Perry A. Sook

Perry A. Sook (born 1958) is an American media mogul who founded Nexstar Media Group, one of the largest television and digital media corporations in the United States. He is chairman and CEO of Nexstar and in October 2025, the Nexstar board of directors extended Sook's contract as CEO through March 2029. Sook is also chairman of the joint board of directors of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Sook founded Nexstar in 1996, with the acquisition of single local television station, WYOU in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In the decades since, the corporation has grown into the largest owner of television stations in the US, in addition to amassing additional media holdings such as The Hill, American television network The CW, and cable channel NewsNation (the latter relaunched from WGN America, which the company acquired in 2019). In August 2025, Sook announced a pending merger of Tegna Inc. into Nexstar, which would be in violation of current federal regulations for broadcast media ownership.

In 2003, Sook took Nexstar public after acquiring Quorum Broadcasting. However, in 2018 and 2019, Nexstar shareholders rejected multimillion dollar compensation packages for Sook.

Early life Sook was born in approximately 1958 in DuBois, Pennsylvania and raised in West Virginia. He completed his undergraduate studies at Ohio University in the Scripps College of Communication.

Sook's first sales job was at a small radio station in Kissimmee, Florida, where the station did not pay him his commission after a big ad sale, which spurred a change to television sales. His son, Perry Sook, Jr., is a sports anchor at Nexstar-owned WPIX.

Politics

Political contributions Between 2000 and 2018, Sook donated substantial sums to American politicians from both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, though the majority of his partisan contributions have gone to Republican politicians. His first recorded donation to a federal candidate was $1,000 to Rick Lazio, a candidate for United States Senate from New York who was running against Hillary Clinton. In total, Sook has donated $32,400 directly to the candidate committees of Republican politicians, including Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, John Cornyn, Marsha Blackburn, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Orrin Hatch, and others. Sook had given another $14,900 cumulatively to related Republican committees, such as the NRCC and the Leadership PACs of Ted Cruz and Liz Cheney. Sook has also donated $5,000 in total to the candidate committees of Democratic politicians, including Chuck Schumer, Mark Pryor, Mark Udall, and Patrick Leahy. His most recent partisan political contribution was a September 2018 contribution to Ted Cruz of $2,700.

Sook has also given heavily to nonpartisan Political action committees (PACs) associated with his business, including $60,000 to Nexstar's PACs and $88,000 to the PACs of the National Associations of Broadcasters.