The Dispatch Broadcast Group was a media company based in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...

. The group was a division of the Dispatch Printing Company, former owner of the ''

Columbus Dispatch ''The Columbus Dispatch'' is a daily newspaper based in Columbus, Ohio. Its first issue was published on July 1, 1871, and it has been the only mainstream daily newspaper in the city since '' The Columbus Citizen-Journal'' ceased publication i ...

'', and was owned by the Wolfe family since 1929 until its sale to

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, Virginia. It was created on June 29, 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publ ...

in mid-2019. The Dispatch Broadcast Group included the Columbus

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

-affiliate WBNS television, radio stations

WBNS (AM) WBNS (1460 kHz) — branded ''1460 ESPN Columbus'' — is a commercial AM radio radio station in Columbus, Ohio. The station broadcasts a sports talk format and carries ESPN Radio programming. It is owned by Tegna Inc., along with WBNS-FM (97.1& ...

and

WBNS-FM WBNS-FM (97.1 MHz) – branded ''97.1 The Fan'' – is a commercial sports radio station in Columbus, Ohio. It and WBNS (1460 AM) are the only two radio stations currently owned by television company Tegna, Inc. The studios are co-located wi ...

in Columbus, the statewide Ohio News Network, and

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

-affiliate

WTHR WTHR (channel 13) is a television station in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside low-power broadcasting#Television, low-power, Class A television service, Class A MeTV affiliate WALV-CD ( ...

television in

Indianapolis Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...

(formerly WLW-I) which was purchased in 1975. On April 24, 2013, former WBNS-TV news director John Cardenas was named president and general manager of the station and vice president of broadcast news for the Dispatch Broadcast Group. On December 7, 2018, Dispatch Broadcast Group president and

general manager Larry Delia commented to the ''

Indianapolis Business Journal ''Indianapolis Business Journal'', often abbreviated ''IBJ'', is a weekly newspaper published in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. ''IBJ'' reports on Central Indiana business. It is the leading publication of IBJ Media. Its economic columnists includ ...

'' that the company may consider buying divested

Nexstar Media Group Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarters in Irving, Texas, Midtown Manhattan, and Chicago. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 television station ...

stations as Nexstar readies to buy

Tribune Media Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Through Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Media was one of the largest television broadcasting companies, owning 39 ...

. On June 11, 2019, it was reported the Dispatch Broadcast Group had sold its television and radio assets to Tegna Inc. for the sale price of $535 million. The sale was completed on August 8."TEGNA Completes Acquisition of Dispatch Broadcast Group’s Leading, Top Ranked Stations in Indianapolis, IN and Columbus, OH"

, August 8, 2019, Retrieved August 8, 2019.

References

Tegna Inc. Defunct broadcasting companies of the United States Companies based in the Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area 1929 establishments in Ohio Mass media companies disestablished in 2019 2019 disestablishments in Ohio 2019 mergers and acquisitions {{US-media-company-stub