Multimedia, Inc. was a media company that owned 12 daily newspapers, 49 weekly newspapers, two radio stations, five television stations, and a cable television system division. The company was headquartered in
Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville (; locally ) is a city in and the seat of Greenville County, South Carolina, United States. With a population of 70,720 at the 2020 census, it is the sixth-largest city in the state. Greenville is located approximately halfway be ...
.
History
Multimedia's origins can be traced to December 1932, when the News-Piedmont Company of Greenville, which published the ''Greenville News'' and ''Greenville Piedmont'' newspapers, acquired radio station WFBC, only weeks after the station relocated to Greenville from Knoxville, Tennessee. In November 1953 the News-Piedmont Co. acquired majority ownership of the ''Asheville Citizen'' and ''Asheville Times'' and its wholly owned radio station, WWNC. WFBC-TV, the ''News'' and ''Piedmonts television station, signed on from Greenville at the end of 1953.
The News-Piedmont Co. would expand its broadcast holdings with the acquisitions of WBIR-AM-FM-TV in Knoxville in 1961, and of the Southeastern Broadcasting Company, which owned WMAZ-AM-FM-TV in
Macon, Georgia
Macon ( ), officially Macon–Bibb County, is a consolidated city-county in the U.S. state of Georgia. Situated near the fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is located southeast of Atlanta and lies near the geographic center of the state of Geo ...
, in 1963. Then, in September 1967 the three commonly owned companies were merged, taking on the Multimedia, Inc. name. At the time Multimedia consisted of the Asheville and Greenville newspapers, three television stations and seven radio stations.
The company's biggest purchases came in 1976, when it purchased several properties from Cincinnati-based Avco, which was liquidating its media holdings. Multimedia first bought Avco's flagship television station, WLWT in Cincinnati, and later acquired Avco Program Sales, the syndication division which produced and nationally distributed '' The Phil Donahue Show'' and a regionally-distributed program produced at WLWT, ''
The Bob Braun Show
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in En ...
''. This division would be renamed Multimedia Program Sales.
The company was involved in one of the more unusual media transactions in history. In 1983, it sold its flagship television station, WFBC-TV in Greenville (now WYFF) and WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to
Pulitzer, Inc.
Pulitzer, Inc. was an American media company who owned newspapers, television stations and radio stations across the United States. Founded by Joseph Pulitzer (who also funded the Pulitzer Prizes, which are not affiliated with the company), its p ...
In return, Multimedia received Pulitzer's former flagship television station, KSDK in St. Louis. Multimedia used its new purchase as the testing ground for a new show hosted by Sally Jessy Raphael.
General Electric's NBC unit was considered to buy the company in 1995, but the deal never materialized.
On July 24, 1995, the
Gannett Company
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.FCC in November 1995 and was completed a month later, on December 4.
and after the sale was finalized, in November 1996, Gannett sold Multimedia Entertainment to
MCA
MCA may refer to:
Astronomy
* Mars-crossing asteroid, an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Mars
Aviation
* Minimum crossing altitude, a minimum obstacle crossing altitude for fixes on published airways
* Medium Combat Aircraft, a 5th gene ...
subsidiary of Seagram. In January 2000 the cable television division, which included systems in Kansas, Oklahoma and North Carolina was sold to
Cox Communications
Cox Communications, Inc. (also known as Cox Cable and formerly Cox Broadcasting Corporation, Dimension Cable Services and Times-Mirror Cable) is an American digital cable television provider, telecommunications and home automation services. It i ...
. The North Carolina systems were resold to
Suddenlink Communications
Suddenlink was an American telecommunications subsidiary of Altice USA trading in cable television, broadband, IP telephony, home security, and advertising. Prior to its acquisition by Altice, the company was the seventh largest cable operator wi ...
in 2006.
The Multimedia name lives on as a holding company and licensee within what is now
Tegna Inc.
Tegna Inc. (stylized in all caps as TEGNA) is an American publicly traded broadcast, digital media and marketing services company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia. It was created on June 29, 2015, when the Gannett Company split into tw ...
Stations are listed in alphabetical order by state and city of license.
Television stations
Note: two boldface asterisks appearing following a station's call letters (**) indicate a station that was built and signed on by a predecessor company of Multimedia.
Footnotes:
*1 Multimedia purchased only a simple majority (51 percent) stake in WKYC-TV from NBC in 1991. Gannett retained the same share until 1999, when it purchased the remaining portion (49 percent) from NBC.