After a period of strong growth, BIA Advisory Services is predicting that cord cutting and the shift towards streaming will produce a “flattening” in retransmission fees between 2024 and 2028. That marks and important change from recent years, where BIA estimates that local TV stations generated $12.3 billion in distribution revenue from MVPDs and vMVPDs in 2020, and this rose 22.5 percent to $15.1 billion by 2023.
A blog post by BIA's Rick Ducey noted that “as shown below, NBC affiliated stations saw the largest increase in distribution revenue in this period, followed by CBS, FOX, and ABC. Broadcasters often negotiate both financial and non-financial terms such as including carriage of diginets.”
