We were discussing NewsNation in the Discord the other day, and I went browsing through Nexstar's latest Annual Report to see what mentions of NewsNation they make in it.
One thing did jump out at me, in a mention of how much money they've saved cutting syndicated programming and other types of rights (emphasis mine):
Dropping syndicated programming and other shows from NewsNation through 2021 saved them $17.5 million dollars. They now control all of that ad inventory, on programming they are paying much less for than what it replaced (hell, dropping syndicated programming very likely paid for the NewsNation programming outright.) This is an important part of the NewsNation strategy, the same strategy the local stations use when they drop an hour of Judge Judy for more local news. The "ratings" might not be as good, but if they're now paying $4,000 an hour to program NewsNation Prime where they were previously paying $8,000 for an hour of Law and Order: Parking Enforcement Unit, they are coming out ahead.