FTVLive was the FIRST to tell you that Nexstar was pulling the plug on live streaming at most of their stations. Others are just now catching up to FTVLIve’s reporting.

As we FIRST reported, Nexstar is having stations delay the live stream of their newscasts by up to two hours.

The reason?

Nexstar says that they are trying to grow the  retransmission consent fees they collect from distributors as cord-cutting erodes the number of people subscribing to traditional pay-TV services.

This is a money grab and one of the most short-sighted moves that we here at FTVLive have seen in a longtime.

Delaying your newscasts is not going to cut down on people cutting the cord. Your continuing to demand more money from cable and satellite subscribers is doing that and it will continue.

Nexstar obviously doesn’t understand that streaming is the future of this business and by offering stale newscasts to viewers when your competition is not, is going to help you plunge to the bottom.

Stations should be looking to stream all newscasts live and add extra content that you will not find on air. This is how local stations will survive and apparently Nexstar is looking at making a cash grab now, with no focus on the future.

Streaming is and will be what saves local TV.

Nexstar is going the way of the dinosaur with this move.