Uncle Perry's Email to Nexstar Nation
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The company is promising that the cable newscast will be unbiased and will rely on the local Nexstar stations to provide content.
It launches this summer and one Nexstar employee tells FTVLive that they believe that this new venture has everything to do with raking in political ad money and not much to do with news.
But, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook emailed the staff and says that he is happy with the press the company is getting about their new cable news venture.
Here is the internal email he sent to the troops:
Hello Nexstar Nation!
By now you may already know about today’s big news; it is generating some good media attention, with stories already appearing in The Wall Street Journal and Variety. This morning we announced that our cable network, WGN America, will be launching a live prime-time national newscast this summer. The three-hour newscast, called “News Nation,” will air nightly from 8 pm to 11 pm ET and leverage the strength of Nexstar’s 5,400 journalists in 110 newsrooms across the country. We are the largest newsgathering organization in the United States, with unmatched talent, experience and dedication, and that’s a great foundation on which to build News Nation.
As the press release says, News Nation will deliver fact-based news that is impactful, educational, and unbiased. We believe that there is an audience that is looking for news that is delivered without bias or opinion. No one is currently doing this in prime-time; other networks are carrying entertainment programming, sports programming, or opinionated-talk shows.
Sean Compton, EVP of WGN America, is overseeing the development and execution of News Nation, which will be anchored out of Chicago, at WGN-TV, where we are building a state-of-the-art newsroom and studio. This is a huge undertaking, and Sean is getting a lot of help from a team of people across the company including Blake Russell, Brett Jenkins, Susan Tully, Brian Jones at corporate, Dave Harpe, Sandy Pudar, Tom Vodick, Jeff Wilson and Paul Rennie at WGN-TV.
I’m pleased to let you know that Jennifer Lyons, WGN-TV’s longtime news director, has been promoted to Vice President of News for WGN America, and will be responsible for the day-to-day management and production of News Nation. Jen is the ideal person to drive this project forward—she’s talented, experienced, and understands what it takes to launch a production of this magnitude. In addition, Jen has been responsible for the production of more than 70 hours of local news per week at WGN-TV and launched several local news programs over the last few years.
News Nation will have a fully staffed newsroom—Sean and Jen will be adding approximately 120 new employees dedicated exclusively to the success of the show. News Nation will emphasize breaking news and live video, with the anchors pivoting to various locations around the country as news breaks and stories develop. Importantly, News Nation’s digital team will be committed to delivering news twenty-four hours a day through News Nation’s digital properties and soon-to-be-launched mobile app, newsnationnow. Given WGN America’s reach of 75 million households, News Nation will be a powerful national platform from which to showcase the work of Nexstar’s journalists.
I’m excited about the launch of News Nation and looking forward to Sean, Jen, and the team bringing it to life. It is extremely rare these days, for a media company to take on a project of this magnitude. There is a lot of work ahead, but I am confident News Nation will be a success. We’ll keep you updated on our progress.
Best,
Perry
