MediaTalk | Season 4 | Ep. 45 - How Media Companies Cashed In on Record Midterm Ad Spending

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Mike Reynolds: Hi, I’m Mike Reynolds, a senior reporter covering the media industry with S&P Global Market Intelligence’s technology, media, and telecommunications news team.

Welcome to "MediaTalk," a podcast hosted by S&P Global, where the news and research staff explore issues in the ever-evolving media landscape. Today, we’re talking politics — or, more pointedly, political advertising spending and revenue for the 2026 midterm election cycle, which resulted in significant redrawing of the U.S. map, from red for Republicans to blue for Democrats.

To help make sense of it, we have a quintet of executives. I’m joined by S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan Principal Analyst and Head of Research Justin Nielson, who specializes in broadcasting, among other things. We also have Peter Leitzinger, an equity research and fixed-income analyst at Kagan. He keeps tabs on many aspects of the broadcast realm, including political advertising, and has followed the presidential and latest midterm cycles.

Steve Passwaiter is a veteran political analyst and currently the president of Silver Oak Political, a Washington, D.C., political advisory firm that assists organizations interested in introducing services or improving their position in the political advertising sector.

We also have Samantha Osborne. Sam is vice president of political advertising at Nexstar Media Group. She heads Nexstar’s national political sales division, which is charged with generating growth across the company’s linear, digital, and connected-TV platforms. Sam’s career has also included time overseeing E. W. Scripps’ political advertising sales for its local media unit. She is based in Washington, D.C.

Those executives and yours truly appeared in S&P Global’s political advertising webinar on October 6, titled “CTV Broadcasting: The Battle for Political Dollars — Kagan Research Forecasts the ’26 Midterms.”

That being said, joining our group today is Will Hildebrandt. Will is vice president of national political sales at NBCUniversal. After joining Telemundo Station Group in 2014, he began handling political advertising sales for NBC and Telemundo owned-and-operated television stations, Peacock, and the regional sports networks. Will previously worked for a decade with many political agencies and consultants while representing numerous broadcast affiliate groups.

The United States is a nation divided on many issues. There’s also the war in Iran, as well as escalating food, energy, gas, and health-care costs.

Let’s start with our "MediaTalk" rookie. Welcome, Will. How are you doing?

Will Hildebrandt: I’m doing well. Thanks, Mike, for having me. How are you?

Mike Reynolds: Good. All right. Evidently, a lot of those issues came to bear at voting booths across the nation on or before Election Day, November 3. It turned out to be a blue wave, with Democrats seemingly gaining on all fronts. Was that your expectation, Will?

Will Hildebrandt: I think my expectation, based on following the polls — which is part of my job — was that there would be a blue wave. How big it would be, I wasn’t sure.

One of my friends and I placed a bet. He was more accurate than I was. He said Democrats would net nine Senate seats and 55 House seats.

Mike Reynolds: Wow. Okay.

Will Hildebrandt: He was very close. I was a little more pessimistic. I think I said Democrats would net three Senate seats and 22 House seats.

Having said that, yes, I did see the blue wave coming based on the polling. I think most of us thought that was going to happen. Certainly, we started to see that, because the money always follows the polling. We started to see Democrats making a play in places such as Kansas and Texas — places where they hadn’t been making a play before.

Then Florida came onto the map later, which told us that they thought they had a chance there as well.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Sam, how about you? Nexstar obviously has a very large station footprint. As you and your team were doing business, did you get a sense that November 3 was going to wind up being a tough night for the GOP?

Samantha Osborne: Yes. We all know that you can follow the money, but that’s only one variable in election outcomes. You can look at 2024 as an example: being outspent doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to win or lose an election.

However, when you saw the influx of money during those last few weeks, which predominantly came from the Democratic side, and read the articles about major donors opening their wallets and their super PACs, and then saw money going into states such as Mississippi, Texas, and Kansas — some of these safe seats that we were forecasting a year ahead — none of us were talking about them. That’s definitely a telltale sign.

