Granite Broadcasting
LLC
A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a ...
is a broadcasting
holding company
A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
which owns one television station in the United States, in
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, Onondaga County, New York, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in the state of New York following New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffa ...
. Granite was founded by
W. Don Cornwell and Stuart Beck in 1988,
[Cornwell And Deushane Stepping Down At Granite Broadcasting](_blank)
''Broadcasting & Cable
''Broadcasting & Cable'' (or ''Broadcasting+Cable'') is a weekly telecommunications industry trade magazine published by Future US. Previous names included ''Broadcasting-Telecasting'', ''Broadcasting and Broadcast Advertising'', and ''Broadcast ...
'', 11 August 2009, Retrieved 19 October 2018 and was the first African-American station group in the United States considered to be a "major" station operator (though not the first minority-owned chain, a distinction held by the now-defunct
Aleut
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the U ...
-owned Cook Inlet Broadcasting).
Granite's chairman/CEO is Peter Markham, with Duane Lammers as COO.
History
W. Don Cornwell left
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
' investment banking department in 1988. He co-founded founded Granite Broadcasting Corporation with Stuart Beck on February 8, 1988.
In 1993, it purchased two stations from Meredith Corporation, which included
WTVH
WTVH (channel 5) is a television station in Syracuse, New York, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is the only station whose broadcast license continues to be owned by Granite Broadcasting, a moribund company (controlled by Greenwich, Conn ...
in
Syracuse
Syracuse may refer to:
Places Italy
*Syracuse, Sicily, or spelled as ''Siracusa''
*Province of Syracuse
United States
*Syracuse, New York
**East Syracuse, New York
**North Syracuse, New York
*Syracuse, Indiana
* Syracuse, Kansas
*Syracuse, Miss ...
and
KSEE
KSEE (channel 24) is a television station in Fresno, California, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside CBS affiliate KGPE (channel 47). Both stations share studios on McKinley Avenue in eastern Fresn ...
in
Fresno for $38 million.
In 1997, Granite purchased TV station KOFY-TV for $143.8 million, becoming the largest purchase ever. Cornwell served as CEO and chairman of Granite until stepping down in 2009.
During his time with the company, Granite expanded to 23-channels and 11 markets.
In April 2006, Granite bought out
WBNG-TV
WBNG-TV (channel 12) is a television station in Binghamton, New York, United States, affiliated with CBS and CW+. The station is owned by Gray Television, and maintains studios on Columbia Drive in Johnson City and a transmitter on Ingraham Hil ...
in
Binghamton
Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the conflue ...
from
SJL Broadcasting
Sir John Lawes School (also known as SJL) is a mixed state secondary school with academy status in Harpenden, United Kingdom. The school has close links to two other local secondary schools, Roundwood Park School and St George's School, an ...
, which was in the process of liquidating its broadcasting holdings, which paid $45 million to cost.
Granite declared
Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy on December 11, 2006, mainly due to the complications of the
2006 United States broadcast TV realignment
In January 2006, America's two "second-tier" television networks, UPN and The WB, announced they would both cease operations on September 15 and 17, and their operations would be transferred to a new joint-venture "fifth" network, The CW. Meanwh ...
which nullified the sales of the group's
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
and
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
The WB
The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. ...
affiliates due to those stations being left out of
The CW
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
because of
CBS Corporation
The second incarnation of CBS Corporation (the first being a short-lived rename of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was an American multinational media conglomerate with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, and t ...
-owned stations in both cities taking the affiliation by default. It emerged from bankruptcy in June 2007 under the control of private equity firm
Silver Point Capital
Silver Point Capital is a Greenwich, Connecticut-based hedge fund that focuses on credit and special situations investments.
It was founded in 2002 by former Goldman Sachs partners, Edward A. Mulé and Robert J. O’Shea. Together, they created a ...
(which also took over
ComCorp later that year).
In 2011, it filed a lawsuit against
Nexstar Broadcasting Group
Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarter offices in Irving, Texas; Midtown Manhattan; and Chicago, Illinois. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 te ...
for having the
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
affiliation to appear on WPTA's digital subchannel after dropping it from WFFT. The suit was settled in 2013, and WFFT reclaimed the Fox affiliation.
In February 2014, Granite reached deals to sell the majority of its stations.
WKBW-TV in
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...
and
WMYD in Detroit were sold to the
E. W. Scripps Company
The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...
for $110 million (the latter forming a duopoly with Scripps-owned ABC affiliate
WXYZ-TV). Most of its remaining stations (mostly in small markets), along with the
Malara Broadcast Group's two stations, went to
Quincy Newspapers
Quincy Media, Inc., formerly known as Quincy Newspapers, Inc., was a family-owned media company that originated in the newspapers of Quincy, Illinois. The company's history can be traced back to 1835, when the ''Bounty Land Register'' was one of ...
and
SagamoreHill Broadcasting
SagamoreHill Broadcasting LLC is a privately held American holding company that owns 13 television stations based in the Great Lakes and southern United States regions. The company is a joint venture of the investment firm Duff Ackerman & Goodric ...
(which originally planned to operate the LMA-controlled stations Granite currently provides services to for Quincy).
SagamoreHill was subsequently dropped from the Quincy transaction.
In July 2015, the deal was reworked yet again to have SagamoreHill acquire WISE, the SSA between WISE and WPTA (owned by Quincy) wound down within nine months of its closure, and have all of WISE's network affiliations moved to WPTA in exchange for its The CW Plus affiliation.
On September 15, 2015, the FCC approved the deal,
Letter
''CDBS Public Access'', Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
, Retrieved 15 September 2015 which was completed on November 2.
List of stations
Current
Other notes:
*1 Owned by Granite, WTVH is operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, t ...
under a local marketing agreement
In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or tim ...
(LMA).
Former Granite-owned Stations
Other notes:
*1 Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, t ...
, Granite operated WHOI under an SSA prior to selling WEEK-TV to Quincy Newspapers in 2015.
*2 Owned by Venture Technologies Group
Venture Technologies Group, LLC is an American television broadcasting company that was founded in 1996 and based in Los Angeles, California. The company currently owns 14 television stations.
Stations owned
Stations owned through Four Season ...
(through Four Seasons Broadcasting), Granite operated WAOE under an SSA until its expiration the end of 2014. Venture Technologies Group now operates the station outright.
*3 These stations (including WPTA following its 2004 sale) were owned by Malara Broadcast Group, but operated by Granite under joint sales agreements until the sale to Quincy Newspapers and SagamoreHill Broadcasting in 2015.
References
External links
Company Site
Company Profile @ Forbes
List of company contacts and locations
Don Cornwell interview April 17, 2000
{{Gray_TV, state=collapsed
Television broadcasting companies of the United States
Mass media companies established in 1988
Mass media companies based in New York City
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2006
Gray Television
2015 mergers and acquisitions