• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, September 10, 2009

The top executive at station group Nexstar indicated Thursday that he would oppose any efforts that networks make to take a cut of the retransmission consent revenues his company currently receives.

CEO Perry Sook said he "struggle(s) to understand why certain networks all of a sudden feel that they are entitled to a piece ... when they had no hand in the negotiation, documentation and collection of it.

"It kind of reminds me of the bully on the playground that tries to steal your lunch money," he said.

Station groups have succeeded in persuading cable and satellite operators to pay them to carry the network affiliates they operate. There have been suggestions that networks will seek a piece of that pie, arguing that their programming adds value to the stations.

Speaking at the Television Bureau of Advertising's forecast conference, Sook proposed a future retrans framework that could give the networks a share -- as well as the operators.

Sook, who received an award at the event, said networks, stations and operators could work in concert to provide an advertiser with a new opportunity that would benefit all three of them.

"We could get together and sell stuff, offer exclusive coupon opportunities to our advertisers and split the downstream revenue," he said.

For example, he said if stations and networks have access to the addresses of a cable company's customers, they could target them with, say, a $1,000-off coupon on a car. Then, the trio could get a cut of the automaker's resulting sales.

Nexstar operates a slew of mid- to-small-market stations, including the CBS affiliates in Salt Lake City, Austin and Rochester, N.Y., and CW outlets in Jacksonville, Fla. and Providence.

Last year, the company generated $21.8 million in retrans revenues, a 27% increase over 2008. Retrans dollars accounted for about 8% of total company revenues.

"I shudder to think where our local stations and local news operations would be, especially this year, without that additional source of revenue," Sook said.