Mike Reynolds: Okay. Justin, Will and Sam have already alluded to the changes in the House. There’s still some counting to be done. Heading into the election, the balance was 218 to 213 in favor of the GOP, with four vacant seats. Again, we don’t have a final count, but it’s a major change.

Justin Nielson: Yes, Mike. Definitely a major win for Democrats, flipping at least 40 seats and securing a majority of more than 250 seats, with about 16 seats yet to be called.

It also changed the map in major states such as Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas. The diversity of the newly elected congressional representatives and governors also cannot be understated and will have a major impact on policy decisions for the lame-duck president.

In addition, voters came out in opposition to a lot of money spent by billionaires — particularly Elon Musk in Texas — supporting candidates who favored data-center deployment.

Mike Reynolds: Gotcha. Peter, let’s talk a little about the Senate. Again, Republicans held the advantage heading into November 3, including among early voters. We’re still undecided in Mississippi and Alaska, but there have been major changes there as well.

Peter Leitzinger: Yes. Including the independents who caucus with Democrats, Senate Democrats were able to win 20 Senate races, while the Republican Party secured 13 of the 35 seats up for election. Two races have not yet been called — in Mississippi and Alaska.

The big storyline is that Democrats have, by all accounts, won the Senate majority. The major stories are the flips of seats held by Republican senators in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, and North and South Carolina.

In Alaska, if no candidate secures a majority of the vote, the race will proceed to a ranked-choice tabulation, in which the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated and those votes are redistributed.

In Mississippi, as of this morning, Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by 2,500 votes in the uncalled race. That would be another major win for Democrats.

Of course, Senate control has significant consequences for the final two years of President Trump’s term and will influence how the agenda operates within a divided government going forward.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Steve, there were a lot of changes in governors’ mansions as well. I think there were 36 races. What was the final count?

Steve Passwaiter: I believe the Democrats — we’re not counting Alaska quite yet — are going to end up with around 30 governorships, including a number of places where it has been decades since there was a Democratic governor.

Sam and I are both Ohioans, and we both have to go back into our mental archives to remember that Ted Strickland was the last Democratic governor of Ohio. He served only four years before being summarily voted out of office.

Obviously, the big prize in all of this was Texas, where Greg Abbott was running for a third term. We have to go all the way back to Ann Richards to find the last Democratic governor of Texas, and that was before George W. Bush served as governor.

You look at Georgia and Iowa — these are all places where there have been Republican governors over the years, and now those seats have flipped. Joe Lombardo was defeated in Nevada by the attorney general, Aaron Ford.

Some of the same things we’ve been discussing happened in these gubernatorial races as well.

Mike Reynolds: All right, Steve, let’s talk a little about overall spending. I think AdImpact’s final estimate was $11.9 billion. That’s a midterm record. Is that ahead of presidential cycles as well?

Steve Passwaiter: Yes, most assuredly. That’s the largest amount ever spent in an election. Looking at their official number this morning, the total actually climbed above $12 billion.

Mike Reynolds: Okay.

Steve Passwaiter: About $12.05 billion has been spent around the country, according to their latest estimate.

Mike Reynolds: Before we talk about how your companies fared, Sam and Will, I wanted to ask you about the new lowest-unit-rate rules, which have been allowed by various courts, including the Supreme Court. The rules expanded the FCC’s authority to allow political parties to receive the same lowest unit rate historically granted only to candidates.

Some thought this might negatively affect political revenue. There have also been recent moves, I believe, by the Republican National Committee either to expand lowest-unit-rate eligibility to everyone or to have it removed from the mix. Will, what are your thoughts?

Will Hildebrandt: No comment.

Mike Reynolds: There you go. Sam, how about you? Anything you can say here?

Samantha Osborne: I’m not going to elaborate on the future. Obviously, those court cases will be untangled over the next few months.

The only thing I can say — and it was said largely during our earnings calls — is that we do think the ruling brought more dollars to broadcast. Broadcast’s share of overall spending is really healthy.

