The Nexstar Mirage: How a Legacy Media Giant Is Faking Its Digital Future
Reports
•
May 2, 2025
The Nexstar Mirage: How a Legacy Media Giant Is Faking Its Digital Future
Reports
•
May 2, 2025
From decaying digital traffic to $2.9B in questionable goodwill, Nexstar is burning through the last of its linear TV cash flow — while insiders quietly exit the building.
Nexstar Media Group (NASDAQ: NXST) is not a digital transformation story — it’s a slow-motion collapse wearing a mask.At first glance, the numbers impress: nearly 200 local TV stations, 138 websites, 229 apps, and a portfolio that includes The Hill, NewsNation, BestReviews.com, and a controlling stake in The CW. Nexstar trades near all-time highs. Analysts cheer its digital “pivot.” Executives tout omni-channel synergy. Investor decks scream scale.But dig beneath the boilerplate — and the empire begins to rot.This is a legacy media company clinging to relevance by acquiring digital assets it doesn’t know how to operate, while burning through the last of its broadcast-era cash flows.
Behind the glossy language lies a house of collapsing cards:
Traffic across Nexstar’s digital ecosystem is plummeting — from CW to NewsNation to BestReviews.
Apps and websites are outdated, with many scoring under 3 stars and racking up user complaints.
The company’s own insiders — 16 former executives and directors — describe it as aimless, technologically ignorant, and months away from a reckoning.
Aged leadership has no plan for younger audiences, no meaningful strategy for TikTok, Instagram, or streaming innovation.
Nexstar’s most meaningful digital asset (The CW) is in freefall — Google Trends, app installs, and YouTube views all cratered 70–90% from their peaks.
Engagement is non-existent: hundreds of thousands of videos uploaded across its YouTube channels, most earning less than $10 per year.Meanwhile, the company is loaded with $2.9 billion in goodwill, exceeding its total shareholder equity — reflecting a decade-long acquisition spree that, by all operational metrics, has failed.The final nail? Insiders are quietly fleeing. Over $48 million in shares were sold in the past six months, while management continues to buy back stock to prop up optics.
In our opinion, Nexstar isn’t pivoting to the future. It’s buying time. This is a dying empire, digitally incompetent, leveraged on goodwill, and headed straight for its Kodak moment.
Part 1: The Kodak Moment — Legacy Media’s Death Spiral Has Begun
Figure: Audience Age Cliff
Nexstar and its flagship network, The CW, average viewers in their mid-60s — a stark contrast to YouTube and TikTok, where ad dollars increasingly flow. This age gap is killing Nexstar’s relevance and ad appeal.
If you want to understand Nexstar’s fate, look no further than Kodak in the 2000s.
Both were dominant players in their industries. Both were cash-rich legacy brands. And both dramatically underestimated how quickly the world was changing around them.
The difference? Kodak invented the digital camera and ignored it. Nexstar is pretending digital doesn’t matter — and buying assets it doesn’t know how to use.
The Demographic Cliff
Nexstar still makes the majority of its revenue from linear broadcast TV — over 200 stations across the U.S. This includes major affiliates like CBS, FOX, ABC, and The CW. But while the financials are still padded by retransmission fees and political ad spend, the audience is crumbling.
According to a 2024 Nielsen-backed study:
The average age of a Nexstar viewer is 64.5 years old.
For The CW, its most “youth-focused” asset, average viewer age is 65.2.
That’s not just bad — it’s existential.
Advertisers are fleeing. The modern ad economy is built around millennials and Gen Z, who are:
Easier to influence
More active on social media
More data-rich for targeting
And crucially, nowhere near a cable box
Linear TV’s last strength — captive, loyal audiences — is now its biggest liability. These audiences are dying off, literally, and younger viewers aren’t coming to replace them.
Broadcast Decline is Accelerating
Figure: The Cord-Cutting Collapse
Cable TV households have fallen by over 50% since 2012, while streaming adoption has nearly quintupled. Nexstar, still heavily reliant on retransmission fees, is riding a wave that’s already crashed.
Nexstar’s NewsNation, once a flagship national rollout meant to challenge CNN and FOX, has seen its household reach drop from 75 million to 64 million in just three years. That’s a 15% collapse in footprint during a period when Americans consumed more video content than ever.
Why?
Because audiences didn’t switch channels. They left the platform entirely.
Cord-cutting has become the norm, not the exception.
Smart TVs are now portals to Netflix, YouTube, Twitch — not ABC or CW.
Local news is consumed via X, Reddit, TikTok, and community-specific Discords, not 6PM broadcasts.
The industry trend is undeniable:
Legacy TV is dying — and faster than Nexstar wants investors to believe.
The Illusion of “Sticky” Revenue
One of the most repeated Nexstar bull arguments is that its retransmission revenues — what cable companies pay to carry local broadcast signals — are “sticky” and reliable.
But this is another illusion.
Retransmission fees depend on the existence of cable subscribers.
Cable households in the U.S. peaked in 2012.
Since then, more than 30 million households have cut the cord.
Even optimistic analysts predict this number could double by 2030, leaving traditional broadcasters scrambling.
As linear TV dies, so do the premiums investors are willing to pay for companies like Nexstar — unless they can show a real digital pivot.
Which brings us to Nexstar’s supposed solution…
Part 2: The Digital Delusion — Acquisitions Without Innovation
Figure: Nexstar’s Digital Acquisitions — High Spend, Heavy Decline
From The CW to BestReviews and The Hill, Nexstar has spent hundreds of millions acquiring digital brands that are now in steep decline — some with up to 94% traffic loss. This is not transformation. It’s deterioration by acquisition.
If Part 1 exposed Nexstar’s crumbling broadcast core, Part 2 uncovers the illusion meant to cover it up: a “digital transformation” story built entirely on acquisitions — with no actual innovation.
For the past decade, Nexstar has gone on a buying spree, snapping up every semi-relevant digital asset it could afford. The result? A Frankenstein portfolio of outdated websites, failed review platforms, dead apps, and declining news brands. The company then repackaged this mess as a future-proof digital empire.
But insiders, traffic data, and app metrics tell the real story.
Nexstar isn’t building a digital strategy. It’s buying time.
Let’s Look at the Track Record:
Acquired: BestReviews.com ($160M, 2020)
Once a top-ranking product review site.
Now buried in SEO irrelevance.
Traffic down 94% from peak.
Videos on YouTube average a few hundred views.
User engagement effectively zero.
Acquired: The Hill ($130M, 2021)
Once a prominent politics site.
Traffic declined steadily since Nexstar takeover.
Insider: “The sales team is in disarray. Strategy doesn’t exist.”
Social following flat or declining.
Editor resigned out of frustration within 18 months.
Acquired: 75% of The CW Network (2022)
Touted as Nexstar’s “gateway to younger audiences.”
Average viewer age? 65.2 years
App store reviews: buggy, outdated.
Google Trends shows 76–95% decline in interest post-COVID.
AppMagic shows downloads in freefall.
Acquired: Best-of-Breed AdTech Platforms (2012–2017)
LKQD, Yashi, Kixer, Inergize, Internet Broadcasting, Media General Digital
Merged into Lakana, then quietly shelved.
Today? The internal tech stack is broken. Salesforce licenses were bought — then never used.
One insider called it “a graveyard of abandoned systems.”
No Innovation, Just Acquisitions
Nexstar’s digital “growth” hasn’t come from innovation, engineering, or user experience design. It’s come from buying legacy platforms, slapping the Nexstar logo on them, and pretending they’re new.
Websites are carbon copies of each other, boilerplate CMS-powered news hubs stuck in 2012.
Apps are glitchy, under-promoted, and almost entirely unused.
There’s no streaming strategy to compete with Tubi, Pluto, or Roku.
There’s no presence on TikTok, Instagram, or even Reddit where younger audiences now consume news.
Former employees say any internal efforts to modernize were “shot down or defunded.”
And most damning of all: Lakana — Nexstar’s supposed adtech nucleus — was silently shut down in 2019.
