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

Duane Lammers, known lovingly as the Hammer, passed away on July 19, 2025, in O’Fallon, Missouri, at the age of 64, according to an article in the Columbia Missourian.

At the time of his death, Lammers was president and founder of MAX Retrans, a consulting firm focused on retransmission consent, mergers and acquisitions.

In the world of television broadcasting, Lammers is best known for his role as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Nexstar Broadcasting.

In that role, Lammers was designated the tip of the spear by Perry Sook, Nexstar’s president, when on January 1, 2005, Nexstar pulled five of its Texas and Missouri stations off of cable networks until the cable companies agreed to pay compensation to Nexstar to air them.

Nexstar’s move was the first by a broadcast company to negotiate a subscriber fee from the cable industry for the right to air its local television stations.

And Lammers took on the cable companies with a stance that showed his toughness as a negotiator.

“If they think we’re going to give them our channels for free and then they can charge $10 or $15 a month for digital cable,” said Lammers in a quote to the Baltimore Sun, “then they can drop dead.”

Ironically, Lammers initial approach was reasonable.

In 2005, I was the VP of Marketing for Nexstar. At some Nexstar stations which were off cable, staffers handed out rabbit ears so consumers could receive their broadcast stations over-the-air.

Depending on the cable provider, Nexstar stations were off cable from 9 to 11 months,

At the beginning of negotiations, Lammers was in the conference room at Nexstar headquarters in Irving, Texas. I could see Lammers circling the table holding something in his hand.

Turns out he was meeting face-to-face with cable executives.

According to an article in Multichannel News, I was quoted as saying, “I saw Duane walking around with a penny. He told them he would allow them to carry our signal, in the markets where they were in dispute, if they would agree that our signals and our channels were worth at least a penny as a starting point. I thought it was an ingenious move on his part.”

But the Cox executives wouldn’t concede the “penny” point and left, and the dispute continued.

Sook and Lammers are heroes among many of his peers for his stand on retransmission consent.

Estimates say local TV stations generated $12.3 billion in retransmission consent dollars in 2020, but will fall to just shy of $9 billion in 2025.