There were concerns about consistent erosion as we compete more with streaming, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Mike Reynolds: Okay. Going back to your earnings call, Sam, Nexstar and Tegna have not yet been integrated, but the combination had an incredible level of spending. How did you do overall, to the extent that you can share that with our listeners?

Samantha Osborne: We’re very proud of how we performed. I can’t speak to Tegna because we’re in separate worlds, but I think the results you can see publicly are very good. It was a good year for all of us.

I think our friends in radio may have taken a bit of a hit, and cable came in below CTV for the first time. But as broadcast peers, we all had great years, and that’s very positive for the industry.

As we look ahead to an open presidential contest, we’ll probably get busier faster than we care to as we look toward the next cycle.

Mike Reynolds: I got you. How about NBCUniversal’s stations, including the owned-and-operated NBC and Telemundo stations? Were regional sports networks a factor this time around?

Will Hildebrandt: This was an amazing year for us, just as Sam said. Politically, we set a record in terms of revenue across all of our stations — NBC, Telemundo, and the regional sports networks.

What was most incredible for NBC was our programming, which helped us reach those numbers. If you go back to February, we were fortunate to have Super Bowl 60 kicking things off. Our local station in Boston benefited from the Patriots being in that game.

That led into the Winter Olympics. I still get goosebumps when I think about how it ended for both the men’s and women’s hockey teams, and the ratings were staggering. During that period, we also had the NBA All-Star Game. This was our first season with the NBA since the 1990s.

We came out of February riding an amazing high. Peacock was riding that wave, too. A lot of people sign up to watch events such as the Olympics and then stay, creating a long tail. That led into the summer and the marquee event we covered in Spanish on Telemundo: the World Cup.

That was a huge ratings bonanza for our network and our local Telemundo stations, and we monetized all of it.

Regarding Telemundo and Hispanic voters, we saw many advertisers remain on the sidelines during the first six months in terms of their Spanish-language investment. There were various theories about why that was happening, and some of us were worried. In hindsight, however, it appeared purposeful. Advertisers were saving their investment to make a major splash around the World Cup.

While spending lagged during the first half of the year, it more than made up for it during the second half. Democrats made major inroads with Hispanic and Latino voters, particularly through investments in Texas and McAllen, Texas, in the southern part of the state.

For the first time ever, McAllen was our number-one billing market in the Telemundo station group. It’s typically Miami or Los Angeles that is our best-performing station.

That tells you where the money was flowing. There were three congressional races down there, as well as the Senate race. Everyone was trying to move Hispanic and Latino voters to the polls, and I think they were successful in doing so. To be honest, I think that’s why people such as James Talarico won the race.

Mike Reynolds: Justin, you and I were at NAB New York last month at the Javits Center. Tony LaMourado, a sales executive for Scripps, was on one of the panels discussing how candidates in Michigan could reach the entire state by buying spots on the local Detroit Pistons network.

Scripps CEO Adam Symson also mentioned local sports and the NBA team on the company’s recent earnings call. It was a good cycle for Scripps as well, both for the stations and, now, with sports in the mix.

Justin Nielson: Yes, both divisions performed very well. Scripps reported $81 million in the third quarter, a record for a midterm election cycle. The company specifically highlighted strong spending in Ohio and Michigan, as well as Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

As you noted, Scripps’ sports strategy and Detroit Pistons games enabled the company to monetize political advertising at a premium rate. All in all, it was a great quarter for them.

Mike Reynolds: Gray did very well as well, Justin?

Justin Nielson: They did. Gray also reported record revenue of $198 million in the third quarter and provided full-year guidance of approximately $630 million to $640 million, including a record fourth quarter of about $319 million to $329 million.

The company saw a late-cycle shift in political spending in states where it has a strong presence. Some money moved out of Georgia and North Carolina and into Iowa, Alaska, Maine, and Nebraska, where Democrats saw opportunities.

