WPIX is owned by Mission Broadcasting and managed by Nexstar.

Based in Chicago, NewsNation’s new New York facility features two control rooms on the second and 10th floors. The 10th floor includes the studio for the Dan Abrams Show and Cuomo, however Cuomo will eventually move to the second floor. 

The studios encompass approximately 1,000 square feet and feature 359 LED panels and 112 TVs between the newsroom, feed room and control rooms and have the capacity to do 16 simultaneous live shots.

Nexstar Chairman and CEO Perry Sook lauded the Nexstar board for putting its financial support behind the new bureau at an opening ceremony of the new facility this week, adding “we wouldn’t spend that money if we didn’t believe in the mission.”

NextTV has the rest of the story.  

WASHINGTON—In a filing with the FCC, Comcast is asking the agency to rule that Nextstar is violating the ownership cap on stations because it has not actually divested control of WPIX in New York. 

Nextstar was required to sell stations as part of its acquisition of Tribune and sold WPIX to Mission Broadcasting in 2020. 

In the filing Comcast’s attorneys asked that the FCC “issue a declaratory ruling that Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is attributed with New York City station WPIX-TV (“WPIX”), under either a de facto control analysis or the more generalized `influence’ standard underlying the broadcast attribution rules, and thus is in violation of the national television ownership rule’s national audience reach limit.”

The filing also argued that “Nexstar’s divestiture of WPIX as ordered by the Commission has proven to be a sham in violation of the condition in the Nexstar/Tribune Order,” requiring Nextstar to divest stations and that “remedies are necessary and appropriate to bring Nexstar into compliance with the 39 percent cap on national audience reach.”

Comcast is in the middle of a retransmission consent dispute with Mission Broadcasting and the filing stressed that “it is critical that the Commission act promptly on this Petition for Declaratory Ruling,” because “Nexstar has asserted retransmission consent and other broad rights over WPIX, contrary to Nexstar’s express representations to the Commission during the Nexstar-Tribune transaction that it would (1) divest WPIX to stay under the national ownership cap and (2) not provide any services for the station post-transaction.”

“Aside from undermining the FCC’s divestiture condition and violating the national ownership rule,” the petition also argued that “if Nexstar has its way, Comcast’s retransmission consent fees for WPIX would increase dramatically” and that “such added costs would ultimately be borne by Comcast customers.”

The petition is available here.  

BALTIMORE—While Sinclair signaled Wednesday (Feb. 21) that it will be divesting ownership in WPIX-TV New York and WGN-TV Chicago to get under the FCC's 39 percent ownership cap, it could still be keeping its hand in the number one and number three markets, respectively, where it does not currently own any stations.

Sinclair said it already has a purchase agreement for both stations and both those agreements include services agreements, in which Sinclair could provide some services to the new owner.

The amended deal filed with the FCC includes footnotes on the sales of both WGN and WPIX to the effect that: “The purchase agreement provides that upon closing of the sale of this station, Sinclair will enter into an option and master services agreement [the WGN footnote simply says 'services agreement' or 'agreements,' plural] with the buyer of this station [WPIX], copies of which will be filed as part of the assignment application for such station.”

[FCC IG Agreed to Investigate Pai Handling of Sinclair-Tribune]

One analyst talking on background said a sale of both stations to Cunningham, which already owns a bunch of stations with various management agreements with Sinclair, is a definite possibility.

The FCC as part of its media deregulation efforts scrapped the previous Democratic FCC's advisory on joint agreements, which warned that the FCC viewed them essentially as a way to skirt FCC ownership rules.

This story first appeared on TVT's sister publication B&C.