🎯 Analyst Praise vs. Reality
Despite all this, analysts continue to parrot Nexstar’s narrative. Here’s a real quote from a March 2025 earnings call:
“Nexstar’s diversification into digital media has been a smart move, enabling the company to tap into new revenue streams and adapt to the changing media landscape.”
But here’s what 16 former insiders told us instead:
“It’s all virtue signaling.”
“They’re just buying logos.”
“No one in leadership understands digital.”
“There’s no TikTok strategy, no Instagram plan — nothing.”
“BestReviews was just a PowerPoint purchase.”
“They spent millions on Salesforce licenses, then abandoned them.”
Part 3: Traffic Collapse — The Metrics They Don’t Want You to See
Figure: Nexstar’s Digital Brands Are Rapidly Fading
From The CW (-94%) to BestReviews (-92%), Nexstar’s portfolio is collapsing in relevance. Even The Hill, once a top political outlet, has seen a 30% decline — despite the surge in election-season interest.
For a company that name-drops “digital” 64 times in its annual report, Nexstar’s actual digital traffic tells a story of abandonment, apathy, and alarming decline.
We analyzed web traffic, app downloads, YouTube performance, Google Trends, and third-party app ratings across Nexstar’s entire digital ecosystem. What we found wasn’t just bad — it was terminal.
This isn’t a slowdown. It’s digital decay.
National Websites: A Network in Freefall
Let’s start with the crown jewels: The CW, NewsNation, The Hill, and BestReviews.
The CW
Once a Gen-Z-facing TV brand. Now a shadow of its former self.
Web traffic down 85% from post-COVID peak.
App downloads flatlined since 2022 acquisition.
Google Trends interest down 94%.
BestReviews.com
Acquired for $160M to compete with Wirecutter.
Currently receives less than 6% of prior traffic.
YouTube uploads draw less than 300 views per video.User engagement close to zero.
NewsNationNow.com
Touted as Nexstar’s national news platform.
Traffic down 41% over the past 24 months.
Engagement plummeting on both site and social.
TheHill.com
Declined ~28% in monthly unique visitors since 2022.
Social growth completely stalled.
Editor turnover, strategy drift, sales team dysfunction.
Mobile Apps: Outdated, Unused, Forgotten
Across its 278 mobile apps, Nexstar’s average app store rating is below 3.5 stars. Most haven’t been updated in over a year. Many are built on decade-old architecture.
Figure: Nexstar App Downloads Are Free-Falling
Estimated total downloads across Nexstar’s mobile app portfolio have declined by nearly 75% since 2019. Most apps are outdated, under-marketed, and technically obsolete — users are leaving, and no one’s replacing them.
112 local station apps exist — but 28 have no app at all.
Of the rest, 23 show zero significant downloads (under 5,000).
AppMagic and SensorTower data show a peak in 2019 — and a steady decline since.
Review after review describes the same experience: buggy, outdated, frustrating to use.
Meanwhile, competitors like Gray Television, TEGNA, and Scripps have invested in sleek UI, streaming-native formats, and real-time personalization.
Nexstar? Copy-pasted weather apps with boilerplate news templates.
YouTube: Millions of Videos, Pennies of RevenueNexstar uploads hundreds of thousands of videos to YouTube across its various local and national brands.
Figure: Nexstar’s YouTube Strategy Is All Volume, No Value
Despite uploading hundreds of thousands of videos, Nexstar’s brands average under 5,000 views per video — with annual revenue per upload often below $10. This is not a digital monetization model. It’s a digital landfill.
But despite the volume, performance is dismal:
The average video generates less than $10/year in ad revenue.
Views per upload often don’t break 500.
Even flagship brands like The Hill and RewindTV fail to break 30 likes per video.
This isn’t content. It’s digital litter.
Worse, Nexstar doesn’t have a premium ad rev-share deal with YouTube like larger networks. So even the little money it earns is below par.
Google Trends: Brands in Retreat
We cross-referenced Google Trends data for every major Nexstar property.
The pattern is consistent:
BrandTrend Decline Since Peak
The CW-94%
BestReviews-92%
NewsNation-53%
The Hill-30%
Local Station Interest (avg)-78%
Even when traffic data varies across sources, Google Trends paints a universal picture of fading relevance.
🧱 A Hollowed-Out Ecosystem
While Nexstar continues to tell investors it has “hundreds of apps” and “millions of digital touchpoints,” the reality is this:Most of these platforms are redundant.Few are updated regularly.Engagement is tanking.Users are voting with their thumbs — and they’re gone.
Part 4: Insider Revolt — Sixteen Executives, One Message: This Ship is Sinking
We interviewed sixteen former Nexstar executives, directors, and senior staff from digital, editorial, adtech, sales, and operational teams.The result?Not one expressed confidence in the company’s future.
Not one believed Nexstar’s digital strategy would work.
And several used the same phrase — “This company has 18 months left.”
In all our years writing activist research, we’ve never seen such a uniformly negative internal consensus. These aren’t Twitter trolls or anonymous Glassdoor comments. These are former senior insiders, with NDAs and equity grants behind them, telling us: The digital strategy is “a mirage.” Leadership is “propping up linear TV until retirement.”Innovation is “intentionally smothered. ”There’s “no strategy for TikTok, YouTube, or younger audiences.” The entire business is in managed decline.
The Strategy Is to Wait It Out
Many insiders told us the quiet part out loud:“They’re milking the linear cash flows until they retire. That’s the whole strategy.”This isn’t about growth. It’s not about turning a ship around. It’s about avoiding panic while quietly bleeding out.There is no pivot. There is no reinvention.Leadership is just running out the clock — then handing the disaster to the next generation of executives.
Underinvestment Is Baked In
While Nexstar reports strong profits, it’s not reinvesting in its own future.Digital budget cuts killed almost every new product initiative.A former CDO from Roku was hired… then defunded.Nexstar bought 1,600 Salesforce licenses — then refused to use them.Engineers, designers, and digital talent have been laid off or driven out. Instead of R&D, Nexstar opted for stock buybacks and dividends.This is not a transformation strategy. This is financial makeup on a dead model.
Digital Talent is Crushed or Pushed Out
Multiple insiders painted the same picture: if you push for digital-first ideas, you’re gone.“There’s no appetite for real change. Just find someone who can say the word ‘digital’ and not threaten the linear revenue stream.”
Digital leaders were:
Ignored
Undermined
Or simply fired
Product teams reported:
“No buy-in”
“No budget”
“No support”
One executive told us bluntly:
“They hired the fake-it-til-you-make-it management class. Nobody knew what they were doing. It was all smoke.”
No Path to Younger Audiences A staggering number of insiders referenced the complete absence of any youth strategy. No TikTok. No Snap. No YouTube Shorts.No real Instagram focus. No one under 30 at the strategy table.“The median age of our audience was a joke internally. But nothing changed. They didn’t care.” Advertisers want under-50 reach. Nexstar can’t deliver it — and leadership doesn’t even seem to try.
Internal Tools Are a Disaster
App CMS is decade-old WordPress clones.
Local sales tech is worse than Sinclair, Tegna, Gray, or Scripps.
Content delivery is manual, slow, and outdated.“Monetization tech doesn’t exist.”The platform? Broken. The talent? Gone. The executives? Checked out.
Actual Insider Quotes, Here’s what we heard — verbatim.
“They could care less about their people and are out of touch with digital.”
“There is not even a strategy to find viewers where they are.”
“You have a short shelf life at Nexstar if you say linear is dead.”
“Everything feels like it’s just buying time.”
“Leadership doesn’t understand the space — and doesn’t want to.”
Part 5: The Goodwill Bubble — $2.9 Billion of Empty Promises
Figure: Nexstar’s Goodwill Surpasses Shareholder Equity
Nexstar now carries more goodwill than book value, with $2.9B in intangible assets propping up just $2.2B in equity. This signals deep fragility — if digital assets continue underperforming, large-scale impairments are inevitable.
If Nexstar’s digital empire is a crumbling illusion, its financial statements are the stage props holding up the act. Because on paper, Nexstar’s balance sheet is sitting on a $2.9 billion pile of goodwill.
