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2026.09.25 | TB | Media | Cox Media Group & FCC Cap

原标题：Cox Media Group – Will FCC Ownership Cap Changes Lead to Long-awaited Sale?

#media

Third Bridge · 2026-09-25

Analyst-led • 17 Sep 2026

Companies: SBGI US, SSP US, GTN US, NXST US

Nathan Reed (NR) Independent Consultant

John Conca (JC) — Third Bridge Sector Analyst

Agenda

Key Insights

Introduction

JC: Welcome to Third Bridge's Interview entitled Cox Media Group – Will FCC Ownership Cap Changes Lead to Long-awaited Sale? My name is John Conca, and I'll be facilitating today's Interview with Mr Nathan Reed, former Director of Operations at CMG [Cox Media Group].

Before we start today's Interview, please state either I agree or I disagree to the following statement: You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any such information, or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.

NR [00:00:30]: I agree.

JC [00:00:31]: Would you mind giving a brief introduction to yourself and your background?

NR [00:00:39]: I've worked in the broadcast industry for about 30 years, and a lot of that was spent in radio. When I got to CMG in 2016, they started down a path of convergence where radio and TV was operated together in certain markets where the co-ownership existed. I was able to be a part of that in Tulsa, where they started that originally in a couple of their other markets. My promotions through Tampa Bay eventually were dependent on whether or not the company would end up acquiring more stations before it was actually ultimately sold to [Firm]. When a couple of acquisitions didn't end up happening, I did remain in Tampa Bay overseeing their six properties there. In the meantime, continued to find some synergies between our TV stations and radio operations and sought partnerships and that sort of thing to the company during that time.

Learned an awful lot about TV operations and exactly how all of that functions and the technologies that were being pursued at the time. It was ultimately where I re-entered the company in Atlanta and left there at the end of January of this year, but with all of that experience and the way they operate and that sort of thing, they have been deeply involved with much of that on the strategic side for audience development and not so much on the financial aspects. I couldn't quote you exactly anything like that, but I can tell you how thoughtful they are of an operator and some of the details that are public about that.

Questions

[00:02:13] How do you see broadcast being positioned in the broader media landscape at a macro level?

NR [00:02:46]: I think a lot of broadcast, whether it's radio or television, there is somewhat of an old guard in the industry itself, whether it's ownership or some leadership, they understand there's probably a need for them to have a shot in the arm about innovation and how to really grow, whether that's by scale or its investment in technology or really truly just doing the large projects and finding out the new ways that they could be a part of the audience's life. They have the infrastructure. I mean, these stations are available on just about every digital platform you can imagine. They do get retransmission fees and that sort of thing from partners, whether it's digital and streaming or traditional cable. I think it's just a matter of opening their eyes to see that there are other revenue streams, whether it's additional retrans fees that they could generate by using ATSC 3.0, which is essentially endless digital channels that you could create. If you, for instance, wanted to partner with Netflix and get some of their syndicated shows and you wanted to create a network of your own, that's not out of the question.

You can actually get even more creative and insert your own local newscast in between these Netflix shows that you're syndicating and essentially up your quality programming and attract viewers that way and be seen differently with ATSC 3.0. I think that's one example of how they could actually increase their retrans fees and then ATSC 3.0, when we talk about it again, there are some additional new revenue streams that just don't exist right now that the technology could actually be useful for. In addition to that, depending on the FCC's just formal or informal ways of approving mergers and acquisitions right now, that audience cap used to be so low that you could maybe be a regional operator, but never national, and now you could achieve some of that national scale. Regardless of the operator, I think that's very lucrative too because that makes ATSC 3.0 even more attractive then it makes how you could create your own networks even more attractive with partnerships. Really, there is a lot of upside to it. I think it's just a matter of someone having a vision and being able to have the capital to say, "This is where we're going and here's how we're going to get there."

[00:05:20] You mentioned that infrastructure is very important, but on the other hand, one could argue that content is more important in a decentralised, streaming world. In terms of what is ultimately driving the trends in the market, how important is the infrastructure? How important is distribution in reality when you have so many players that can just go OTT [over-the-top]?

