Q4 Local+National

Week-to-Week Pacing Changes

Thiss week, Q4 Core Pace picked up 0.3 points:

• November grew by half a point.

• December picked up 0.3 points.

Every category we measure experienced the November growth.

Forecast Updates

The post-election window continues to see plenty of positive activity from a wide variety of advertisers and categories. We’ve seen new dollars from restaurants (Perkins), retail (Academy Sports, Good Feed, Burlington Coat Factory), and tech (Google, Meta, Verizon). Plenty of advertisers are finding money to spend before the year is up, and we couldn’t be happier to see it.

Because despite all this late activity — with more still pending — stations remain far too open post-election. Even markets where political consumed nearly every bit of October inventory are finding themselves with plenty of room in November and December. These stations preempted hundreds of thousands of Core dollars in October. Where are the makegoods going? Are advertisers simply taking credits instead?

Just like last week, our overall station group is projecting a 70% sellout across major dayparts. And remember, that’s the projected sellout — where stations are expected to finish based on current booking patterns. Actual sellouts are closer to 60% today, when they should be approaching 90%. That’s an enormous amount of valuable inventory still sitting on the shelf.

So once again, I implore you: find a way to sell the rest of your inventory, at least through the week of 12/7. Those final two broadcast weeks are always a challenge, but over the next month, you still have plenty of valuable sports, Prime, holiday specials, and news inventory to sell. Don’t waste it!

I’ve raised our November estimate but am holding December steady this week:

Q4 vs. 2025:

• October: -20.1% – up 0.2 points from last week

• November: -4.4% – up 1.6 points from last week

• December: -7.4% – flat to last week

• Q4 Total: -10.6% - up 0.5 points from last week

2026 vs. 2025:

• Q1: -2.7%

• Q2: -9.9%

• Q3: -9.3% - down 0.1 points from last week

• Q4: -10.6% - up 0.5 points from last week

• 2026: -8.1% - up 0.2 points from last week