IRVING, TX—Nexstar Media Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nexstar Media Group, has acquired The Hill for $130 million in a deal that the company hopes will create synergies between The Hill’s popular digital political news offerings and Nexstar’s extensive news operations.
In announcing the deal, Nexstar noted that Hill had more than 48 million average monthly users and 2.2 billion total pageviews in 2020. The Hill also attracted more than 4 million followers and 914 million video views on Twitter and received five times more Facebook interactions than other political news website.
That complements Nexstar’s own digital platform, which delivered record growth and audience engagement in 2020, ranking #1 in local news for every month of the year and reaching record key performance indicators, including average monthly users of 91 million and 7.8 billion pageviews, Nexstar reported.
Combined, The Hill and Nexstar are used by a third of all U.S. digital media viewers, Nexstar said.
The Hill has more than 100 journalists who cover political news and events, creating potential synergies between The Hill and Nexstar’s cable news network, NewsNation, and its local news gathering operations, which has 5,500 journalists producing over 275,000 hours of local and national news annually.
“The accretive acquisition of The Hill’s independent, political digital media platform marks continued progress with Nexstar’s ‘content-first strategy’ and reflects our organization-wide commitment to deliver trusted, unbiased, fact-based journalism that engages and informs our audiences across all screens and devices,” explained Tom Carter, Nexstar president and chief operating officer. “The Hill has a nationally recognized brand known for delivering balanced political reporting, as well as authentic opinions and perspectives, and is highly complementary to Nexstar’s national cable news network, NewsNation. According to the January 2021 Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart, The Hill and NewsNation are two of the most centrist of leading news outlets in the U.S.”
Carter also noted that The Hill was “a national brand with strong profitability” and that “The Hill marks the second digital transaction under our ‘content first’ strategy, following the December 2020 acquisition of BestReviews, which is already benefiting from its incorporation into Nexstar’s digital network. Going forward, Nexstar will continue to focus on select strategic, accretive digital investments to complement, leverage and scale our content offerings.”
