FREE READ: Nexstar’s Nation-Wide Initiative ‘Remarkable Women’ is Remarkable Television

By Paul Greeley
817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

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In 2019, Perry Sook, Nexstar’s CEO, wanted to create a project that would recognize women and the work they do in local communities that often goes unnoticed and challenged his management team to come up with a great initiative.

Thus began Remarkable Women.

Mellisa Stacy, the director of local content at Nexstar, and part of the Remarkable Woman program from the beginning, says when the team showed Sook the first plan of Remarkable Women, he told them, ‘You need to think bigger.’

“I’ll never forget it,” Stacy says. “It was a Saturday morning, and he emailed me and said ‘I want this to be big and I want it to be different than anything, or anybody’s ever seen.’ He really did have a vision.”

As you’ll discover, they achieved that objective. Everything about Nexstar’s Remarkable Women’s program is, well, remarkable.

“It’s grown over time, and continues to get better,” says Matthew Rosenfeld, Nexstar’s SVP and Regional Manager.

Consider the 2025 version of Remarkable Women.

The nominating process starts in November in 116 Nexstat local markets and this year includes the participation of NewsNation and the CW network, giving Remarkable Women a national footprint.

Each Nexstar market (NewsNation also chooses finalists from non-Nexstar markets) asks for Remarkable Women nominations based on a criteria of community contribution, self-achievement and innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.

The 116 Nexstar markets, the CW network and NewsNation run nomination promos.

Every part of the process is on television.

“It’s promos, digital and social, interviews during news and lifestyle shows,” Rosenfeld says. “Thanks to the participation from NewsNation and the CW, we accepted nominations from every single DMA in the country,” Rosenfeld says.

More than 12,000 nominations were submitted this year alone, about a 30 percent increase over last year. Since launching in 2019, Remarkable Women has received over 58,000 nominations with 70% of nominations coming from women, underscoring how deeply this initiative is becoming about sisterhood, women uplifting one another.

Eventually, those 12,185 nominations are whittled down to 125 local market finalists.

“We surprised every market winner on the same day across the entire company, surprised them with the fact that they were the winner, and they were going to Hollywood,” Rosenfeld says. “A very emotional element.”

Each of the 125 finalists receive $1,000 to donate to the nonprofit of their choice. The regional finalists receive $5,000 and the Remarkable Woman of the Year will receive an additional $25,000 to the nonprofit of her choice.

Remarkable Women has well-known national sponsors: Olay, Straight Talk Wireless, Allstate and SeeHer. And there are sponsors in each of the Nexstar local markets.

In mid-April, the 125 women finalists gathered at a Los Angeles hotel for a gala-filled weekend to select the one woman among them who will be the Remarkable Woman of the Year for 2025.

“These are women from so many different walks of life who’ve suffered through adversities and tragedies,” Stacy says. “Some have never been on an airplane.”

Nexstar flew the 125 women, who didn’t know each other, to Los Angeles, and gave them the VIP treatment.

Rosenfeld says the event, Nexstar’s Remarkable Woman of 2025, is not just about the story of the one woman who wins, or the stories of the five regional winners, or even the 15 stories of the women leading to the one.

The Remarkable Woman initiative is about sisterhood.

“It’s a movement,” Stacy says. “That’s what it is. That’s a perfect word for it. And we need things like this. And television tells the story.”

Nexstar coordinated their flights, so they arrive at different times throughout the day.

“We have a car service waiting for them with the sign that says Remarkable Women car service to get them to the hotel,” Rosenfeld says.

“When they get to the hotel, we have a welcome committee to meet them where every single one of them gets a standing ovation.”

As they arrive on Sunday, the cameras roll as each of the women get a swag bag of remarkable women’s stuff.

“We interview them for television and social media, giving shout outs back to their local markets,” Stacy says.

That first night, there’s a welcome pool party event where videos are shown featuring celebrities congratulating the women are played.

The messages are positive: You are remarkable and you’re amazing.

“All these women give all year long to their families and everybody in their community,” Stacy says. “So, this is a chance for them to receive some love.”

The next day, after a tour of Hollywood, the finalists are taken to watch a taping of the Jennifer Hudson show.

It’s a surprise.

“It’s not just a live taping of the show,” Rosenfeld says. “They are the topic of the show.”

Hudson interviewed 5 as a part of her program which will air on May 22 and then she went into the audience and interviewed more and then took individual photos with some of the women.

“They did a group picture,” Rosenfeld says. “It’s really a life-changing event.”

That night, Leeza Gibbons hosted a dinner where the women and their achievements are celebrated. Videos of each woman is shown on massive screens.

“We asked every woman to write a letter to her younger self and then read that letter to the camera on their iPhones,” Stacy says. “That was a new element and it was amazing.”

“They say thank you about a million times for celebrating them,” Rosenfeld says.

The 2025 Remarkable Woman of the Year was announced during an uplifting, star-studded event televised nationwide on The CW Network and on NewsNation.

The 2025 Remarkable Woman of the Year is airing locally in all of the Nexstar TV markets over the next month.

NOTE: The feeling of sisterhood was on display throughout the weekend as these women came together to celebrate.

One of the finalists got a tattoo on her arm that said, what else, Remarkable.

Another jumped into the pool with her evening clothes on.

Another Remarkable Women, was explaining to her table mates at breakfast how her charity that she runs needed money to fix the roof of her building.

“Simultaneously, people at her table got out money and wrote her checks to fix that problem,” Rosenfeld says. “It was a an incredibly emotional moment. And that’s how these women support each other.”