IRVING, Texas—Mission Broadcasting and Nexstar Media Group today announced the launch of NextGen TV on WPIX-TV in New York City, the nation’s largest television market. Mission owns WPIX-TV and Nexstar provides services to the station; the two companies worked together on the launch. The New York launch marks the 51st Nexstar-owned or partner market to begin broadcasting with ATSC 3.0.
The CW affiliate joins WCBS (2), WLIW (21), WMBQ-CD (46), WNBC (NBC 4), WNET (13), and WNJU (Telemundo 47) in the Big Apple 3.0 lineup. Those stations launched on a lighthouse hosted by PBS’s The WNET Group in October.
This week, Nexstar also transitioned its local television stations in El Paso and Baton Rouge, as well as WVLA-TV, a partner station in Baton Rouge owned by White Knight Broadcasting. The recent transitions add three more cities to the total number of Top 100 television markets that are on the air with a NextGen TV signal.
Over the course of 2023, Nexstar says it has deployed ATSC 3.0 at local television stations in seven of its markets across the nation, including San Francisco, Dallas, and Des Moines. More than 58 million U.S. television households now receive a NextGen TV signal from a Nexstar-owned or partner station, the company said.
Based on ATSC 3.0, the world’s most advanced television broadcasting technology, NextGen TV can be enhanced with Internet content to enable viewers to get the most out of live sports, live news, and live events in real-time, without looking away from TV screens. ATSC 3.0 gives broadcasters the power to serve their markets with a range of high value data services in addition to improved television broadcasting. Nexstar is a participant in BitPath, a broadcaster-supported consortium creating a network for datacasting, with services launching soon.
“When it comes to the deployment of ATSC 3.0, we think scale is critically important to fostering consumer demand for NextGen TV sets and developing new businesses and services,” said Brett Jenkins, EVP/CTO/Chief Digital Officer for Nexstar Media Group, Inc. “Nexstar is extremely well-positioned to deliver broad-based data services to a wide range of businesses and industries. One study done by BIA suggested that these services could generate up to $15 billion in additional broadcast revenue by 2030, and Nexstar is actively pursuing discussions with potential customers interested in pursuing the new opportunities presented by NextGen TV now.”