NR [00:05:56]: Absolutely. Take this in a couple of steps. You've got your technical things that have existed forever, the land and the towers and the broadcast facility, all of those things. You're still going to need a studio. That part is going to be there. Eventually down the road, if everything converts to digital and people give up on broadcast entirely, you can sell off the property and you're still going to make a mint with all of those things. The towers are very, very attractive to cellular providers and others as well because tower ownership is its own industry in a sense. There will always be that opportunity to move forward without that, if that's where the trend goes down the road. As far as the infrastructure goes to reach people, think about the properties individually as what they already do. They succeed by selling airtime and that sort of thing, and it's all marketing. Yours is a vehicle for clients to have good relationships and to sell things and become more successful.

That's where the industry can also sell itself and does not do that very well without telling people why it's valuable to them in many ways outside of, "Join us for this newscast at this time, this show is going to be on at this time." They do a great job of branding themselves in that way, but they don't reintroduce themselves to, quite frankly, the audience that has never really been dependent on walking up to a TV with a remote control to find a channel or switch a channel back in the day. If you're able to tell them go get our app and convert that audience or, "Hey, this is absolutely free anytime in our app or over the air or wherever you want to find us." There is an attractiveness to that because people are tired of paying gazillion fees per month for every app, every show, everything that they want to watch. There's a lot of fatigue there.

JC [00:07:57]: Perhaps this is a broader question on innovation as a whole. When do we start seeing the inflection? It would be foolish to argue that consumer fatigue does not exist and is not starting to happen. When does it inflect to the point of viewership dynamics changing a little?

NR [00:08:28]: Candidly, with that, I think as your scale is increased for your ownership or even if it's just your regional decision, if that's what size company you are, being able to convert that messaging, you can see increase in viewership and viewer habits and audience habits, whether it's TV or radio when you start that messaging. The audience will come along with you. Most companies that have research like CMG does, they find success in that, and that's been their guiding tool most of the way. It's a matter of them making it all important.

[00:09:08] Could you describe CMG [Cox Media Group] as a company, including its radio and TV portfolios? My understanding is that the company has fewer stations than some of its major competitors, but they are usually in big markets and performing pretty well. Could you outline its market positioning, how it got there, why it works and where it could go from here?

NR [00:09:51]: The company originally was founded in Dayton, Ohio. They've really taken their time carefully over the course of 100-plus years to shape and operate and be consistent in what they've done, and that really is the basis of their stewardship. As things have gotten even more digital over the past 20 years, they haven't ignored that. They've been very thoughtful about it. You can see that in their product and the way they position themselves on the air and where their products are available, that sort of thing. The company, in my opinion, if you're looking at the company as something that could grow if they decided to go acquire more properties, say, like a Nexstar or Sinclair, if somebody did that, the leadership or the style of operation is what would actually make those companies even more attractive and more successful.

To give you an example, Nexstar is a fairly solid operator. They're still investing in the products and that sort of thing, where Sinclair has regionalised or even nationalised a lot of the properties that they own, so there isn't really a local footprint in many of their markets anymore. That's where you see the audience erosion, the audience loss and their competitors perform a lot better. I think the CMG approach that thoughtful like, we can do this and not sacrifice that and make even more money is the way to continue forward. Whenever you research anything in these, like I said, the great operators, you'll find that the audience still does want that product on whatever platform it's available. They're going to participate if it's done well.

[00:11:37] Is the business model still revolving around local news? Does that hold true? It goes back to what we mentioned around owning and producing content.

NR [00:11:58]: Correct. Local news is still the major driver. The newscasts that are really the big ones are still the big ones, whether it's morning, late afternoon and evening, those are still very, very competitive. Now with the technology, like I was saying, if they have a side channel, they can repeat those newscasts so they can deliver an extra newscast. All of that is additional local revenue. That's one of the main drivers for continuing local news is that that's inventory you completely own vs paying network affiliation fees and having to share that inventory during those times. That's why you see some of the stations do so much news. The other aspect of that is if you have quality programming in the way that branding, like I was talking about earlier, if you've got a network that's delivering quality programming, (1) you can promote that heavily and you can still win. (2) Live sports, whether it's regional, college, professional, all of it, live sports is still the most watched live viewing experience across the country and promoting those things and making sure it's integrated into your brand is really key to driving that additional revenue and keeping people coming back for more.