Mike Reynolds: Okay. Peter, tell us a little about Sinclair. They had a strong political year as well.

Peter Leitzinger: Yes. Sinclair was well positioned in a number of swing states during this election year.

In the first half of 2026, the company reported that political advertising revenue was up 20% from 2024, which was a very positive result. In its third-quarter earnings report about a week ago, Sinclair reported $136 million in political advertising revenue — an increase of 55% over the 2022 midterm election.

The company increased its guidance and now expects full-year political revenue of $455 million. That is a significant increase from the projected $375 million it issued in August. Those were exceptional results.

Mike Reynolds: And Peter, could you remind us that Kagan was bullish on station spending overall for the 2026 cycle? What was Kagan’s view of where stations would end up?

Peter Leitzinger: Our projections have local television political advertising revenue reaching more than $4 billion in 2026. We expect it to grow to $5 billion in the 2032 election year.

The projected 2026 total represents an increase of 15% over the revenue recorded in the last nonpresidential election year, 2022. That would make it a record for a midterm election year.

Mike Reynolds: Next on our agenda: While local stations remain the medium of choice for many candidates and campaigns in 2026, CTV continues to gain momentum. Steve, can you give us a sense of where that platform might have ended up this time around?

Steve Passwaiter: From what I’ve seen, it was more than $2.5 billion, which was well ahead of where it had been during the last midterm and the last presidential cycle.

It now seems to be taking budget away from other platforms. I would imagine cable took a hit during this cycle, with a lot of that money moving to connected television.

These companies had a really strong year. It’s the old adage about a rising tide lifting all boats, and I think everybody got aboard this time.

Mike Reynolds: Okay. Will, what about CTV in the NBCUniversal portfolio?

Will Hildebrandt: Peacock was a true bright spot for us, as Steve noted. I’m hearing a figure of $2.5 billion for CTV overall, but we essentially doubled our previous high-water mark from 2024.

Our programmatic sales, which we launched for political advertising during the last election cycle, nearly tripled. The Street has heard that Peacock became profitable this year, and the sky’s the limit as we continue to focus on direct and programmatic political sales.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Sam, how about Nexstar? I know the company has been touting its growth in CTV, and that translated to the political side as well. When you spoke with us during our webinar, you also discussed the advantages that broadcast still holds.

Samantha Osborne: That’s why broadcast still has the largest share. There’s strength in broadcast: high frequency, transparency, and an easy, fast way to reach voters.

We saw that spending was not limited to statewide races. A lot of money was spent on congressional races through broadcast as well.

The targetability of CTV, combined with the reach and frequency of broadcast, complements the two platforms. Media plans are being built more comprehensively than they were in the past, which benefits all media.

There isn’t one exclusive buy. To reach voters, you have to buy both, in part because of cord-cutting. Broadcast remains highly relevant, particularly because of live events and live sports, including football. We also had the upside of the World Cup.

We always look forward to presidential cycles with the Olympics because they occur closer to the general election. News is another important factor. Local news remains wall-to-wall political coverage in the hot markets, where demand is always high.

Mike Reynolds: I got you. We’ve covered the macro picture. Let’s narrow the focus a bit. Will, can you talk about Senate spending overall and some of the top races for NBCUniversal?

Will Hildebrandt: Given where our station footprint is, the Senate was a good portion of our business, although it wasn’t the largest.

Texas was significant, and it was bigger than we expected when we projected a year earlier. We had to hold a call with our NBC station in Dallas and our statewide Telemundo station to tell them, “This is going to be the big one. Get ready. Let us know if you need additional resources.”

Depending on how things turned out, we knew we would have to determine what we would do in 2028. There isn’t a Senate race in Texas in 2028, but given the results, the presidential candidates will be watching the state closely.

If I were a Democrat, I would be thinking that taking a state such as Texas would make the map much more difficult for Republicans.

Mike Reynolds: Sam, how about a look at the House chamber? Where did Nexstar see the most activity?

