Q2 Local+National

Week-to-Week Pacing Changes

Q2 moved up this week, growing 0.4 points:

• May picked up 0.2 points.

• June jumped 1.2 points.

Quite a few categories enjoyed the June jump, with only the following showing declines this week: ABC and Indie stations, and the South Atlantic region.

Forecast Updates

I’m pleased to see the pacing growth this week, but I’m tempering my May estimate slightly and lowering it a bit. June, however, both grew substantially and still has the time and opportunity for additional improvement from here. We’re hearing about heavy-ups coming down from Comcast and Chevy, and at least in some markets AT&T is hitting the books this week as well (though other markets report this business is “on hold”). These accounts could add meaningful late dollars to May and all of June and provide a bit more support to what remains a softer-than-usual quarter.

With that said, I am still estimating that June will weaken somewhat in pace from here. Even though my forecasts for the industry have generally been lower than other prognosticators’, I’ve still been too optimistic. ShareBuilders remains committed to unvarnished honesty about the realities of the market, because optimism doesn’t do you much good when making financial decisions or trying to stay competitive in a weak market.

And so with that commitment in mind, I’ve updated my Q3 and Q4 estimates as well, lowering them slightly. We can hope that the pressure from gas prices and other challenges caused by turmoil in the Middle East eases in the coming months, leading to greater spending in the back half of the year, but the conflict isn’t over and the pressure may linger. Hope is not a strategy, and so I must lower my estimates until the data dictates otherwise.

Here are my forecasts for the week:

Q2 vs. 2025:

• April: -13.6%

• May: -13.0% – down 0.8 points from last week

• June: -4.6% – flat to last week

• Q2 Total: -10.5% - down 0.3 points from last week

2026 vs. 2025:

• Q1: -2.0%

• Q2: -10.5% - down 0.3 points from last week

• Q3: -12.1% - down 1.6 points from last week

• Q4: -14.2% - down 0.5 points from last week

• 2026: -9.7% - down 0.8 points from last week