Then as I was saying earlier, if you want to create, and I'll use an example in Atlanta, where Gray TV, they have basically their own studios set up down there, where they can create their own content. They've made their own side channels, and they even gave up affiliation with CBS. CBS had to stand up at some station in the market essentially because they decided, "No, we can pour more into this and we can make a better product, and we can make it even more attractive than it was with all the crazy network affiliation and reinvest in our team and then create extra content like PeachtreeTV," if you guys want to research that at some point, that's all their own generated content. It's retransed as well with the cable system there and the digital properties. That's a great example of how you can take as many side channels as you want on that high-definition frequency and truly maximise it for your revenue and audience growth.

[00:14:09] You mentioned the example of Gray Media giving up CBS affiliation in Atlanta, which I think was a watershed moment. I interpreted that more as not being tenable to keep the affiliation, rather than being a way to get out from under someone's thumb, but do you think it's the opposite? Should we interpret it as Gray feeling better off without that affiliation vs it being a pessimistic reaction?

NR [00:14:33]: I think it was a perfect dynamic situation where Gray has the scale and ability. Like I said, their own studios over there with Assembly, they call it, to be able to say, "Look, we're going to do this and we're going to do it competitively." It's worked really well for them. There's another, I wouldn't say case study, it's been several years now, but a station in Miami that gave up its ABC affiliation forever ago at this point, and they're thriving, so it really wasn't out of an act of desperation, pardon me, expression, but it was a middle finger to the network saying, "We're done paying your ridiculous fees and you're not providing us any quality content beyond a couple of shows, we're out, just forget it."

That really is something I think the industry could also do more of because in some of these markets, like I mentioned, where they have duopolies, or that I'll use Detroit and Flint, Michigan, for an example, since I'm in that region. Sinclair took the NBC affiliate off of main frequency here and put it on the side channel to their Fox affiliate that they've owned for a while. They don't have any local programming, so to speak, on the NBC affiliate anymore. They stood up their own network and just put that on the main channel, and it's doing all right for them. It's aggregating enough audience, but they were done with wasting an entire signal on something with extreme fees and really an oversaturated market between Flint and Detroit, and they were just more competitive in a different way.

[00:15:45] How do we reconcile the idea of dropping affiliation with what is ultimately driving the most people to live viewership – sports? The networks obviously own the major sports rights. Gray, for example, got in the game in terms of standing up cluster stations – almost like a pseudo-RSN [regional sports network] of its broadcast channels across regions. If the major sports are tied to the networks – the NFL is obviously the big one – how do you overcome that? Is that the biggest factor?

NR [00:16:34]: Correct. The networks have never had to deal with the type of ownership levels or concentrated ownership levels that could be possible with the FCC to use your example of Nexstar were to acquire another operator and become a nationwide force, the networks are forced to look at that differently, and so are the major league sports organisations where they're going to say, "If you're not available on this or you can't penetrate an audience here, we're going to be forced to cut deals." You're seeing some of that a little bit with if you use the Amazon example or even Netflix example of them wanting in on some of the NFL action. They're already able to have that thought on getting away from networks a bit, and they're not seeing any downside to it. If you're going to have that, I think, having a negotiator for your entire company based on the region or based on games you want to carry, that won't be unheard of to deal with the major league sports and even regional sports.

JC [00:17:29]: To continue to play devil's advocate here, what if they interpret that as, "We're not seeing the downside. There's no need for networks, or there's no absolute necessity for us to deal with networks"? Ultimately, the networks are distributing through broadcast. Could that be the next order thought of all of this, in terms of not needing product? I understand your point on the reach in the specific markets, but that would be where I would be going if I was concerned here. How would you interpret that?

NR [00:18:07]: The leagues know, and most sports organisations, whether they're collegiate or professional know that if they start charging for every single game, they're very careful about how they're testing the waters now, the audiences aren't thrilled about having to pay for it. They do know that that's a problem. I don't think it's going to become a major pay-to-view type of thing at all because it's one of the few things that candidly, it's not political, it's a shared experience. It's part of the American culture. It's all of those things. They're not going to go down the road of pay-to-view or just give up on networks or local viewership in that way. They can't. It would destroy their model.

JC [00:18:07]: I think the overhang of all of this is what happens if regulators get involved, especially with how much power the NFL has culturally. It's certainly in the backdrop of all of this as well. I completely agree.

[00:18:39] How do you assess CMG's model of having fewer big stations in the world of consolidation vs having more breadth and scale of stations? How should we think about that competitively in terms of capturing ad dollars and, more importantly, retransmission dollars?

