Broadcast Consolidation Playbook

How do you combine major broadcast networks in the same market without losing viewers, advertisers, and employees?

As the regulatory landscape evolves, broadcast television executives are positioning themselves for what could be the most significant wave of consolidation in decades. While the opportunity to acquire additional station groups presents exciting possibilities for growth and efficiency, it also raises complex questions that demand careful consideration and expert guidance.

At Think Consulting, our team has over 75 years of combined experience guiding numerous organizations through successful consolidations. We’ve learned that while each situation is unique, there are common challenges that every leadership team must address. More importantly, we have developed and field-tested solutions that work in the real world, not just in theory.

As broadcast groups begin to contemplate the ownership of multiple stations in any one market, there are common challenges that must be addressed. Those challenges can broadly be described as revenue generation, news, operations, brand stewardship and internal culture. As a precursor to any consolidation, we have listed some of the most common questions we’ve catalogued in our work with broadcasters.

Ad Sales Integration: Maximizing Revenue While Maintaining Relationships

The integration of sales teams and processes presents several critical questions that can make or break a consolidation’s success:

  • How do you preserve valuable client relationships while transitioning to a unified sales structure? Local advertisers often have deep connections with their sales representatives, and disrupting these relationships can put significant revenue at risk.
  • What is the optimal approach to pricing and inventory management with multiple stations in a single market? Each station brings its own rate cards, selling strategies, and market dynamics.
  • When and how should you introduce programmatic selling across the expanded station group? The timing and implementation of technological changes can significantly impact both revenue and team morale.

Our consultants have helped numerous broadcast groups navigate these challenges, implementing proven strategies that maintain revenue stability while capturing new opportunities created by scale.

News Operations: Balancing Local Identity with Operational Efficiency

News integration is often the most visible and sensitive aspect of broadcast consolidation. Key considerations include:

  • How do you maintain distinct local voices that often have a long-term relationship with the viewing community?
  • What is the optimal structure for shared services? Station groups with multiple market news operations can benefit from carefully planned and implemented shared services for multiple workflows including media management and shared content, editing, newsroom computer systems, graphics, music, and production.
  • Where are the opportunities to leverage technology for efficiency without compromising quality? Current technologies are being designed and introduced to make all aspects of news operations more streamlined and efficient. The days of newsroom operations being burdened with complex technology solutions are quickly transforming to being able to create more multiplatform content with less technical overhead.
  • How do you manage the transition from independent news departments to a more collaborative model while maintaining team engagement and performance? There is a delicate balance between traditional standalone newsrooms with larger collaborative operations. Local news is only successful by maintaining the local connection to the community. This is accomplished by creating content that is important to the local viewer and maintaining local on-air talent audience can relate to.

Think Consulting’s approach to news integration has been refined through multiple successful consolidations, ensuring that efficiency gains don’t come at the expense of local market connection and journalistic quality.

Operations: Infrastructure Integration and Modernization

Technical integration presents both significant opportunities and potential pitfalls:

  • What is the optimal timeline for standardizing broadcast infrastructure across stations? Changing broadcast infrastructure across multiple stations is a time-consuming process. There are multiple steps to consider when considering how to approach this type of transformation. Clients should be prepared to spend up to a year to accomplish this.
  • How do you evaluate and prioritize competing technology investment needs across the consolidated footprint? Traditional broadcast vendors are less interested in selling hardware and are rapidly changing to software as a service models. Additionally, as clients look to move services to cloud based platforms there are multiple non-traditional “broadcast” vendors in that space. It’s important to understand that when working through financial modeling for this transition, cash flow will be impacted as clients move from what has traditionally been a capital model to an expense model.
  • Where are the opportunities to centralize operations without creating single points of failure? Cloud based workflows can play an integral role in elimination of single points of failure. Careful design architecture workflow integration, implementation and training is critical to the success of a project of this scope.

Our engineering experts have developed comprehensive evaluation tools and implementation frameworks that help leadership teams make informed decisions about technology integration and investment prioritization.

Brand Stewardship: Understanding and honoring the brands that many have grown up with

Over the past decades stations have built trusted brands within the community. How do you honor the traditions of the past while also moving forward. Some thoughts:

  • Consolidation often has negative connotations when it comes to press and local voices. How do you message to the community their brands will stay intact and that consolidation is needed for survival?
  • How do you evaluate and prioritize transparency with the community?
  • What are meaningful ways that the community at large can have a say in the brands and priorities going forward to give them a sense of buy-in?

Our marketing and PR experts have used positive messaging in many instances to get ahead of the expected wave of criticism that will accompany consolidation. We have found that communities that were communicated with early, shown a reason for the consolidation and brought into some aspects of the planning process were far less negative throughout the duration of the transition.

Culture: Creating a Unified Organization

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of consolidation is cultural integration:

  • How do you identify and preserve the best aspects of each organization’s culture while moving toward a unified vision?
  • What is the optimal pace of integration, and how do you maintain momentum without overwhelming the organization?
  • Where are the opportunities to create excitement about the future while acknowledging and respecting the past?

Think Consulting’s change management expertise helps leadership teams navigate these sensitive waters, turning potential cultural clashes into opportunities for organizational growth.

Moving Forward with Confidence

As the broadcast industry enters this new phase of consolidation, success will depend on careful planning and expert execution. Think Consulting’s team brings not only decades of experience but also a proven track record of helping broadcast groups capture the full potential of consolidation while avoiding common pitfalls.

Our consultants are ready to help your organization navigate these challenges, bringing tested solutions and methodologies that can be customized to your specific situation.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you prepare for and execute a successful consolidation strategy.

About the Author

Todd Parkin (Vice President of Growth & Managing Director of Media) is a seasoned media executive with a remarkable track record of driving innovation and rethinking business models in the fast-moving media landscape. Read more.