Samantha Osborne: By far, the House and Senate accounted for the majority of our business, but we also had a lot of upside during the first half of the year, especially in gubernatorial primaries.

A great deal of money was spent in races that were difficult to predict as being highly contested, and many of them went to runoffs. We also had a record number of runoffs, which crescendoed into the second half of the year very nicely for all of us.

Our footprint is particularly favorable for the House. We were in all the toss-up races, which has many benefits. With a large footprint, you’re not dependent on a single race. Even when North Carolina appeared to crumble as a Senate race, there were still highly competitive congressional races there.

As the money shifted, we saw it move to Kansas. We have strong Kansas stations, so that was definitely an advantage. We don’t have stations in Alaska and Maine, so we didn’t receive any of those dollars.

That’s one of the major advantages of having a large footprint: access to these races. We all know there are things we can’t control — a candidate’s ability to raise money, a weak candidate, or demographic shifts.

We also have a large footprint in Texas. There was concern that the race would soften after Ken Paxton won, but it actually crescendoed again in the fall, which was very nice to see.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Justin, let’s turn to the gubernatorial races. Give us a sense of the spending. As I said at the top, there were 36 races overall.

Justin Nielson: AdImpact just reported that approximately $2 billion was spent on gubernatorial races. Spending was concentrated primarily in the three open-seat races in Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Other important states included California, North Carolina, and Texas, where Democrats outspent Republicans in some markets and were able to flip seats.

Overall, gubernatorial spending was lower than total spending across the midterms, but it was highly concentrated in states with open seats or opportunities for Democrats to flip seats.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Steve, what about down-ballot races and state legislatures? What kind of year was 2026, and how did it compare with the last midterm election in 2022?

Steve Passwaiter: There has been general growth in down-ballot races that can almost be traced back to the Dobbs decision. That was the spark that injected a lot of life into state legislative races because of the stakes involved.

Redistricting in a number of states also focused considerable attention on state legislatures.

I want to thank John Link and his team at AdImpact, who were kind enough to share these numbers with me. Looking at state legislative races in this cycle, including both the primary and general elections, approximately $601 million was spent.

Overall, down-ballot races accounted for nearly $2.2 billion.

Mike Reynolds: Wow. Okay.

Steve Passwaiter: AdImpact defines down-ballot races as anything other than Senate, gubernatorial, or House races. The number includes both primary and general-election spending.

That is an extraordinary figure. If slightly more than $12 billion was spent overall, down-ballot spending represented just under 20% of the total — somewhere in the high teens.

Mike Reynolds: I got you. Using the broad math of a baseball batting average, that’s 17%.

Steve, you talked about this last time as well. Since we’re still counting, perhaps we’re still officially in 2026, but there’s no downtime, right? We’re already moving on.

Steve Passwaiter: No. The next cycle had already started before this one ended.

It used to be that there were three or four months when everybody would go on vacation, get a suntan, return to the office in the middle of January, and spend a couple of months easing back into things.

Then it became a process that started about half an hour after the last election ended. Now there are actually two cycles running at the same time.

We’ve already seen the first ads for the Chicago mayoral race. A former Illinois attorney general is running ads that began a couple of days ago. It’s on.

Mike Reynolds: Sam, you talked about that as well. There’s no rest for the weary.

Samantha Osborne: No, it doesn’t seem like it. There’s an open presidential primary for both parties, and the Democrats have changed the order of the first few states. That will be different from the past, when the sequence went from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina.

It’s going to be competitive. There are many people jockeying for the nomination, and many of them know how to raise money. I think there will be a significant amount of spending.

Then you have to look at the Senate races. Many states that just had contentious Senate races will have contentious Senate races again in 2028, so you have to look ahead to those as well.

There are also races next year. I think we’ll see the issue of artificial intelligence emerge, too. A lot of money was spent on that topic, and issue advertising is sometimes harder to predict.

Odd-numbered years are not quiet anymore. They’re not what they used to be, and that’s good for Will and me.

Will Hildebrandt: Absolutely.