NR [00:19:25]: When you look at the nucleus of CMG, I would look at it as, this is after having worked for the company, I would look at the operation strategy of CMG as a whole, and I would take that and scale it up to a company that wants to acquire even more and use that as the nucleus of your operation, use that as your foundational footprint to scale up quality product. That's one for the value of the company, I think, the most valuable is the operation strategy there. The things that happen afterwards, if you were to acquire more of those properties and make it worth your money is sell off the fringe assets because inevitably, depending on what you acquire, you're going to have some fringe markets that may not really serve your audience level very well.

Like I said, the towers and the frequencies and the land are all going to be worth something in those regions, so you could make back some of the money that way. When it comes to the overall value, the brands that CMG has built like any solid operator are still the most recognisable. To give you an example, in Atlanta, the saying still among people even under the age of 35 is, when you come to Atlanta, it's Coke, Chick-fil-A and WSB. It's embedded in the culture because that's how big those brands are and I'll throw a Delta in there as well to be put up there with that level of recognition is incredibly valuable. That's how most of the brands are seen in the markets they have.

[00:20:48] What does CMG do differently from an operations perspective vs companies such as Nexstar, Gray and Sinclair?

NR [00:21:44]: I'll speak in general terms for the industry. The best operators are that have the most competitive brands, know what the audience is going to do before the audience does it. They're able to predict where the product will need to go, what the product language will need to be to bring the audience along. They're able to look at all of those things ahead of time and have, what do you want to call, an assertive approach to it vs a very reactive, "Oh, we better do this approach." Again, pardon my language. The other part of all of this that's underlying is they also know that despite… Nielsen is the main rating service for the entire industry, radio and TV. They know that despite Nielsen's audience measurement shortcomings, and the nuances that make it almost impossible without paying them even more money to get a total aggregate of your product ratings, they know that despite that, it's still important to maintain that integrity to your product. That's where some of the companies are just done with Nielsen. They don't care what the ratings look like anymore. I don't want to say Sinclair's that, but it looks like it's that company, where they don't invest anything anymore, and it looks like that and it feels like that when you see their product.

That's just not broadcast. That's also you're getting retrans fees and you're negotiating them based on your footprint nationally, not so much across the market that you're in and really just wildly killing your competitor with great ratings and revenue. CMG's approach to that and a couple of the other boutique operators is very much like, "Nielsen be damned, this is worth investing in, and we're going to continue." I'll diverge here for a second. With Nielsen, with them having the monopoly of rating services, they're actually now getting competitors. Comscore is a newer that is getting media accredited affiliation and approvals because they're able to merge digital viewership in with some of the data that you get from broadcast as well and cable and all of that. They're getting a truer number of viewership. The erosion isn't nearly as dramatic as what the streaming and digital services would actually have you believe. I want to dovetail that because in radio as well, there are now some accountability tools that the industry hasn't had before, where they're able to actually show you when your ad airs or it's played on a stream, this is where your audience goes within 10-15 minutes afterwards every time it plays. That level of accountability and the new technology that's allowing a competitor to Nielsen ratings that's being stood up now. Are you familiar with DTS dashboard AutoStage?

JC [00:24:06]: Can you share for those who may not know?

NR [00:24:06]: Essentially, the technology exists in modern cars, and it's being employed in more newer models by the day and year of those releases and it's basically a hotspot. You get to see a map of where all of your listenership is coming in radio. They're able to aggregate that information now and it's starting to get a little bit more detailed about how people are listening, where they're listening, when they're listening. We know that radio is a very mobile used medium. They're now able to stand that stuff up. Nielsen is getting more, I wouldn't say yet freak out about it, but they're starting to feel that the industry is saying, "No, we're done with this. We know we're not dying on the vine entirely. You're just making it look even worse." The measurement is a key aspect of how you want to look at what any M&A could look like down the road too. The audience isn't escaping or going away. Like any other digital disruption, their attention is somewhere else, but if you're there and you're available on the platforms for them to see you, they're going to come with you, like I said, that branding and positioning is mission-critical.

JC [00:25:12]: The viewership obviously is going to inform the two main revenue streams here, whether it's advertising or retrans at the end of the day.

