If you've been following the private credit conversation this year from the software stress, the headlines on private credit cockroaches, to the maturity wall building toward 2027,  you know how hard it is to find one resource that actually maps the full picture without either panicking or cheerleading.

Octus just published that resource.

Opportunity, Stress, Resilience: The Matured Private Credit Mandate is a data-driven walkthrough of where private credit actually stands heading into the back half of 2026. Not vibes. Not headlines. The numbers are pulled from the most comprehensive BDC dataset in the market (Octus tracks over 170 public and private BDCs–100% of the space–not just the marquee names everyone else covers).

Here's what's inside:

The real nonaccrual picture. $7B in nonaccruals, up 12% and 6% in the last two quarters, respectively. 23% nonaccrual rate in IT. Only 15% of nonaccrual loans exit cleanly. The data to actually size this stress cycle.

The $800B AI infrastructure opportunity. Banks aren't touching large-scale data center construction. The traditional loan market isn't ready to step up to the table--but private credit is.

The maturity wall and secondary market boom. $3B+ in nonaccrual loans mature through 2027. Meanwhile the secondaries market hit $20B in 2025 on a 70% CAGR. Octus maps both.

The stress is real. The opportunity is real. The difference between the two is the data, the players, and your strategy. Download the whitepaper here. 

Welcome back!

We’re going to talk about the Broadcasting industry today. This is an industry that is extremely reliant on political ad spend cycles, as well as how the NFL elects to distribute primetime and playoff games.

Let’s get into it.

TV broadcasters transmit video and audio through over-the-air radio waves, allowing anyone with an antenna to receive transmissions for free. Station groups such as Nexstar, TEGNA, Sinclair, Gray, and Scripps, own local TV channels that act as affiliates for major networks such as ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS. They earn revenue from retransmission fees and local advertising. These companies are regulated by the FCC, who enforces ownership caps that have grown to be a little antiquated as tech giant new entrants swooped in.

The TV broadcasting industry was at its prime in the early 2000s as linear TV’s viewership and wallet share of ad spend reached its peak. During this period, broadcasting companies increased leverage to be serial strategic acquirers of television stations to increase their reach and concentration. Since then, the rise of streaming services and other digital alternatives has resulted in cord cutting and a subsequent mass migration of viewership and ad spend. The shift away from cable accelerated rapidly during the late 2010s through early 2020s.

The traditional TV broadcasting industry is now a permanent fixture of the distressed credit scene, with a slew of out-of-court transactions taking place over the past few years as a function of a revenue profile in secular decline, elevated debt levels, and an increasingly fixed cost structure. With FCC approval of the Nexstar-TEGNA deal pending, the industry is now at a crossroads. Approval would open the gates for further consolidation, and rejection would crank the heat up on the already melting ice cube.

In this week’s piece, we will be taking a deep dive into the historic industry, its key players, the competitive dynamics, and where the industry is going from here. We will then describe the loopholes companies are already using to circumvent FCC regulation regarding ownership concentration. From there, we will turn to the contemplated Nexstar-TEGNA transaction (which is currently set for an appeals court trial).

The TV value chain is broadly composed of three types of companies: national networks, broadcasters, and distributors. National networks produce high-budget content that will be broadcast to households across the country. The largest networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) are collectively known as the “Big 4.” This classification will be important when we discuss relevant FCC regulation. Moving downstream, broadcasters (e.g., Nexstar and TEGNA) operate local TV stations that air both national network content (via affiliate agreements) and local news and advertisements. National network content typically occupies primetime slots when viewership peaks, and local programs occupy the remaining time. The traditional transmission model entails a TV station paying a transmission fee to infrastructure providers to send its signal over-the-air (OTA) directly to TVs with antennas.