Hilton Howell: And let me follow up with what Pat said. We’re seeing no sign by region or by market at any kind of recession. We just aren’t seeing it. And when we began 2023, everyone that was on our calls at the time thought, Oh, well, we’re going to have a recession. Rates going up, we’re going to devastate things, and we’re not seeing that anywhere the changes that we have in terms of our core revenue are things like automobile, all right, automobile industry, they didn’t advertise a lot because they didn’t have enough cars to sell for the demand. And now all of a sudden, they’ve got to do that. It’s returning, but there’s no signs of a recession that we yet see anywhere in the country.
James Goss: Okay. Very good to know. Couple of other questions about the sports focus. You made a point of saying how important it was to take advantage of the opportunities. I’m curious about a couple of things. One, the situation we have in Phoenix with the Sun and the Mercury, are there other markets that you think you can do similar things? And are these sort of nonexclusive add-ons to other program rights that are existing in those markets? And then separately, with regard to the ACC programming, is that totally within the context of the CW. And to the extent that the CW has changed its stripes quite a bit with Nextar recently in terms of the orientation. Are there additional stations in some of the markets where you might be more inclined to consider affiliating with the CW, whereas you may not have earlier?
Hilton Howell: I’m going to let Pat go for this, but I do want to say a couple of things, Jim. First of all, everyone on this call may or may not have actually looked at our footprint. This is something that we actually need to make sure that you guys understand. One of the great things about what we have built over the last, pick it, number of decades, is that we cover small markets, midsized markets and large markets. And so we’re one of the very, very, very few broadcasters that can deliver a broadcast speed for a sports team for every single viewer that wants to watch those teams. One of the things that we preach is that, what, you need to be on free TV. Gray can deliver that. We did a brilliant job and are doing, I should say, a brilliant job with Sun, because we’re in Yuma, Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff, everywhere in the state of Arizona.
And we got letters. And this is something that the investing world needs to understand. Our GM and our station got letters from individuals who live on the American reservations, the Native American reservation saying, thank you so much. Because all of a sudden, for the first time, we can watch power basketball team on our reservation in our homes. And that is the power of broadcast television that is also, I want to say, one of the unique abilities that Gray has. If you look at our home state of Georgia, we’re in every single television market. That’s true for South Carolina, Alabama. That’s true for almost all of Mississippi and Louisiana, all of Kentucky, all of Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, you go through the list, and we cover the smallest cities to the largest metroplex.
And that gives us an ability not only to put it on the air, but because we have such a high concentration of deeply embedded TV stations, we can promote these sports teams better than any of our competitors. That is our sales pitch, and it’s what we’ve been building for almost 30 years.
Patrick LaPlatney: Yes. Just to follow on, Hilton. I think the way to look at it is we’re not just focused on the Phoenix team or the Atlanta team or the Cleveland team or the Nashville team. We have markets. I’ll use an example here in the state of Wisconsin. We’re not in Milwaukee, but we’re in every other market in Wisconsin. So we are a great partner for whomever ends up with — I’ll make this up, the buck or the brewers. And that situation is true for a number of different teams. So we — again, we have 1 team right now. We’re not going to get way ahead of ourselves here, but the reality is our geography is really favorable to many, many sports franchises. And Jim, you asked a question about CW and the ACC, the ACC rights that were formerly with Diamond are now at the CW, so the ACC football and basketball rights. I think that’s what you’d asked. I just wanted to confirm that.
James Goss: Yes, that is correct.
Patrick LaPlatney: Yes.
Hilton Howell: And we’re very happy with that. And I will tell you personally, I love watching the CW ACC football, I watched the Georgia Jack game here recently and Atlanta on our CW here, we’re proud to be affiliated with the CW network as we are with all of our networks — but I do want to just take a moment and salute Perry Sook and everyone at Nexstar for what they’ve done for the CW. They’re doing a great job, and we’re proud to be in business with them on a local basis.
Patrick LaPlatney: I should have mentioned that we actually do the production for CW football and for CW basketball. That’s Raycom Sports, one of our production companies.
James Goss: Okay. But the other part of the question was whether you there are additional CW affiliations that might be under potential consideration, would you say…
Hilton Howell: I think that’s a question for Perry Silicon, the CW, not for great television. But just so you’ll know, I’ll take any CW affiliation that they want to give us. So yes, we’re open, but that’s a question for the people that own that network.
James Goss: Thank you.
Operator: And our last question is going to come from Michael Kupinski with Noble Capital. Your line is open.
Michael Kupinski: Thank you for taking the question. Congratulations on working with Jonathan Katz, by the way, the guy has been a pioneer in the network business. And I think that’s a real plus. I was curious on flushing out your strategy for those networks and also how many networks do you think you might need to gain scale there? And then also, do you plan to grow affiliates beyond maybe the Gray affiliations and stations that you might have, maybe just to kind of flush out your strategy there?
Patrick LaPlatney: Yes. It’s really — it’s Jonathan strategy. But from our perspective, being able to partner with the very best in the business is a huge advantage. Back in 2011, and this is back in the Raycom days, Raycom partnered with Jonathan to launch Bounce and Grit and Escape and Laugh. And those networks grew tremendously, and you ended up selling them to Scripps much to Raycom’s dismay at the time. And so one network is an African-American focused network. One is a sort of Western/action adventure, having access to the libraries from Lionsgate and WBD is another enormous asset for that business. So look, I think in terms of other station groups, I could — I want to speak for Jonathan, but I’m sure he’s talking to a lot of folks who run traditional television station groups beyond Gray, but I don’t — in terms of is sort of a strategic approach to that area, that’s really his deal more in mind.
