Nexstar completes ATSC 3.0 rollout across all top 25 U.S. markets

Broadcasters now have a footprint in the nation’s largest markets, shifting the industry focus from infrastructure builds to monetization. This establishes a critical mass of reach for the EdgeBeam Wireless venture, which targets a multibillion-dollar addressable market in automotive connectivity and content delivery. For streaming providers and advertisers, this standard offers a bridge to marry over-the-air signals with IP-based interactive data. Watch for the FCC's decision on the National Association of Broadcasters’ petition to sunset ATSC 1.0 by 2028 in major markets, which would force legacy hardware upgrades.

The formation of EdgeBeam Wireless in January 2025 by Nexstar, Sinclair, Gray Media, and E.W. Scripps signaled a unified industry pivot toward non-traditional broadcast revenue. According to internal venture estimates released at CES 2025, the group is pursuing addressable markets worth $3.7 billion in automotive connectivity and $3.65 billion in content delivery network (CDN) services. The appointment of Conrad Clemson as CEO in June 2025 further accelerated this strategy, with the venture focusing on high-precision navigation and terrestrial GPS backups that utilize the ATSC 3.0 physical layer.

Regulatorily, the broadcast industry has been pushing to accelerate the sunset of legacy signals. Per the Federal Register in November 2025, the FCC began seeking comments on a petition from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) that proposed a mandatory transition deadline. The plan would require all full-power stations in the top 55 markets to end ATSC 1.0 broadcasting by February 2028, with the rest of the country following by early 2030. While approximately 76% of U.S. households had access to NextGen TV signals by early 2025, consumer device adoption remains the primary hurdle for the transition.

Data from Business Research Insights in June 2026 suggests the ATSC 3.0 device market is projected to grow at a 12% CAGR through 2035. While nearly 14 million ATSC 3.0-enabled televisions were sold in 2024 alone, current estimates per the FOTVI Report indicate that cumulative tuner penetration is still roughly 10% of the active TV set population. Recent FCC rulings in late 2025 allowed low-power TV stations to transition without legacy simulcasts, a move intended to seed the market with more 3.0-capable signals as broadcasters look to justify the hardware costs of the upgrade.