BIA had the opportunity to share thoughts about devising a 2025 Local TV Strategies Playbook at TV NewsCheck’s conference held as part of NAB New York. For a copy of the presentation deck, click here.
The key takeaway is that local TV stations have six revenue streams that should be driven by strategies to boost competitiveness and EBITDA growth by leveraging strengths in AI, Data, and Video. Coming off a very strong Political spending year in 2024, year-over-year comps including Political fall off a cliff when looking at 2025. Comparing core revenue (excluding Political), 2025’s not so bad but could be better.
TV OTA and TV Digital Revenue: BIA forecasts TV OTA revenue will rise from $15.9 billion in 2024 to $16.3 billion in 2025, with TV Digital adding further growth. This puts Local TV stations at $18.3 billion in 2025, surpassing 2024’s $16.8 billion. TV OTA sees the largest core revenue increase among local video media, outpacing CTV. Local TV stations can sell across CTV, TV OTA, and TV Digital to capture more market revenue. Factoring in other digital ads increases their market share.
Where does Local TV grow from here? To grow, local TV must evolve with the multiplatform video market. Stations should consider how to bring legacy businesses into the future, leverage unique value propositions, and determine major pivot points for success. Here’s a few questions to consider:
- As the multiplatform video market continues to morph and evolve, how can local TV keep pace with competitors by tapping innovations in technology, data, business models, audience, and advertiser trends?
- How can the industry bring legacy businesses into the future on sound economic footing?
- How can local TV leverage its unique value propositions while creating new ones that go beyond its core strengths?
- What are the major pivot points that will determine success or failure as local TV transforms, and what can broadcasters expect ahead for ad revenue, retrans and even reverse comp?
BIA has developed starter ideas for a 2025 Playbook, which includes developing and using first-party data, renegotiating network-affiliate relationships, and automating planning and activation workflows. More details are in the deck you can download here.
As you look ahead and plan for 2025, BIA has a new budget template that might be quite helpful. Send me an email if you’d like details. As always, BIA is all about local and we’re here to help define and then win success.
