The Hill acquired by Nexstar Media Group for $ 130 million



[ad_1]

Political digital media company The Hill was acquired by Nexstar Media, a television broadcast and internet media company, for $ 130 million.

Nexstar, which operates TV channels in 116 markets and 120 local websites, said the acquisition of The Hill would be immediately accretive to its operating results. Nexstar’s Networks division operates NewsNation (formerly WGN America), a national cable news and entertainment network reaching 75 million homes, as well as the Antenna TV and WGN Radio multicast network in Chicago.

The deal strengthens Nexstar’s predominantly news-focused content strategy, according to Tom Carter, president and chief operating officer of Nexstar.

“The Hill has a nationally recognized brand known for providing balanced political reporting, as well as authentic opinions and perspectives, and is highly complementary to Nexstar’s national cable news network, NewsNation,” Carter said in announcing the agreement.

In 2020, The Hill had 48 million average monthly users and 2.2 billion total pageviews, according to Comscore, while Nexstar’s digital properties averaged 91 million monthly users and generated 7.8 billion. page views for the year. According to Nexstar, The Hill and Nexstar together reach one-third of all US digital media consumers.

The Hill brings more than 100 political journalists to Nexstar, whose NewsNation and local news operations employ some 5,500 journalists who produce more than 275,000 hours of local and national news each year.

The Hill was founded as a newspaper in 1994 by Democratic agent Jerry Finkelstein and Martin Tolchin, a former New York Times correspondent. HRS Management, the private investment office of Josh Harris, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, is The Hill’s largest investor.

Finkelstein, President of The Hill, said in a prepared statement: “It has been an honor to lead and transform The Hill into the premier medium it is today. With the help of HRS Management, we have considerably developed the activity and the audience. We are confident that Nexstar will continue to accelerate this tremendous growth.

Bret Pearlman, Head of Private Investments for HRS Management, said: “We are delighted to have been investors in The Hill and partners of Mr. Finkelstein over the past five years as he and the management team of the company transformed the company into a digital media powerhouse. . With a solid foundation in place and a unique offering in the market, we are convinced that the future of the company is extremely bright.



[ad_2]

Source link