Mike Reynolds: Will, you’re in the same boat and happy to be there?

Will Hildebrandt: I can’t imagine that, with an open White House, we won’t have at least 400 or 500 people throwing their hats into the ring. We’ll build 15 debate stages and start as early as May.

To Sam’s point, advocacy is a significant part of this. Everybody is back in town, and people in Washington make hay at this time of year because many organizations want to get their message to everyone on Capitol Hill.

That message may concern artificial intelligence or data centers. I think the money will continue to come.

Mike Reynolds: Justin, you mentioned data centers. That issue seems to have captured a lot of attention, and I would imagine the spending will continue on that front.

Justin Nielson: I would agree. Of the 44 ballot propositions concerning data centers and artificial intelligence, 43 were voted down.

Mike Reynolds: Steve, what will 2028 bring in terms of spending?

Steve Passwaiter: I’m a liberal-arts guy, so I don’t think I can count that high. But I’ve heard $15 billion being discussed.

I hate to throw numbers out when Will and Sam are here, because people in management hear them and say, “We’ll count on $16 billion or $17 billion. You can do that, right?”

I’ve spent some time in the television sales world, so I know how that works. But I think $15 billion is probably the number we’re looking at.

To expand a little on Justin’s point, data centers were one chapter in a much larger story. There were really two major issues in this cycle: affordability and corruption.

A majority of voters do not believe the economy is structured to benefit them; they believe it is structured to benefit the wealthy. Voters saw tax breaks going to data centers across the country, and both parties used that issue against the other.

It became part of a broader narrative about everyone being too close to one another and the economy not necessarily working for working-class people. I think that was one of the clear themes that emerged last Tuesday.

As for 2028, if I were a carpenter, I would want to get into the debate-stage-building business. I would want to hire a lot of people.

We may have to clear-cut every forest in the country to build enough debate stages, because it’s going to be a circus. I guarantee it.

Mike Reynolds: Peter, is it going to be a $15 billion circus?

Peter Leitzinger: I think so. Everything is pointing upward right now, and with no clear presidential favorites in either party, both sides are going to benefit.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Will and Sam, as Steve said, we’re going to get you in trouble with your bosses. Is that the number you’re looking at at this point?

Will Hildebrandt: I’m looking at a much smaller number in case my chief revenue officer is listening right now. I’d like him to assign the budget accordingly.

Steve, you’d better be right about those numbers. You’d better be right.

Mike Reynolds: Sam, do you want to disagree with Steve?

Samantha Osborne: I’m going to say exactly what Will said. We all like to manage expectations.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Let’s finish with a spending survey. We talked about CTV’s growth in 2026. Stations still led the way. Will that be the case in 2028? Will more money still be spent on local television than on CTV?

Sam, you’re up first.

Samantha Osborne: I still think broadcast will carry the larger share than CTV. I don’t see that changing after what we just witnessed.

Mike Reynolds: How about you, Will?

Will Hildebrandt: Despite all the doomsayers, I’m going with linear. I don’t think linear will fall behind CTV yet.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Justin?

Justin Nielson: I agree with Sam and Will. There is still value in being adjacent to local news and sports programming.

Mike Reynolds: All right. Peter?

Peter Leitzinger: I agree. CTV will continue its growth trajectory, but the main takeaway for me is that the overall pie continues to grow. I don’t think television will be dethroned in 2028.

Last word to you, Steve.

Steve Passwaiter: I have no reason to disagree with any of my colleagues. I think linear will still hold the lion’s share, as it did during this cycle.

Mike Reynolds: That concludes this episode of "MediaTalk." On behalf of our audience, I want to thank our guests — Justin, Peter, Steve, Sam, and Will — for discussing the midterm elections and sharing their views on what might take place during the 2028 presidential cycle. We appreciate you all being here and taking the time to join "MediaTalk." This is Mike Reynolds. Thanks to all of you for listening. We’ll catch up soon on the next installment of "MediaTalk."