WGN America rebranded as NewsNation last year, with its goal being to deliver fact-based and unbiased news. Now over 12 months since this venture went live, Sean Compton, president of the Nexstar Media Group network’s division, spoke with TV Newser about the network’s growth.
The marquee names that NewsNation has for their programming are Ashleigh Banfield and Dan Abrams. Compton spoke about how pleased he is regarding the development of their two shows.
“Very happy. We are going to market them significantly in the coming weeks. In fact, the billboards went up this week across the country, and we have a lot of other marketing going out. We are very proud of the shows, so now we want people to come find them,” Compton said.
One of the following steps for NewsNation in their growth is reaching that 24/7 news channel goal, where CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News are currently. Compton stated that it’s the goal to be at that level, and sometimes building a network is one hour at a time.
“We definitely plan on getting there. We are building the network, sometimes an hour at a time, sometimes multiple hours at a time. We started in 2020 with 21 hours live. We started this year with 49 hours live in January, and here we are at the end of first quarter with 56 live hours per week,” Compton said.
“There is not an exact date on it because each day we find something that occurs like a war, and we added that 11 o’clock hour and we are now not turning back from that. You pivot when things like that happen, and you see opportunities. We will get to 24 hours. We will make that ultimate leap here in the near future, I would say.”
Eduardo Razo is the Assistant Content Editor for BNM, which includes writing daily news stories on the news media industry. He can be found on Twitter @eddierazo_ or you can reach him by email at eddie1991razo@gmail.com.
I have enjoyed seeing the growth of news nation. I have been watching since the first night. I like how it started as an outlet to be like a national focused newscast set up like local news. now they are starting to gather more commentary shows. They still have a feel of being more focused on telling the news stories rather than just being an opinion show. I find they are my second or third choice for news programing on a nightly basis. I find them much more credible than say MSNBC or CNN