Alan Pergament: It's 11 o'clock. Do you know where WIVB's newscast is? Owner stops streaming newscasts live

As people who have cut the cord undoubtedly realize, the station no longer airs its newscasts live on its website or app. It carries the newscasts two hours later.

Which raises the questions: Who wants to watch the 6 p.m. news at 8 p.m. or the 11 p.m. news at 1 a.m.? And why is Nexstar doing this?

According to sources, Nexstar’s decision to stop livestreaming apparently is largely due to protect the amount of money it receives in retransmission fees from cable companies, satellite providers and other ways to carry their stations.

The trade publication Broadcasting and Cable spelled it out: “The move comes as station groups like Nexstar are trying to grow the retransmission consent fees they collect from distributors as cord-cutting erodes the number of people subscribing to traditional pay-TV services.”

Broadcasting and Cable added some Nexstar stations in larger markets such as Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco will still stream local news programs live on their station apps.

In a sense, Nexstar is making a compromise to the providers giving them retransmission money by delaying streaming newscasts by two hours rather than carrying them live.

To understand Nexstar’s concern, remember recent examples of when it engaged in retransmission disputes that have taken WIVB, sister station WNLO-TV (CW 23) and stations across the country it owns off cable and satellite providers.

As I have written during the local retransmission standoffs, many people were still able to watch local affiliates over the air or stream them live even if they couldn’t get them on cable or satellite providers.

For instance, during the Nexstar retransmission dispute with Fios last October that took Channel 4 and CW 23 off the air for a couple of weeks, viewers could stream the newscasts live anyway on the station’s website or on Paramount+ if they subscribed to that streaming service that carries CBS programs.

If you subscribe to Paramount+, Channel 4’s newscasts still are streaming live now because Nexstar has a separate retransmission deal with that service.

The ability for viewers to stream local newscasts may have reduced the leverage that station groups have had on the companies paying retransmission fees during carriage disputes.  

The decision to stop streaming Channel 4 newscasts live likely affects not only people who have cut the cord locally but also former Western New Yorkers who have moved elsewhere or snowbirds who head south during the winter. Those viewers who streamed Channel 4 newscasts live to know what is going on in their hometowns now may switch to the station's local competitors. 

The decision is not without some risks. After all, streaming is considered the future of TV. In many ways, it is the present.

With streaming sites becoming more and more popular, making it harder to livestream local newscasts seems like a shortsighted decision.

The national owners of the Buffalo stations that compete with Channel 4 and its newscasts are continuing to stream their newscasts live.

The owners of WGRZ-TV (Channel 2) and WKBW-TV (Channel 7) do so though they also receive revenue from retransmission fees and would seem to face the same concerns as Nexstar does. Tegna owns Channel 2, the E.W. Scripps Company owns Channel 7.

“We are and will continue to livestream,” wrote Channel 7 General Manager Marc Jaromin in an email. “Research the growth connected to television usage and you’ll see the audience migrations.”

All the research you need to see on the audience migration is to look at the decline I have reported in local TV ratings, especially in prime time when it is rare for any program to get a double-digit rating.

“Yes, WGRZ will continue to livestream our local news and other locally produced content on WGRZ+,” wrote WGRZ-TV General Manager Mark Manders in an email. “Our viewers and potential viewers engage with multiple platforms daily. We want our content to be available to them wherever they are, whenever they want it, on whatever device they choose.”

That seems to be the better strategy than Nexstar’s compromise to satisfy those companies paying retransmission fees. But time will tell.