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 ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

which owns one television station in the United States, in Syracuse, New York. Granite was founded by

W. Don Cornwell W. Don Cornwell (born January 17, 1948) is a retired investment banker and broadcast media executive. He was the founder, CEO, and Chairman of Granite Broadcasting, which at the time was the largest television broadcast company controlled by an ...

and Stuart Beck in 1988,Cornwell And Deushane Stepping Down At Granite Broadcasting
''

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 ''Broadca ...

'', 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

left Goldman Sachs' 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, C ...

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, M ...

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 Fre ...

Fresno Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

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 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 confluenc ...

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 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whet ...

(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 ...

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 terrestrial television, broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture be ...

affiliates due to those stations being left out of

The CW ''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 ...

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, an ...

-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 ...

(which also took over

ComCorp Communications Corporation of America (also known as ComCorp) was a broadcasting company in the United States that owned television stations in smaller markets. The company was headquartered in Lafayette, Louisiana. It owned and/or operated 20 s ...

later that year). In 2011, it filed a lawsuit against Nexstar Broadcasting Group 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''). Twelv ...

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 WKBW-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios at 7 Broadcast Plaza in downtown Buffalo and a transmitter on Center Street ...

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 Sou ...

and WMYD in Detroit were sold to the E. W. Scripps Company for $110 million (the latter forming a duopoly with Scripps-owned ABC affiliate

WXYZ-TV WXYZ-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside independent station WMYD (channel 20). Both stations share studios at Broadcast House on 10 ...

). 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 jurisd ...

, 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, ...

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

, Granite operated WHOI under an SSA prior to selling WEEK-TV to Quincy Newspapers in 2015. *² Owned by Venture Technologies Group (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 SiteCompany Profile @ ForbesList of company contacts and locationsDon 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