NR [00:28:56]: I think one of the other interesting things is you're seeing too as a whole in the advertising world, just outside of traditional media, if you will, digital clients and sales are starting to realise that it's great to have SEO. It's great to have all of this on your screen time with people and the click-through is okay, but it's not delivering them actual quality brand building and recognition, and it can be easily ignored. What they're finding now is like, "Oh, traditional media still does this incredibly well." Building a brand and recognition is the lion's share of what you need to do to stand up a quality business and it be recognised, of course, and then you can motivate your people through that messaging to participate. That's where it really does make a difference in your sales force, too, to adapt to that way of thinking now. It's almost come full circle.

[00:29:55] You mentioned that viewership isn't really going the way people thought it would be. Do you think this leads to tailwinds in advertising revenue going forwards? You noted that broadcast is closing the attribution gap to a certain degree. Ad dollars were going downstream towards the lower funnel, but there is seemingly also a bit of a shift back to brand. What is your ad revenue outlook for 2026-28? Should we think about ad revenue increasing? Is that a crazy outlook?

NR [00:31:13]: To be honest, it's not crazy. It depends sometimes on your company. It depends on maybe a couple of properties and your sales team's approach, but it also can depend on your scale and whether or not you treat the industry that you're in like an agency almost where you're helping each other out between markets regionally and individually in your majors. To give a little more detail on that, think about how the industry, this is for radio as well, has evolved where they've had the partnerships with Google and Amazon and that sort of thing to be certified, if you will, in air quotes, to sell digital and have that inventory and to create holistic campaigns for a client. What you're seeing now is the name of the company, it's out of Canada that is actually the attribution tool that's really blowing up in the US or will be soon. I'll try to remember that as we speak, but the tool, it's a pixel.

You take your advertising campaign that you've got and you've got your broadcast TV, you've got your ad for radio, you've got your ad for web and digital socials, all of that. You can actually take that pixel, place it on that client's website, and it will aggregate everything and all of the influx that comes to that client's web page or app afterwards, and you can go back and show your client, "Hey, look, this is what all of this campaign is doing for you." That wasn't possible 15 years ago or even 10 years ago on a consistent basis. There is the opportunity for these operators to go through and actually improve sales figures outside of political. Political is always going to give you a shot in the arm every 2-4 years depending on your market. I think that is mission-critical. Again, it's the industry being able to make sure they're positioning their sales staff for it. I would say that the better operators are already doing that.

[00:33:24] How do we explain the political displacement? We're essentially flat in terms of the total ad space. We're seeing some changes to advertising rules, where PACs [political action committees] could be getting the lowest negotiated rate going forwards.

NR [00:34:33]: The lowest rates.

JC [00:34:36]: My point is, even with the shot in the arm, political advertising is strong, ad revenues are still flat and core is meaningfully displaced. If more and more goes to political going forwards, is it still going to be that shot in the arm?

NR [00:35:02]: I think that's going to get challenged at court is my best educated guess because if you're looking at a commercial operator or a business of any kind and you're going to go, "Oh, because I'm affiliated with elections or a PAC, I'm just going to get endless free advertising from your entity. I think that they will fight back on that. The NAB hasn't organised its thought publicly yet, but I would guess that's coming. My best guess is they will probably win in court, even though they're public airwaves. We know you can't go into a bank and hold somebody at gunpoint and go, "Give me all your money and get away with it." That's essentially what these entities are asking.

I was going to say the displacement, by the way, in the current model, the displacement is not wildly crazy. What happens is your lowest average unit rate basically gets bumped out and made good at a later time, so to speak. The clients are usually pretty aware of that. They do a good job of messaging ahead of that in most of the industry.

[00:36:19] We've seen reports that the PE owners are looking to put CMG up for sale. This goes all the way back to year-end 2024 or early 2025. Why has it not happened yet? We've seen the Nexstar-Tegna deal. Sinclair has made an attempt at Scripps, obviously unsuccessfully to this point. Gray has bought some stations from a host of other smaller regional players. Why have we not seen anybody come calling for CMG, given that it is known as a good operator with well-regarded stations in the respective markets?

NR [00:37:28]: The two things that come to mind are, one, if they're trying to sell it with radio, I could see where TV operators… That may scare them a bit if they're not familiar with it or they may not want to deal with it in general because that may not be their core wheelhouse. I'll come back to that for a second, too. The second part of that is I would guess that if you're looking at CMG as the solid operator it is, the valuation is obviously going to be much higher for that reason, but are you necessarily the operator? Is your board going to remove you from operating it in hopes that you're going to take the CMG approach of functioning down the road? I do think that there could be some, I don't want to say ego, but there could be some of that political internal struggle as well because it would be a David vs Goliath view, I should say, as far as the number of stations with the company, but the revenues and that sort of thing, I would guess, are comparable to some of those that are more of a regional vs large market operator.