That’s more than the company’s entire shareholder equity.
Let that sink in.
As of FY2024:
Goodwill: $2,922 million
Shareholders’ Equity: $2,242 million
That means Nexstar’s net worth only exists if the acquisitions they made were actually worth what they paid.
But as we’ve shown:
Most of these digital assets have failed or declined dramatically.
Engagement is collapsing.
Revenue per property is deteriorating.
Traffic and utility are fading fast.
So what’s that goodwill actually worth?
In our view, not much.
The Breakdown: Impairments, Denials, and Deferrals
Here’s what’s already been quietly written off:
2019: $63.3M impairment (digital)
2022: $96.1M impairment (BestReviews)
2023: $19M impairment (“a second digital unit”)
2024: $24M impairment (unnamed digital business)
That totals just $202.4M — less than 7% of total goodwill. And yet:
BestReviews.com is functionally dead.
Lakana has been shuttered Most local apps are outdated and unmaintained.
CW is losing 90%+ of its digital relevance.
The Hill is declining in traffic and engagement.
Why is Nexstar still carrying $2.7B+ of remaining goodwill, as if the future cash flows from these brands justify the price?
Goodwill Math: The Illusion of Intangible Value
Goodwill is supposed to reflect synergies, future earnings, and competitive advantage from acquisitions.All signs point to a coming goodwill reckoning — one that could erase hundreds of millions in book value.
What the Numbers Really Mean
A company with more goodwill than equity is extremely vulnerable if:Those assets no longer generate expected returnsImpairments must be takenDebt covenants rely on inflated book valueAnd that’s where Nexstar sits today.
The goodwill is not “too big to fail.” It’s too big to believe.
Part 6: Inside the Selloff — Why Insiders Cashed Out at the Top
Figure: Insider Sales While Stock Stays Inflated
Nexstar insiders sold off over $48M in stock during periods of high market optimism — timing exits before broader recognition of the company’s declining digital performance. Meanwhile, the stock price remained artificially elevated via buybacks.
While Nexstar continues to pump investor decks full of digital buzzwords and stock buybacks, the people who know the truth — the insiders — are quietly heading for the exits.
Over the last six months alone, Nexstar insiders sold $48.1 million worth of stock.
That’s not normal shareholder rebalancing. That’s strategic exit behavior from people on the inside of a failing transformation.
The Pattern Is Clear: The CEO, CFO, and multiple directors sold shares across multiple tranches.Most of these sales occurred after bad digital KPIs were already evident but before the broader market noticed.
Zero meaningful insider buying occurred during this same period.
Insiders are watching:App download crashes 📉
YouTube monetization failure 💀
Google Trends implosions 🔻
Tech and marketing staff walkouts 🚪
Impairment footnotes quietly ballooning 📉
And they’re cashing out.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
$48.1 million in insider sales in just six months.Over $75 million sold since early 2022.No open-market purchases during that period. Concentration of sales among key decision-makers.This isn’t noise. It’s a signal.The people with access to the real numbers don’t believe the story they’re telling.
Meanwhile, Nexstar Buys Back Its Own StockEven as insiders sell, Nexstar continues to repurchase its own shares. Why?To prop up earnings per share.To offset dilution optics.To maintain the illusion of “shareholder confidence.”But here’s the truth: stock buybacks don’t mean a thing when your insiders are the ones selling into them.It’s not shareholder alignment. It’s optical manipulation.
The Playbook Is Familiar
We’ve seen this movie before:
Company struggles to reinvent.
Glossy buzzwords distract investors.
Insiders unload stock near highs.
Market realizes the moat never existed.
Valuation collapses.
Impairments follow.
Think Kodak. Think Blockbuster. Think legacy newspapers. Think Nexstar.
Part 7: Conclusion
Nexstar’s Mirage Is Fading, and FastNexstar Media Group wants to be seen as a dominant, modern media conglomerate — digitally savvy, nationally scaled, and future-proofed. But after investigating the full scope of its operations, interviewing former executives, and analyzing traffic, financials, and platform performance across hundreds of assets, one conclusion is clear: Nexstar isn’t transforming. It’s withering.
This is a company:
Built on an aging broadcast audience with a median age of 64+Relying on apps with declining downloads and websites losing over 70% of their traffic
Claiming digital success while its most expensive platforms — BestReviews, The Hill, The CW — are collapsing
Holding $2.9 billion in goodwill — more than its book value — despite zero evidence of scalable ROIQuietly watching insiders dump tens of millions in stock while investors are told everything’s fine
We’ve seen this pattern before:
Legacy media, unable to pivot
Internal resistance to innovation
Acquisitions instead of invention
Aging leadership running out the clock
Market optimism built on fantasy metrics
And eventually… a write-down avalanche
What Comes Next?
In our view:
Massive goodwill impairments are not a matter of “if” — but whenInsider sentiment is already priced in — via their own actionsDigital turnaround is unlikely without a full leadership overhaulYounger audiences are gone, and Nexstar is not building anything that brings them backAdvertisers are shifting budgets toward TikTok, YouTube, and AI-optimized channels, where Nexstar has zero competitive leverageThe real story here isn’t how Nexstar will grow into the future — it’s how long the market will let it pretend it has one.
Final Word:
This is not a misunderstood media company with untapped upside.This is a legacy business nearing its endgame, packaged in buzzwords, managed with short-term optics, and led by people who have no incentive to change course before they retire.
We believe investors buying into Nexstar today are walking into a slow-moving value trap.Like Kodak. Like Tribune. Like Gannett. Like Blockbuster.This is Nexstar’s moment. And it’s already behind them.
*At The Time Of Writing $NXST is Trading At $149.42*
Nexstar Media Group (NASDAQ: NXST) is not a digital transformation story — it’s a slow-motion collapse wearing a mask.At first glance, the numbers impress: nearly 200 local TV stations, 138 websites, 229 apps, and a portfolio that includes The Hill, NewsNation, BestReviews.com, and a controlling stake in The CW. Nexstar trades near all-time highs. Analysts cheer its digital “pivot.” Executives tout omni-channel synergy. Investor decks scream scale.But dig beneath the boilerplate — and the empire begins to rot.This is a legacy media company clinging to relevance by acquiring digital assets it doesn’t know how to operate, while burning through the last of its broadcast-era cash flows.
Behind the glossy language lies a house of collapsing cards:
Traffic across Nexstar’s digital ecosystem is plummeting — from CW to NewsNation to BestReviews.
Apps and websites are outdated, with many scoring under 3 stars and racking up user complaints.
The company’s own insiders — 16 former executives and directors — describe it as aimless, technologically ignorant, and months away from a reckoning.
Aged leadership has no plan for younger audiences, no meaningful strategy for TikTok, Instagram, or streaming innovation.
Nexstar’s most meaningful digital asset (The CW) is in freefall — Google Trends, app installs, and YouTube views all cratered 70–90% from their peaks.
Engagement is non-existent: hundreds of thousands of videos uploaded across its YouTube channels, most earning less than $10 per year.Meanwhile, the company is loaded with $2.9 billion in goodwill, exceeding its total shareholder equity — reflecting a decade-long acquisition spree that, by all operational metrics, has failed.The final nail? Insiders are quietly fleeing. Over $48 million in shares were sold in the past six months, while management continues to buy back stock to prop up optics.
In our opinion, Nexstar isn’t pivoting to the future. It’s buying time. This is a dying empire, digitally incompetent, leveraged on goodwill, and headed straight for its Kodak moment.
Part 1: The Kodak Moment — Legacy Media’s Death Spiral Has Begun
Figure: Audience Age Cliff
Nexstar and its flagship network, The CW, average viewers in their mid-60s — a stark contrast to YouTube and TikTok, where ad dollars increasingly flow. This age gap is killing Nexstar’s relevance and ad appeal.
If you want to understand Nexstar’s fate, look no further than Kodak in the 2000s.
Both were dominant players in their industries. Both were cash-rich legacy brands. And both dramatically underestimated how quickly the world was changing around them.
