Workers at television stations owned by Nexstar – the largest TV Broadcasting Company in the U.S. – are forming Unions to address low wages and disrespect.
National Association of Broadcasting Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America (NABET-CWA) has released a report titled: Breaking the Story: The Real Cost Of Low Wages At America’s Largest Broadcaster, which outlined the realities of low pay at 14 Nexstar-owned News Stations across the country:
Instead of bargaining in good faith, Nexstar has fired Workers for organizing and refused to recognize Unions even after Workers voted overwhelmingly in favor of them in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)-supervised elections.
This report documents the low wages at Nexstar through a survey of Workers and analysis of labor market data.
NABET-CWA conducted the survey between February and June of 2025 and received 109 responses from Nexstar Broadcasting Employees:
Respondents reported poverty wages and widespread worry about meeting basic financial obligations like housing, medical care and groceries.
The majority (62%) of Nexstar Workers earn less than a living wage for their metro area for a single person without children and 89% earn less than a living wage for their metro area for a single person with one child.
A majority (63%) of Workers rely on family, friends or public assistance to get by.
A majority of survey respondents feel financially insecure: 87% worried about meeting financial obligations sometimes (57%) or often (30%).
The majority of survey respondents report delaying necessary medical care (55%) and buying groceries (53%) among their struggles to get by on Nexstar’s low wages.
A majority (54%) of survey respondents report that they sometimes or often rely on overtime to make ends meet, while 38% of respondents rely on a second job.
Twenty-two percent of survey respondents reported that they rely on both overtime at Nexstar and working a second job.
The wages reported by Workers indicate that Nexstar pays well below its peers in the industry – Nexstar pays 22% less than the median wage, on average, for the most common occupations surveyed.
Workers also report that they have to skip breaks and often work in understaffed departments.
Meanwhile, Nexstar is very profitable and seeks to grow through more acquisitions of local broadcast stations.
To do this the Company is actively lobbying to eliminate the Federal cap on the number of stations a single company can own, a long-standing protection for localism and competition in the broadcast market.
NABET-CWA is calling on Nexstar to negotiate fair contracts with its Employees that provide livable wages.
We also urge Congress to prevent the Trump Administration from eliminating the existing standards for broadcast ownership and call on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to stay firm against industry’s efforts to change the current standards through rule-making.
