I was reading the Financial Post section of the National Post this morning and I found an article about Nexstar Broadcasting Group and its local TV peers.

Highlights:

• “After a long period in Wall Street’s dog house, Nexstar Broadcasting Group Inc. and other local TV companies are strutting like Best in Show winners. Stocks of Nexstar, Lin TV Corp., Young Broadcasting Inc., Sinclair Broadcasting Group Inc. have climbed by 50% or better since last fall, as broadcasters squeeze cash from cable companies to carry the local stations on which U.S. audiences watch most of their TV.”
• “Nexstar bulls say the market hasn’t yet recognized Nexstar’s other industry-leading positions: The company has pioneered the ownership of two TV stations in the same market and by transforming its stations into TV-and-online machines, while much of the industry just starts to wake up to the Web.”
• “Less than a year ago, Nexstar lured Rajiv Lulla, a former Web guru at Viacom Inc.’s MTV, to transform the company’s online strategy. Starting last fall, eight Nexstar stations so far have beefed up their Web sites to carry more video content from the TV stations — especially local news –and sell advertising around it. The company expects to convert the rest of its station group by this summer.”
• “Private equity money is flowing into local TV.”

What it means: this article gives a quick rundown of Nexstar and other publicly-traded local TV companies. There’s one sentence in the article which puzzles me though. When talking about the stock value of Nexstar, the journalist says: “The problem is the inexorable decline in market share for local advertising dollars, which the affiliates rely on for the bulk of its revenue.” I’m not sure exactly what that means. Does it mean local TV is losing market share in local advertising dollars? Does it mean local advertising is losing market share vs. national advertising? I’m not sure. Anyone in my readers can explain this to me?