The difference? Kodak invented the digital camera and ignored it. Nexstar is pretending digital doesn’t matter — and buying assets it doesn’t know how to use.
The Demographic Cliff
Nexstar still makes the majority of its revenue from linear broadcast TV — over 200 stations across the U.S. This includes major affiliates like CBS, FOX, ABC, and The CW. But while the financials are still padded by retransmission fees and political ad spend, the audience is crumbling.
According to a 2024 Nielsen-backed study:
The average age of a Nexstar viewer is 64.5 years old.
For The CW, its most “youth-focused” asset, average viewer age is 65.2.
That’s not just bad — it’s existential.
Advertisers are fleeing. The modern ad economy is built around millennials and Gen Z, who are:
Easier to influence
More active on social media
More data-rich for targeting
And crucially, nowhere near a cable box
Linear TV’s last strength — captive, loyal audiences — is now its biggest liability. These audiences are dying off, literally, and younger viewers aren’t coming to replace them.
Broadcast Decline is Accelerating
Figure: The Cord-Cutting Collapse
Cable TV households have fallen by over 50% since 2012, while streaming adoption has nearly quintupled. Nexstar, still heavily reliant on retransmission fees, is riding a wave that’s already crashed.
Nexstar’s NewsNation, once a flagship national rollout meant to challenge CNN and FOX, has seen its household reach drop from 75 million to 64 million in just three years. That’s a 15% collapse in footprint during a period when Americans consumed more video content than ever.
Why?
Because audiences didn’t switch channels. They left the platform entirely.
Cord-cutting has become the norm, not the exception.
Smart TVs are now portals to Netflix, YouTube, Twitch — not ABC or CW.
Local news is consumed via X, Reddit, TikTok, and community-specific Discords, not 6PM broadcasts.
The industry trend is undeniable:
Legacy TV is dying — and faster than Nexstar wants investors to believe.
The Illusion of “Sticky” Revenue
One of the most repeated Nexstar bull arguments is that its retransmission revenues — what cable companies pay to carry local broadcast signals — are “sticky” and reliable.
But this is another illusion.
Retransmission fees depend on the existence of cable subscribers.
Cable households in the U.S. peaked in 2012.
Since then, more than 30 million households have cut the cord.
Even optimistic analysts predict this number could double by 2030, leaving traditional broadcasters scrambling.
As linear TV dies, so do the premiums investors are willing to pay for companies like Nexstar — unless they can show a real digital pivot.
Which brings us to Nexstar’s supposed solution…
Part 2: The Digital Delusion — Acquisitions Without Innovation
Figure: Nexstar’s Digital Acquisitions — High Spend, Heavy Decline
From The CW to BestReviews and The Hill, Nexstar has spent hundreds of millions acquiring digital brands that are now in steep decline — some with up to 94% traffic loss. This is not transformation. It’s deterioration by acquisition.
If Part 1 exposed Nexstar’s crumbling broadcast core, Part 2 uncovers the illusion meant to cover it up: a “digital transformation” story built entirely on acquisitions — with no actual innovation.
For the past decade, Nexstar has gone on a buying spree, snapping up every semi-relevant digital asset it could afford. The result? A Frankenstein portfolio of outdated websites, failed review platforms, dead apps, and declining news brands. The company then repackaged this mess as a future-proof digital empire.
But insiders, traffic data, and app metrics tell the real story.
Nexstar isn’t building a digital strategy. It’s buying time.
Let’s Look at the Track Record:
Acquired: BestReviews.com ($160M, 2020)
Once a top-ranking product review site.
Now buried in SEO irrelevance.
Traffic down 94% from peak.
Videos on YouTube average a few hundred views.
User engagement effectively zero.
Acquired: The Hill ($130M, 2021)
Once a prominent politics site.
Traffic declined steadily since Nexstar takeover.
Insider: “The sales team is in disarray. Strategy doesn’t exist.”
Social following flat or declining.
Editor resigned out of frustration within 18 months.
Acquired: 75% of The CW Network (2022)
Touted as Nexstar’s “gateway to younger audiences.”
Average viewer age? 65.2 years
App store reviews: buggy, outdated.
Google Trends shows 76–95% decline in interest post-COVID.
AppMagic shows downloads in freefall.
Acquired: Best-of-Breed AdTech Platforms (2012–2017)
LKQD, Yashi, Kixer, Inergize, Internet Broadcasting, Media General Digital
Merged into Lakana, then quietly shelved.
Today? The internal tech stack is broken. Salesforce licenses were bought — then never used.
One insider called it “a graveyard of abandoned systems.”
No Innovation, Just Acquisitions
Nexstar’s digital “growth” hasn’t come from innovation, engineering, or user experience design. It’s come from buying legacy platforms, slapping the Nexstar logo on them, and pretending they’re new.
Websites are carbon copies of each other, boilerplate CMS-powered news hubs stuck in 2012.
Apps are glitchy, under-promoted, and almost entirely unused.
There’s no streaming strategy to compete with Tubi, Pluto, or Roku.
There’s no presence on TikTok, Instagram, or even Reddit where younger audiences now consume news.
Former employees say any internal efforts to modernize were “shot down or defunded.”
And most damning of all: Lakana — Nexstar’s supposed adtech nucleus — was silently shut down in 2019.
🎯 Analyst Praise vs. Reality
Despite all this, analysts continue to parrot Nexstar’s narrative. Here’s a real quote from a March 2025 earnings call:
“Nexstar’s diversification into digital media has been a smart move, enabling the company to tap into new revenue streams and adapt to the changing media landscape.”
But here’s what 16 former insiders told us instead:
“It’s all virtue signaling.”
“They’re just buying logos.”
“No one in leadership understands digital.”
“There’s no TikTok strategy, no Instagram plan — nothing.”
“BestReviews was just a PowerPoint purchase.”
“They spent millions on Salesforce licenses, then abandoned them.”
Part 3: Traffic Collapse — The Metrics They Don’t Want You to See
Figure: Nexstar’s Digital Brands Are Rapidly Fading
From The CW (-94%) to BestReviews (-92%), Nexstar’s portfolio is collapsing in relevance. Even The Hill, once a top political outlet, has seen a 30% decline — despite the surge in election-season interest.
For a company that name-drops “digital” 64 times in its annual report, Nexstar’s actual digital traffic tells a story of abandonment, apathy, and alarming decline.
We analyzed web traffic, app downloads, YouTube performance, Google Trends, and third-party app ratings across Nexstar’s entire digital ecosystem. What we found wasn’t just bad — it was terminal.
This isn’t a slowdown. It’s digital decay.
National Websites: A Network in Freefall
Let’s start with the crown jewels: The CW, NewsNation, The Hill, and BestReviews.
The CW
Once a Gen-Z-facing TV brand. Now a shadow of its former self.
Web traffic down 85% from post-COVID peak.
App downloads flatlined since 2022 acquisition.
Google Trends interest down 94%.
BestReviews.com
Acquired for $160M to compete with Wirecutter.
Currently receives less than 6% of prior traffic.
YouTube uploads draw less than 300 views per video.User engagement close to zero.
NewsNationNow.com
Touted as Nexstar’s national news platform.
Traffic down 41% over the past 24 months.
Engagement plummeting on both site and social.
TheHill.com
Declined ~28% in monthly unique visitors since 2022.
Social growth completely stalled.
Editor turnover, strategy drift, sales team dysfunction.
Mobile Apps: Outdated, Unused, Forgotten
Across its 278 mobile apps, Nexstar’s average app store rating is below 3.5 stars. Most haven’t been updated in over a year. Many are built on decade-old architecture.
Figure: Nexstar App Downloads Are Free-Falling
Estimated total downloads across Nexstar’s mobile app portfolio have declined by nearly 75% since 2019. Most apps are outdated, under-marketed, and technically obsolete — users are leaving, and no one’s replacing them.
112 local station apps exist — but 28 have no app at all.
Of the rest, 23 show zero significant downloads (under 5,000).
AppMagic and SensorTower data show a peak in 2019 — and a steady decline since.
Review after review describes the same experience: buggy, outdated, frustrating to use.