To your point, it's not that giant of a company by any means, but the valuation is there. I think most of that valuation is TV because radio, just looking at the industry, radio is just not that well priced anymore at that time. Those stations are successful that they have, don't get me wrong, but I do think radio is just not that pricey. The benefit to co-owning, I will tell you, is that if you're able to use your assets and not have to pay for additional advertising on those mediums, you can grow your audience between the two platforms. I think that's still mission-critical too. You're driving ears and eyes back and forth between your own assets, and that's a competitive advantage because that reach is still there, and you're constantly getting new cume or people that are coming to your brands.

[00:39:32] We mentioned that perhaps everyone should be adopting CMG's model, but this will likely not happen if it is acquired. Is there a world where scale is a prerequisite to compete in any meaningful and effective way, and if you're not a part of a big station group, you're essentially left behind, with Nexstar, for example, being able to come in with more leverage over retransmission in that market because it can better negotiate with all the big providers, given the households it covers? We went from 39% ownership to essentially no cap now. Nexstar-Tegna is boasting 80% coverage, even though it's being held up by a TRO [temporary restraining order] because of a DirecTV lawsuit.

NR [00:41:07]: Yes, you can still use that as a nuance. Those are two ways to operate, obviously. If you're going national scale, depending on who is doing the retransmission for you, a lot of the operators if it's traditional cable are still regional, so they need the stations with the highest ratings overall to justify themselves. Say, if Nexstar is, and they're not in Atlanta, I don't think, but if they're in Atlanta and they're like, "Hey, we want this fee because we're a national footprint," whatever, they're still going to look at that regionally and go, "No, you're not getting that for Atlanta. You aren't doing well there. People are cleaning your clock left and right." It's going to be more lucrative for them to look at the most successful stations and pay accordingly in that regard. For the streaming platforms, it's still a little bit similar because they're going to look at your overall success in your home market and realise that's where most of the station's audience is still going to come from those local IPs. I think that's one nuance to look at it. The other part of it is the Sinclair model, they just don't care.

I'm saying that just based on viewing their product and seeing that sort of thing, they will regionalise and nationalise anything because that's just their operating model, and they'll negotiate accordingly, where it may not be the best retrans rates, but they also don't have a giant overhead in each of their markets because they gave up on a local presence, sort of thing. I want to add one thing too, before we wrap up our time. Going back to ATSC 3.0, the other revenue stream that hasn't existed for these stations before and TV specifically is ATSC 3.0 would allow for you to… I'll just cover it lightly, you can dive into it on the net if you want or we could talk again, but it will allow you to create revenue streams like data delivery for major regional or national players depending on your scale. They'll pay millions, tens of millions to that sometimes depending on a market, a region, a national footprint, that sort of thing. You can also create your own paywall situations as that technology rolls out. If you talk to people, they're going to say, "It hasn't done anything in 10 years." Remember, most of that 10 years, they've been trying to implement it and build it, so to speak.

They haven't officially fully marketed mainstream yet, but those products are on the market now, and they're starting to penetrate the market. Long term, that growth of having a creative paywall with your own content, think about Gray in that regard, where they're producing their own things and maybe they get some sports rights of their own, they cover it on their own, they could set something up like that and have it behind a paywall in home and you can deliver advertising directly to an IPTV or an internet-connected TV in anybody's home. There's an awful lot of advance coming for ATSC 3.0 stations. CMG has a lot of those already broadcasting, and I know some of the other major operators do, too. There's that, and then that technology can also let you… Believe it or not, like digital billboards, if you were to acquire one of those companies or partner to those companies, you could technically push out ad updates out to those billboards overnight and update campaigns and that sort of thing and make them even more timely. If you were to own those billboard companies, think about that as your overall holistic advertising model as well. There are some other interesting things where you could treat the industry more even as a marketing and advertising agency down the road, too.

