And if we feel there’s a risk adjusted return via an acquisition out there of any scale, then we would certainly diligence the heck out of that and try and get to the finish line if everything proved. But I think the company looks a lot like it does. If I had to bet, I would bet the company will be larger 3 years from now than it is today. What acquisition will lead to that in combination with our organic growth? I can’t really say, but I’m excited to run out those ground balls and find out.
Operator: Our next question comes from Jim Goss with Bank Research.
James Goss: I wonder if you might talk a little bit more about the Comscore Nielsen effort to develop the linear and cross-platform audience measurement. Information that should inform your national sales organization that you’re now working with. Is there some measurable impact? Or is this primarily a supportive effort to the targeting efforts and pricing on the ends? Is there a way to look at it in some identifiable way?
Lee Ann Gliha: I’ll just answer this. Obviously, we reported that we struck new deals with both Comscore and Nielsen and we’re excited about the new data that they’ve got coming into their services that are hopefully going to be able to provide us with better insights and information about who’s watching and be able to kind of talk to the advertisers about the breadth of our audience and the reach of our audience that is — think is second to none. . But I think from a tangible impact perspective, I think it’s to be determined. We are continuing to work with these providers to get us the best information that we can then utilize with our clients.
James Goss: Okay. And should provide some upward bias to your ad revenues though I would imagine.
Perry Sook: Well, we’ve gone to the market in the upfront and said that Comscore would be our preferred currency upon which to transact. But I’ve found out in 45 years in the broadcast business, you can’t make a lot of money trying to tell your clients what to do. So the clients will buy a [indiscernible] , big term. dictate the currency, and we will obviously react and adjust as best we can. But. Comscore is a much larger data set. And not surprisingly, we think it provides better numbers over the long term. But we will transact with our customers on the basis that they would like to transact upon.
James Goss: Okay. One smaller thing. I was wondering, are there any other Nexstar stations to transition to the CW? Or are you pretty much through that process?
Lee Ann Gliha: From the perspective of — there are additional opportunities out there as you saw that we even bought a station that we intend to make into a CW network at [indiscernible] In San Diego. So if there’s other opportunities, we just will look at those on a case-by-case basis as we move forward. . But that you’re — I’m glad you brought it up because it’s an important point for us because we’ve been able to already transition 12 markets, and that generates significant EBITDA for us on the stations out of the ledger, which just goes to our overall thesis around making this acquisition.
James Goss: Okay. And the last thing, you made a note that NextGen is now over 50% when you added I think with Chicago and San Diego. I was wondering if — are there any priority applications now that you’re at this stage? You’ve talked about TV versus data over time? And you’ve also been ambitious about ramping up monetization. I wonder if you might give us an update on that area as well?
Perry Sook: Well, it’s an area where I’m spending a fair amount of my time as well as Brett Jenkins, our CTO. We do have dedicated BD personnel that are involved in exploratory conversations on behalf of our company, but also in concert with the 2 partnerships we’ve historically been involved with, one with Sinclair, and one with Scripps. And so the — there is high interest. We just completed a test with an auto manufacturer in one of our markets. And regarding both data and video delivery to an automobile. And the preliminary results were that they were impressed with the picture quality and the stability of the signal using our 3.0 as a delivery mechanism. So this is long tail development, as you can imagine, because there’s got to be proof-of-concept test trials before people are willing to put pen to paper and spend a lot of money with us, but that’s the phase in which we’re in.
And I continue to believe that you’ll — you’ll hear about commercial clients before this year is out, and you’ll see money continue to start to flow from some of these new applications. As early as later this year, but more likely next year and then meaningful money as — if we are able to sunset the simulcast requirement to free up more bandwidth to be able to do more things then we’ll be able to generate more money. So there’s a regulatory piece as well that has to play into all of this. But the velocity of the conversations, if that’s any constellation to you or help to you have dramatically increased the amount of time we’re spending in meetings with people on this topic is, I would say, more than double of what it was a year ago. So the cadence has increased.
Operator: Our next question comes from Alan Gould with Loop Capital.
Alan Gould: Perry, going back to the concept of big swings. The press is reporting that if Apollo and Sony are successful going after paramount, I know it’s a big if, they would then intend to sell the CBS stations. One, I know you guys looked at ABC when Bob Iger that no doubt there that it was potentially for sale. I know CBS has a lot bigger coverage. Would that even be a possibility just physically to do that? And two, what is the value of stations without the network?
Perry Sook: Well, let’s see. There’s a lot to unpack there. First of all, I don’t know that we ever commented on looking at ABC. Others commented on our behalf, but I don’t think we ever have or ever would confirm or deny rumors about what we may or may not be considering vis-a-vis acquisitions. Obviously, given our station footprint the digestion of CBS station assets would be a tough put, particularly under this regulatory environment and regime. If that were to change, maybe our opinion would change, but that certainly would have to happen, I think, for anyone to have confidence they could pursue a complicated regulatory transaction in the current environment. What is the value of stations without — well, WGN in Chicago is an independent television station.
It will be rejoining the CW network. It produces 109 hours a week of local news and is generally the #1 or #2 biller in that marketplace without the benefit of a network affiliation for more of its commercial life, then it had a brief association with the CW and will be coming — the CW will be coming back home this fall. Quite frankly, that will benefit the network more than it will benefit WGN. I mean they’ll love having the sports, but they’ve had some of that — most of that on a hybrid situation in that marketplace since we began programming sports on the network. But strong stations — and I tell our people all the time, there were television stations before there were TV networks and there’ll be television stations after they are TV networks.
And from my point of view, if you’re serving your community with a robust local news and commerce opportunities, you’re going to be in business. It doesn’t matter what programming you rent and from whom you rent it to fill the times when you’re not programming locally, and that’s basically what a network affiliation is at this point.
Operator: Our next question comes from Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt Securities.
Barton Crockett: Okay. Great. I wanted to drill down a little bit on the advertising commentary. And I was just wondering if you could give us a little bit more granularity on what is driving the inflection to kind of a better trend in the second quarter versus the first quarter. Is it largely kind of bringing up our national sales force? Is it largely kind of getting past some of the Super Bowl type comp issues? Or is there just a feeling that the ad market is firming up maybe because the macro feels better, maybe people are just getting more accepting of this higher for longer interest rate environment? And within that, you gave kind of local national trending. Can you give us — remind us again the split of that in your ad revenues?
Lee Ann Gliha: Yes. So local revenues are just under 70% it’s kind of — somewhere between 65% and 70% of our advertising revenue, excluding political, comes from our local business. I would say, in general, I think our thought process on the national side is it is kind of a firming of the market, which is a positive after many quarters of decline. We’re starting to see some of that kind of growth come back, especially in the back half of the year where the comps will be a lot easier. . I would say, also, there’s a few categories like sports betting that are now kind of down to a low number that are — there’s positivity in terms of some of those comps on a go-forward basis. But I think in general, from a national perspective, it’s more kind of a firming of the overall market than anything else.