Meanwhile, competitors like Gray Television, TEGNA, and Scripps have invested in sleek UI, streaming-native formats, and real-time personalization.
Nexstar? Copy-pasted weather apps with boilerplate news templates.
YouTube: Millions of Videos, Pennies of RevenueNexstar uploads hundreds of thousands of videos to YouTube across its various local and national brands.
Figure: Nexstar’s YouTube Strategy Is All Volume, No Value
Despite uploading hundreds of thousands of videos, Nexstar’s brands average under 5,000 views per video — with annual revenue per upload often below $10. This is not a digital monetization model. It’s a digital landfill.
But despite the volume, performance is dismal:
The average video generates less than $10/year in ad revenue.
Views per upload often don’t break 500.
Even flagship brands like The Hill and RewindTV fail to break 30 likes per video.
This isn’t content. It’s digital litter.
Worse, Nexstar doesn’t have a premium ad rev-share deal with YouTube like larger networks. So even the little money it earns is below par.
Google Trends: Brands in Retreat
We cross-referenced Google Trends data for every major Nexstar property.
The pattern is consistent:
BrandTrend Decline Since Peak
The CW-94%
BestReviews-92%
NewsNation-53%
The Hill-30%
Local Station Interest (avg)-78%
Even when traffic data varies across sources, Google Trends paints a universal picture of fading relevance.
🧱 A Hollowed-Out Ecosystem
While Nexstar continues to tell investors it has “hundreds of apps” and “millions of digital touchpoints,” the reality is this:Most of these platforms are redundant.Few are updated regularly.Engagement is tanking.Users are voting with their thumbs — and they’re gone.
Part 4: Insider Revolt — Sixteen Executives, One Message: This Ship is Sinking
We interviewed sixteen former Nexstar executives, directors, and senior staff from digital, editorial, adtech, sales, and operational teams.The result?Not one expressed confidence in the company’s future.
Not one believed Nexstar’s digital strategy would work.
And several used the same phrase — “This company has 18 months left.”
In all our years writing activist research, we’ve never seen such a uniformly negative internal consensus. These aren’t Twitter trolls or anonymous Glassdoor comments. These are former senior insiders, with NDAs and equity grants behind them, telling us: The digital strategy is “a mirage.” Leadership is “propping up linear TV until retirement.”Innovation is “intentionally smothered. ”There’s “no strategy for TikTok, YouTube, or younger audiences.” The entire business is in managed decline.
The Strategy Is to Wait It Out
Many insiders told us the quiet part out loud:“They’re milking the linear cash flows until they retire. That’s the whole strategy.”This isn’t about growth. It’s not about turning a ship around. It’s about avoiding panic while quietly bleeding out.There is no pivot. There is no reinvention.Leadership is just running out the clock — then handing the disaster to the next generation of executives.
Underinvestment Is Baked In
While Nexstar reports strong profits, it’s not reinvesting in its own future.Digital budget cuts killed almost every new product initiative.A former CDO from Roku was hired… then defunded.Nexstar bought 1,600 Salesforce licenses — then refused to use them.Engineers, designers, and digital talent have been laid off or driven out. Instead of R&D, Nexstar opted for stock buybacks and dividends.This is not a transformation strategy. This is financial makeup on a dead model.
Digital Talent is Crushed or Pushed Out
Multiple insiders painted the same picture: if you push for digital-first ideas, you’re gone.“There’s no appetite for real change. Just find someone who can say the word ‘digital’ and not threaten the linear revenue stream.”
Digital leaders were:
Ignored
Undermined
Or simply fired
Product teams reported:
“No buy-in”
“No budget”
“No support”
One executive told us bluntly:
“They hired the fake-it-til-you-make-it management class. Nobody knew what they were doing. It was all smoke.”
No Path to Younger Audiences A staggering number of insiders referenced the complete absence of any youth strategy. No TikTok. No Snap. No YouTube Shorts.No real Instagram focus. No one under 30 at the strategy table.“The median age of our audience was a joke internally. But nothing changed. They didn’t care.” Advertisers want under-50 reach. Nexstar can’t deliver it — and leadership doesn’t even seem to try.
Internal Tools Are a Disaster
App CMS is decade-old WordPress clones.
Local sales tech is worse than Sinclair, Tegna, Gray, or Scripps.
Content delivery is manual, slow, and outdated.“Monetization tech doesn’t exist.”The platform? Broken. The talent? Gone. The executives? Checked out.
Actual Insider Quotes, Here’s what we heard — verbatim.
“They could care less about their people and are out of touch with digital.”
“There is not even a strategy to find viewers where they are.”
“You have a short shelf life at Nexstar if you say linear is dead.”
“Everything feels like it’s just buying time.”
“Leadership doesn’t understand the space — and doesn’t want to.”
Part 5: The Goodwill Bubble — $2.9 Billion of Empty Promises
Figure: Nexstar’s Goodwill Surpasses Shareholder Equity
Nexstar now carries more goodwill than book value, with $2.9B in intangible assets propping up just $2.2B in equity. This signals deep fragility — if digital assets continue underperforming, large-scale impairments are inevitable.
If Nexstar’s digital empire is a crumbling illusion, its financial statements are the stage props holding up the act. Because on paper, Nexstar’s balance sheet is sitting on a $2.9 billion pile of goodwill.
That’s more than the company’s entire shareholder equity.
Let that sink in.
As of FY2024:
Goodwill: $2,922 million
Shareholders’ Equity: $2,242 million
That means Nexstar’s net worth only exists if the acquisitions they made were actually worth what they paid.
But as we’ve shown:
Most of these digital assets have failed or declined dramatically.
Engagement is collapsing.
Revenue per property is deteriorating.
Traffic and utility are fading fast.
So what’s that goodwill actually worth?
In our view, not much.
The Breakdown: Impairments, Denials, and Deferrals
Here’s what’s already been quietly written off:
2019: $63.3M impairment (digital)
2022: $96.1M impairment (BestReviews)
2023: $19M impairment (“a second digital unit”)
2024: $24M impairment (unnamed digital business)
That totals just $202.4M — less than 7% of total goodwill. And yet:
BestReviews.com is functionally dead.
Lakana has been shuttered Most local apps are outdated and unmaintained.
CW is losing 90%+ of its digital relevance.
The Hill is declining in traffic and engagement.
Why is Nexstar still carrying $2.7B+ of remaining goodwill, as if the future cash flows from these brands justify the price?
Goodwill Math: The Illusion of Intangible Value
Goodwill is supposed to reflect synergies, future earnings, and competitive advantage from acquisitions.All signs point to a coming goodwill reckoning — one that could erase hundreds of millions in book value.
What the Numbers Really Mean
A company with more goodwill than equity is extremely vulnerable if:Those assets no longer generate expected returnsImpairments must be takenDebt covenants rely on inflated book valueAnd that’s where Nexstar sits today.
The goodwill is not “too big to fail.” It’s too big to believe.
Part 6: Inside the Selloff — Why Insiders Cashed Out at the Top
Figure: Insider Sales While Stock Stays Inflated
Nexstar insiders sold off over $48M in stock during periods of high market optimism — timing exits before broader recognition of the company’s declining digital performance. Meanwhile, the stock price remained artificially elevated via buybacks.
While Nexstar continues to pump investor decks full of digital buzzwords and stock buybacks, the people who know the truth — the insiders — are quietly heading for the exits.
Over the last six months alone, Nexstar insiders sold $48.1 million worth of stock.
That’s not normal shareholder rebalancing. That’s strategic exit behavior from people on the inside of a failing transformation.
The Pattern Is Clear: The CEO, CFO, and multiple directors sold shares across multiple tranches.Most of these sales occurred after bad digital KPIs were already evident but before the broader market noticed.
Zero meaningful insider buying occurred during this same period.
Insiders are watching:App download crashes 📉
YouTube monetization failure 💀
Google Trends implosions 🔻
Tech and marketing staff walkouts 🚪
Impairment footnotes quietly ballooning 📉
And they’re cashing out.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
$48.1 million in insider sales in just six months.Over $75 million sold since early 2022.No open-market purchases during that period. Concentration of sales among key decision-makers.This isn’t noise. It’s a signal.The people with access to the real numbers don’t believe the story they’re telling.