[00:45:04] We've been hearing about ATSC [Advanced Television Systems Committee] 3.0 for a while. What do you see as the primary impediment to this point? Is it just a lack of investment? Is it an FCC [Federal Communications Commission] airwaves issue? Is it about OEMs getting the hardware and TVs? Obviously, you have the datacasting JV, EdgeBeam, that all the major broadcasters are a part of, but that seems to be more of enterprise uses, at least that's how I'm taking it right now, and we haven't really seen much out of EdgeBeam yet. What is the hold-up?

NR [00:45:59]: Again, I go back to where this technology takes time to implement and it's slow to grow because you're basically building it out over time. OEMs aren't being required yet like they were the last time there was 2.0. They aren't being required yet to have a standard because the industry itself hasn't settled on it yet. The only thing to make that happen would be the NAB saying basically, and this is owners going to the NAB and saying, "Hey, look, this is our focus. We need for all of this to be regulated in a sense that all TVs are going to have this sort of thing now, just like they did when they became smart TVs." They will eventually come along because what makes a TV so cheap is that the manufacturers are able to go and sell all of the data it collects to the companies that want them. Think about Walmart getting into the streaming game and that sort of thing and Walmart having access, that's why they wanted to buy a streaming service so they could have access to all of that data.

All of that data is going to make each of the operators for TV even more lucrative in the sense of accountability and how you can actually pinpoint marketing and show what you're able to do. You suddenly just became Google for a region or for the nation. I do think there's still some upside to that. I'll go back to what I said at the beginning, sometimes this industry cannot see the forest for the trees because they've been doing the same thing for so long. It's a bit of an old guard that lacks that imagination to be able to make it happen. Any M&A situation that goes on in this industry, the one that's going to win and have the most impactful moment is going to be the one that has a new vision for it. That can bring it out of modern day, if that makes sense.

[00:47:58] The idea of buying stations, cutting costs and hubbing networks or stations across geography seems to be where a lot of the major operators are going. Do you think this is at odds and more of a continuation of the old-school thinking? Assuming that Cox eventually gets sold, does anything lead you to believe that there will ultimately be a change or a break from this old guard?

NR [00:48:58]: I think there will be because at some point, what's any company if it isn't driving revenue or making money, I'll use iHeartMedia as an example, as a radio operator, they have now hacked all of their talent out of the local assets for the most part. The thing that research will tell you every time is it still matters to be local. The more you don't sound like it, the more you don't look like it, the more AI is presenting your newscast without host as some people are doing in Baltimore now. The viewers notice and then you're not special anymore, and then they go away. That's where CMG and the better operators still realise. It's not like they've never had lay-offs before. They've never had efficiencies before. They're just thoughtful about the approach. If you were to take a company like CMG or anyone else and you grew it and you became a national player, it doesn't mean you couldn't regionalise some things or you couldn't do it in operation between two markets and make it look incredibly local. I would encourage you to look at Griffin TV. It's a local operator, but between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, they're able to share resources and it looks phenomenal in that regard. They don't pay a negative price for it. Thinking about those things to get creative, you will beat competitors that have given up. That's where the valuation comes in for these companies that are well run.

[00:50:29] Who do you see as the most likely acquirer of CMG, assuming it doesn't keep going it alone? Do you think it will be Gray, Sinclair or Nexstar?

NR [00:51:02]: I think it would be someone that complements the company. If it would be Gray, that would not surprise me. Gray is a very thoughtful operator, and they do have headquarters in Atlanta like CMG does, that would be very attractive to them, I would imagine. There I don't know the inner workings of Gray, but I do think that they function a lot like CMG in their approach to the thoughtfulness of it. Nexstar, I mean, possibly, they don't have a giant footprint in the south-east, if I'm remembering correctly. That would be attractive to them, I'm sure, in some way. There is the possibility that a brand-new player comes along in general and just says, "I have a vision for what this could be, and I've got the financial backing to make it happen," and they go in and acquire it and start buying up other boutique operators to make it work. Any of those scenarios is possible in that way, but I don't think a Sinclair would afford CMG justice because they're going to lose money almost immediately based on their own model.

JC [00:52:12]: Is there anything else that you want to quickly mention?

NR [00:52:24]: I would say that you've got a pretty solid operating entity in CMG and the radio aspect of it for the right buyer, I hope wouldn't scare them because there is so much that synergistically could actually benefit each of those entities.

JC [00:52:41]: Thank you so much for your time and your commentary today. It's greatly appreciated.

NR [00:52:43]: Thank you. I appreciate talking to you.

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