Meanwhile, Nexstar Buys Back Its Own StockEven as insiders sell, Nexstar continues to repurchase its own shares. Why?To prop up earnings per share.To offset dilution optics.To maintain the illusion of “shareholder confidence.”But here’s the truth: stock buybacks don’t mean a thing when your insiders are the ones selling into them.It’s not shareholder alignment. It’s optical manipulation.
The Playbook Is Familiar
We’ve seen this movie before:
Company struggles to reinvent.
Glossy buzzwords distract investors.
Insiders unload stock near highs.
Market realizes the moat never existed.
Valuation collapses.
Impairments follow.
Think Kodak. Think Blockbuster. Think legacy newspapers. Think Nexstar.
Part 7: Conclusion
Nexstar’s Mirage Is Fading, and FastNexstar Media Group wants to be seen as a dominant, modern media conglomerate — digitally savvy, nationally scaled, and future-proofed. But after investigating the full scope of its operations, interviewing former executives, and analyzing traffic, financials, and platform performance across hundreds of assets, one conclusion is clear: Nexstar isn’t transforming. It’s withering.
This is a company:
Built on an aging broadcast audience with a median age of 64+Relying on apps with declining downloads and websites losing over 70% of their traffic
Claiming digital success while its most expensive platforms — BestReviews, The Hill, The CW — are collapsing
Holding $2.9 billion in goodwill — more than its book value — despite zero evidence of scalable ROIQuietly watching insiders dump tens of millions in stock while investors are told everything’s fine
We’ve seen this pattern before:
Legacy media, unable to pivot
Internal resistance to innovation
Acquisitions instead of invention
Aging leadership running out the clock
Market optimism built on fantasy metrics
And eventually… a write-down avalanche
What Comes Next?
In our view:
Massive goodwill impairments are not a matter of “if” — but whenInsider sentiment is already priced in — via their own actionsDigital turnaround is unlikely without a full leadership overhaulYounger audiences are gone, and Nexstar is not building anything that brings them backAdvertisers are shifting budgets toward TikTok, YouTube, and AI-optimized channels, where Nexstar has zero competitive leverageThe real story here isn’t how Nexstar will grow into the future — it’s how long the market will let it pretend it has one.
Final Word:
This is not a misunderstood media company with untapped upside.This is a legacy business nearing its endgame, packaged in buzzwords, managed with short-term optics, and led by people who have no incentive to change course before they retire.
We believe investors buying into Nexstar today are walking into a slow-moving value trap.Like Kodak. Like Tribune. Like Gannett. Like Blockbuster.This is Nexstar’s moment. And it’s already behind them.
*At The Time Of Writing $NXST is Trading At $149.42*
Nexstar Media Group (NASDAQ: NXST) is not a digital transformation story — it’s a slow-motion collapse wearing a mask.At first glance, the numbers impress: nearly 200 local TV stations, 138 websites, 229 apps, and a portfolio that includes The Hill, NewsNation, BestReviews.com, and a controlling stake in The CW. Nexstar trades near all-time highs. Analysts cheer its digital “pivot.” Executives tout omni-channel synergy. Investor decks scream scale.But dig beneath the boilerplate — and the empire begins to rot.This is a legacy media company clinging to relevance by acquiring digital assets it doesn’t know how to operate, while burning through the last of its broadcast-era cash flows.
Behind the glossy language lies a house of collapsing cards:
Traffic across Nexstar’s digital ecosystem is plummeting — from CW to NewsNation to BestReviews.
Apps and websites are outdated, with many scoring under 3 stars and racking up user complaints.
The company’s own insiders — 16 former executives and directors — describe it as aimless, technologically ignorant, and months away from a reckoning.
Aged leadership has no plan for younger audiences, no meaningful strategy for TikTok, Instagram, or streaming innovation.
Nexstar’s most meaningful digital asset (The CW) is in freefall — Google Trends, app installs, and YouTube views all cratered 70–90% from their peaks.
Engagement is non-existent: hundreds of thousands of videos uploaded across its YouTube channels, most earning less than $10 per year.Meanwhile, the company is loaded with $2.9 billion in goodwill, exceeding its total shareholder equity — reflecting a decade-long acquisition spree that, by all operational metrics, has failed.The final nail? Insiders are quietly fleeing. Over $48 million in shares were sold in the past six months, while management continues to buy back stock to prop up optics.
In our opinion, Nexstar isn’t pivoting to the future. It’s buying time. This is a dying empire, digitally incompetent, leveraged on goodwill, and headed straight for its Kodak moment.
Part 1: The Kodak Moment — Legacy Media’s Death Spiral Has Begun
Figure: Audience Age Cliff
Nexstar and its flagship network, The CW, average viewers in their mid-60s — a stark contrast to YouTube and TikTok, where ad dollars increasingly flow. This age gap is killing Nexstar’s relevance and ad appeal.
If you want to understand Nexstar’s fate, look no further than Kodak in the 2000s.
Both were dominant players in their industries. Both were cash-rich legacy brands. And both dramatically underestimated how quickly the world was changing around them.
The difference? Kodak invented the digital camera and ignored it. Nexstar is pretending digital doesn’t matter — and buying assets it doesn’t know how to use.
The Demographic Cliff
Nexstar still makes the majority of its revenue from linear broadcast TV — over 200 stations across the U.S. This includes major affiliates like CBS, FOX, ABC, and The CW. But while the financials are still padded by retransmission fees and political ad spend, the audience is crumbling.
According to a 2024 Nielsen-backed study:
The average age of a Nexstar viewer is 64.5 years old.
For The CW, its most “youth-focused” asset, average viewer age is 65.2.
That’s not just bad — it’s existential.
Advertisers are fleeing. The modern ad economy is built around millennials and Gen Z, who are:
Easier to influence
More active on social media
More data-rich for targeting
And crucially, nowhere near a cable box
Linear TV’s last strength — captive, loyal audiences — is now its biggest liability. These audiences are dying off, literally, and younger viewers aren’t coming to replace them.
Broadcast Decline is Accelerating
Figure: The Cord-Cutting Collapse
Cable TV households have fallen by over 50% since 2012, while streaming adoption has nearly quintupled. Nexstar, still heavily reliant on retransmission fees, is riding a wave that’s already crashed.
Nexstar’s NewsNation, once a flagship national rollout meant to challenge CNN and FOX, has seen its household reach drop from 75 million to 64 million in just three years. That’s a 15% collapse in footprint during a period when Americans consumed more video content than ever.
Why?
Because audiences didn’t switch channels. They left the platform entirely.
Cord-cutting has become the norm, not the exception.
Smart TVs are now portals to Netflix, YouTube, Twitch — not ABC or CW.
Local news is consumed via X, Reddit, TikTok, and community-specific Discords, not 6PM broadcasts.
The industry trend is undeniable:
Legacy TV is dying — and faster than Nexstar wants investors to believe.
The Illusion of “Sticky” Revenue
One of the most repeated Nexstar bull arguments is that its retransmission revenues — what cable companies pay to carry local broadcast signals — are “sticky” and reliable.
But this is another illusion.
Retransmission fees depend on the existence of cable subscribers.
Cable households in the U.S. peaked in 2012.
Since then, more than 30 million households have cut the cord.
Even optimistic analysts predict this number could double by 2030, leaving traditional broadcasters scrambling.
As linear TV dies, so do the premiums investors are willing to pay for companies like Nexstar — unless they can show a real digital pivot.
Which brings us to Nexstar’s supposed solution…
Part 2: The Digital Delusion — Acquisitions Without Innovation
Figure: Nexstar’s Digital Acquisitions — High Spend, Heavy Decline
From The CW to BestReviews and The Hill, Nexstar has spent hundreds of millions acquiring digital brands that are now in steep decline — some with up to 94% traffic loss. This is not transformation. It’s deterioration by acquisition.
If Part 1 exposed Nexstar’s crumbling broadcast core, Part 2 uncovers the illusion meant to cover it up: a “digital transformation” story built entirely on acquisitions — with no actual innovation.
For the past decade, Nexstar has gone on a buying spree, snapping up every semi-relevant digital asset it could afford. The result? A Frankenstein portfolio of outdated websites, failed review platforms, dead apps, and declining news brands. The company then repackaged this mess as a future-proof digital empire.
But insiders, traffic data, and app metrics tell the real story.
Nexstar isn’t building a digital strategy. It’s buying time.
Let’s Look at the Track Record:
Acquired: BestReviews.com ($160M, 2020)
Once a top-ranking product review site.
Now buried in SEO irrelevance.
Traffic down 94% from peak.
Videos on YouTube average a few hundred views.
User engagement effectively zero.
Acquired: The Hill ($130M, 2021)
Once a prominent politics site.
Traffic declined steadily since Nexstar takeover.
Insider: “The sales team is in disarray. Strategy doesn’t exist.”
Social following flat or declining.
Editor resigned out of frustration within 18 months.
Acquired: 75% of The CW Network (2022)
Touted as Nexstar’s “gateway to younger audiences.”
Average viewer age? 65.2 years
App store reviews: buggy, outdated.
Google Trends shows 76–95% decline in interest post-COVID.
AppMagic shows downloads in freefall.
Acquired: Best-of-Breed AdTech Platforms (2012–2017)
LKQD, Yashi, Kixer, Inergize, Internet Broadcasting, Media General Digital
Merged into Lakana, then quietly shelved.
Today? The internal tech stack is broken. Salesforce licenses were bought — then never used.
One insider called it “a graveyard of abandoned systems.”
No Innovation, Just Acquisitions
Nexstar’s digital “growth” hasn’t come from innovation, engineering, or user experience design. It’s come from buying legacy platforms, slapping the Nexstar logo on them, and pretending they’re new.
Websites are carbon copies of each other, boilerplate CMS-powered news hubs stuck in 2012.
Apps are glitchy, under-promoted, and almost entirely unused.
There’s no streaming strategy to compete with Tubi, Pluto, or Roku.
There’s no presence on TikTok, Instagram, or even Reddit where younger audiences now consume news.
Former employees say any internal efforts to modernize were “shot down or defunded.”
And most damning of all: Lakana — Nexstar’s supposed adtech nucleus — was silently shut down in 2019.
🎯 Analyst Praise vs. Reality
Despite all this, analysts continue to parrot Nexstar’s narrative. Here’s a real quote from a March 2025 earnings call:
“Nexstar’s diversification into digital media has been a smart move, enabling the company to tap into new revenue streams and adapt to the changing media landscape.”
But here’s what 16 former insiders told us instead:
“It’s all virtue signaling.”
“They’re just buying logos.”
“No one in leadership understands digital.”
“There’s no TikTok strategy, no Instagram plan — nothing.”
“BestReviews was just a PowerPoint purchase.”
“They spent millions on Salesforce licenses, then abandoned them.”
Part 3: Traffic Collapse — The Metrics They Don’t Want You to See
Figure: Nexstar’s Digital Brands Are Rapidly Fading
From The CW (-94%) to BestReviews (-92%), Nexstar’s portfolio is collapsing in relevance. Even The Hill, once a top political outlet, has seen a 30% decline — despite the surge in election-season interest.
For a company that name-drops “digital” 64 times in its annual report, Nexstar’s actual digital traffic tells a story of abandonment, apathy, and alarming decline.
We analyzed web traffic, app downloads, YouTube performance, Google Trends, and third-party app ratings across Nexstar’s entire digital ecosystem. What we found wasn’t just bad — it was terminal.
This isn’t a slowdown. It’s digital decay.
National Websites: A Network in Freefall
Let’s start with the crown jewels: The CW, NewsNation, The Hill, and BestReviews.
The CW
Once a Gen-Z-facing TV brand. Now a shadow of its former self.
Web traffic down 85% from post-COVID peak.
App downloads flatlined since 2022 acquisition.
Google Trends interest down 94%.
BestReviews.com
Acquired for $160M to compete with Wirecutter.
Currently receives less than 6% of prior traffic.
YouTube uploads draw less than 300 views per video.User engagement close to zero.
NewsNationNow.com
Touted as Nexstar’s national news platform.
Traffic down 41% over the past 24 months.
Engagement plummeting on both site and social.
TheHill.com
Declined ~28% in monthly unique visitors since 2022.
Social growth completely stalled.
Editor turnover, strategy drift, sales team dysfunction.
Mobile Apps: Outdated, Unused, Forgotten
Across its 278 mobile apps, Nexstar’s average app store rating is below 3.5 stars. Most haven’t been updated in over a year. Many are built on decade-old architecture.
Figure: Nexstar App Downloads Are Free-Falling
Estimated total downloads across Nexstar’s mobile app portfolio have declined by nearly 75% since 2019. Most apps are outdated, under-marketed, and technically obsolete — users are leaving, and no one’s replacing them.
112 local station apps exist — but 28 have no app at all.
Of the rest, 23 show zero significant downloads (under 5,000).
AppMagic and SensorTower data show a peak in 2019 — and a steady decline since.
Review after review describes the same experience: buggy, outdated, frustrating to use.
Meanwhile, competitors like Gray Television, TEGNA, and Scripps have invested in sleek UI, streaming-native formats, and real-time personalization.
Nexstar? Copy-pasted weather apps with boilerplate news templates.
YouTube: Millions of Videos, Pennies of RevenueNexstar uploads hundreds of thousands of videos to YouTube across its various local and national brands.
Figure: Nexstar’s YouTube Strategy Is All Volume, No Value
Despite uploading hundreds of thousands of videos, Nexstar’s brands average under 5,000 views per video — with annual revenue per upload often below $10. This is not a digital monetization model. It’s a digital landfill.
But despite the volume, performance is dismal:
The average video generates less than $10/year in ad revenue.
Views per upload often don’t break 500.
Even flagship brands like The Hill and RewindTV fail to break 30 likes per video.
This isn’t content. It’s digital litter.
Worse, Nexstar doesn’t have a premium ad rev-share deal with YouTube like larger networks. So even the little money it earns is below par.
Google Trends: Brands in Retreat
We cross-referenced Google Trends data for every major Nexstar property.
The pattern is consistent:
BrandTrend Decline Since Peak
The CW-94%
BestReviews-92%
NewsNation-53%
The Hill-30%
Local Station Interest (avg)-78%
Even when traffic data varies across sources, Google Trends paints a universal picture of fading relevance.
🧱 A Hollowed-Out Ecosystem
While Nexstar continues to tell investors it has “hundreds of apps” and “millions of digital touchpoints,” the reality is this:Most of these platforms are redundant.Few are updated regularly.Engagement is tanking.Users are voting with their thumbs — and they’re gone.
Part 4: Insider Revolt — Sixteen Executives, One Message: This Ship is Sinking
We interviewed sixteen former Nexstar executives, directors, and senior staff from digital, editorial, adtech, sales, and operational teams.The result?Not one expressed confidence in the company’s future.
Not one believed Nexstar’s digital strategy would work.
And several used the same phrase — “This company has 18 months left.”
In all our years writing activist research, we’ve never seen such a uniformly negative internal consensus. These aren’t Twitter trolls or anonymous Glassdoor comments. These are former senior insiders, with NDAs and equity grants behind them, telling us: The digital strategy is “a mirage.” Leadership is “propping up linear TV until retirement.”Innovation is “intentionally smothered. ”There’s “no strategy for TikTok, YouTube, or younger audiences.” The entire business is in managed decline.
The Strategy Is to Wait It Out
Many insiders told us the quiet part out loud:“They’re milking the linear cash flows until they retire. That’s the whole strategy.”This isn’t about growth. It’s not about turning a ship around. It’s about avoiding panic while quietly bleeding out.There is no pivot. There is no reinvention.Leadership is just running out the clock — then handing the disaster to the next generation of executives.
Underinvestment Is Baked In
While Nexstar reports strong profits, it’s not reinvesting in its own future.Digital budget cuts killed almost every new product initiative.A former CDO from Roku was hired… then defunded.Nexstar bought 1,600 Salesforce licenses — then refused to use them.Engineers, designers, and digital talent have been laid off or driven out. Instead of R&D, Nexstar opted for stock buybacks and dividends.This is not a transformation strategy. This is financial makeup on a dead model.
Digital Talent is Crushed or Pushed Out
Multiple insiders painted the same picture: if you push for digital-first ideas, you’re gone.“There’s no appetite for real change. Just find someone who can say the word ‘digital’ and not threaten the linear revenue stream.”
Digital leaders were:
Ignored
Undermined
Or simply fired
Product teams reported:
“No buy-in”
“No budget”
“No support”
One executive told us bluntly:
“They hired the fake-it-til-you-make-it management class. Nobody knew what they were doing. It was all smoke.”
No Path to Younger Audiences A staggering number of insiders referenced the complete absence of any youth strategy. No TikTok. No Snap. No YouTube Shorts.No real Instagram focus. No one under 30 at the strategy table.“The median age of our audience was a joke internally. But nothing changed. They didn’t care.” Advertisers want under-50 reach. Nexstar can’t deliver it — and leadership doesn’t even seem to try.
Internal Tools Are a Disaster
App CMS is decade-old WordPress clones.
Local sales tech is worse than Sinclair, Tegna, Gray, or Scripps.
Content delivery is manual, slow, and outdated.“Monetization tech doesn’t exist.”The platform? Broken. The talent? Gone. The executives? Checked out.
Actual Insider Quotes, Here’s what we heard — verbatim.
“They could care less about their people and are out of touch with digital.”
“There is not even a strategy to find viewers where they are.”
“You have a short shelf life at Nexstar if you say linear is dead.”
“Everything feels like it’s just buying time.”
“Leadership doesn’t understand the space — and doesn’t want to.”
Part 5: The Goodwill Bubble — $2.9 Billion of Empty Promises
Figure: Nexstar’s Goodwill Surpasses Shareholder Equity
Nexstar now carries more goodwill than book value, with $2.9B in intangible assets propping up just $2.2B in equity. This signals deep fragility — if digital assets continue underperforming, large-scale impairments are inevitable.
If Nexstar’s digital empire is a crumbling illusion, its financial statements are the stage props holding up the act. Because on paper, Nexstar’s balance sheet is sitting on a $2.9 billion pile of goodwill.
That’s more than the company’s entire shareholder equity.
Let that sink in.
As of FY2024:
Goodwill: $2,922 million
Shareholders’ Equity: $2,242 million
That means Nexstar’s net worth only exists if the acquisitions they made were actually worth what they paid.
But as we’ve shown:
Most of these digital assets have failed or declined dramatically.
Engagement is collapsing.
Revenue per property is deteriorating.
Traffic and utility are fading fast.
So what’s that goodwill actually worth?
In our view, not much.
The Breakdown: Impairments, Denials, and Deferrals
Here’s what’s already been quietly written off:
2019: $63.3M impairment (digital)
2022: $96.1M impairment (BestReviews)
2023: $19M impairment (“a second digital unit”)
2024: $24M impairment (unnamed digital business)
That totals just $202.4M — less than 7% of total goodwill. And yet:
BestReviews.com is functionally dead.
Lakana has been shuttered Most local apps are outdated and unmaintained.
CW is losing 90%+ of its digital relevance.
The Hill is declining in traffic and engagement.
Why is Nexstar still carrying $2.7B+ of remaining goodwill, as if the future cash flows from these brands justify the price?
Goodwill Math: The Illusion of Intangible Value
Goodwill is supposed to reflect synergies, future earnings, and competitive advantage from acquisitions.All signs point to a coming goodwill reckoning — one that could erase hundreds of millions in book value.
What the Numbers Really Mean
A company with more goodwill than equity is extremely vulnerable if:Those assets no longer generate expected returnsImpairments must be takenDebt covenants rely on inflated book valueAnd that’s where Nexstar sits today.
The goodwill is not “too big to fail.” It’s too big to believe.
Part 6: Inside the Selloff — Why Insiders Cashed Out at the Top
Figure: Insider Sales While Stock Stays Inflated
Nexstar insiders sold off over $48M in stock during periods of high market optimism — timing exits before broader recognition of the company’s declining digital performance. Meanwhile, the stock price remained artificially elevated via buybacks.
While Nexstar continues to pump investor decks full of digital buzzwords and stock buybacks, the people who know the truth — the insiders — are quietly heading for the exits.
Over the last six months alone, Nexstar insiders sold $48.1 million worth of stock.
That’s not normal shareholder rebalancing. That’s strategic exit behavior from people on the inside of a failing transformation.
The Pattern Is Clear: The CEO, CFO, and multiple directors sold shares across multiple tranches.Most of these sales occurred after bad digital KPIs were already evident but before the broader market noticed.
Zero meaningful insider buying occurred during this same period.
Insiders are watching:App download crashes 📉
YouTube monetization failure 💀
Google Trends implosions 🔻
Tech and marketing staff walkouts 🚪
Impairment footnotes quietly ballooning 📉
And they’re cashing out.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
$48.1 million in insider sales in just six months.Over $75 million sold since early 2022.No open-market purchases during that period. Concentration of sales among key decision-makers.This isn’t noise. It’s a signal.The people with access to the real numbers don’t believe the story they’re telling.
Meanwhile, Nexstar Buys Back Its Own StockEven as insiders sell, Nexstar continues to repurchase its own shares. Why?To prop up earnings per share.To offset dilution optics.To maintain the illusion of “shareholder confidence.”But here’s the truth: stock buybacks don’t mean a thing when your insiders are the ones selling into them.It’s not shareholder alignment. It’s optical manipulation.
The Playbook Is Familiar
We’ve seen this movie before:
Company struggles to reinvent.
Glossy buzzwords distract investors.
Insiders unload stock near highs.
Market realizes the moat never existed.
Valuation collapses.
Impairments follow.
Think Kodak. Think Blockbuster. Think legacy newspapers. Think Nexstar.
Part 7: Conclusion
Nexstar’s Mirage Is Fading, and FastNexstar Media Group wants to be seen as a dominant, modern media conglomerate — digitally savvy, nationally scaled, and future-proofed. But after investigating the full scope of its operations, interviewing former executives, and analyzing traffic, financials, and platform performance across hundreds of assets, one conclusion is clear: Nexstar isn’t transforming. It’s withering.
This is a company:
Built on an aging broadcast audience with a median age of 64+Relying on apps with declining downloads and websites losing over 70% of their traffic
Claiming digital success while its most expensive platforms — BestReviews, The Hill, The CW — are collapsing
Holding $2.9 billion in goodwill — more than its book value — despite zero evidence of scalable ROIQuietly watching insiders dump tens of millions in stock while investors are told everything’s fine
We’ve seen this pattern before:
Legacy media, unable to pivot
Internal resistance to innovation
Acquisitions instead of invention
Aging leadership running out the clock
Market optimism built on fantasy metrics
And eventually… a write-down avalanche
What Comes Next?
In our view:
Massive goodwill impairments are not a matter of “if” — but whenInsider sentiment is already priced in — via their own actionsDigital turnaround is unlikely without a full leadership overhaulYounger audiences are gone, and Nexstar is not building anything that brings them backAdvertisers are shifting budgets toward TikTok, YouTube, and AI-optimized channels, where Nexstar has zero competitive leverageThe real story here isn’t how Nexstar will grow into the future — it’s how long the market will let it pretend it has one.
Final Word:
This is not a misunderstood media company with untapped upside.This is a legacy business nearing its endgame, packaged in buzzwords, managed with short-term optics, and led by people who have no incentive to change course before they retire.
We believe investors buying into Nexstar today are walking into a slow-moving value trap.Like Kodak. Like Tribune. Like Gannett. Like Blockbuster.This is Nexstar’s moment. And it’s already behind them.
*At The Time Of Writing $NXST is Trading At $149.42*
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