Roberts Broadcasting Company is a media company based in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

. It is a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

of the parent company, the Roberts Companies, one of the largest

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

-owned conglomerates. It is co-owned by brothers

Steven Stephen or Steven is an English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; he is widely regarded as the firs ...

and Michael Roberts.

History

Problems

Roberts Broadcasting filed for

Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 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, wh ...

on October 7, 2011; the company cited the loss of the UPN affiliations for WRBU, WZRB, and WRBJ when that network shut down in favor of The CW in 2006, as much of UPN's programming consisted of minority-targeted programs that Roberts felt were compatible with their stations' target audiences (though the stations have since recovered from this setback; additionally, WAZE had instead affiliated with

The WB The WB Television Network (shortened to The WB, stylized as "THE WB", and nicknamed the "Frog Network" and/or "The Frog" for its former mascot Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network that ran from 1995 to 2006. It launched on ter ...

prior to 2006, as it was owned by South Central Communications until February 2007). The company has also been hit with lawsuits from Warner Bros. Television, Twentieth Television, and

CBS Television Distribution CBS Media Ventures, Inc. (formerly CBS Paramount Domestic Television and CBS Television Distribution) is the television broadcast syndication arm of CBS Studios, a division of the CBS Entertainment Group, in turn a division of Paramount Global, ...

over fees for syndicated programming; Roberts eventually settled with Twentieth but lost the Warner Bros. and CBS cases. On March 24, 2011, the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

(FCC) canceled WAZE's license for failure to construct its digital facilities. However, the station continued to broadcast via their analog translator station network of three stations. On February 20, 2012, Roberts Broadcasting announced it was exploring the possibility of selling one or all four of its television stations in order to raise enough cash to pay off its creditors. On October 22, 2012, Roberts announced that it had sold WRBJ to

Trinity Broadcasting Network The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN; legally Trinity Broadcasting of Texas, Inc.) is an international Christian-based broadcast television network and the world's largest religious television network. TBN solicits donations on its Web site, a ...

; the deal was approved by a bankruptcy court on January 17, 2013, and TBN officially took over operational control of WRBJ five months later, on May 24, 2013. The CW would return to the Jackson area on WJTV-DT2 in September 2013. On January 3, 2013, the repeater network of WAZE ceased operations, with

WTVW WTVW (channel 7) is a television station in Evansville, Indiana, United States, serving as a ''de facto'' owned-and-operated station of The CW. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Nexst ...

hurriedly joining the CW at the end of the month to maintain the network in the Evansville area.Jake's DTV Blog: "WAZE-TV translators shut down", January 3, 2013.
In April 2013, WRBU dropped

MeTV MeTV, an acronym for Memorable Entertainment Television, is an American broadcast television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting. Marketed as "The Definitive Destination for Classic TV", the network airs a variety of classic television progra ...

as a sub-channel; that network now airs in St. Louis on a

KMOV KMOV (channel 4) is a television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, affiliated with CBS and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Gray Media alongside low-power station KDTL-LD (channel 4.6). The two stations share studios on Progress Park ...

sub-channel. On December 2, 2013, Roberts filed to sell WZRB to Radiant Light Ministries, a subsidiary of

Tri-State Christian Television Tri-State Christian Television, Inc., trade name, doing business as TCT Network and TCT Ministries (formerly Total Christian Television), is a religious broadcasting, religious television network in the United States. The network was founded in M ...

, for $2 million. On December 4, Roberts also filed to sell WRBU to TCT for $5.5 million. However, on December 11, the

United States bankruptcy court United States bankruptcy courts are courts created under Article I of the United States Constitution. The current system of bankruptcy courts was created by the United States Congress in 1978, effective April 1, 1984. United States bankruptcy ...

gave initial approval for a plan by Roberts' creditors to instead transfer WRBU, WZRB, and the WAZE repeaters to a trust with Ion Media Networks (a creditor in Roberts' Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings) as its beneficiary, with Roberts' attorney subsequently stating that Ion would purchase the stations for $7.75 million. Roberts had earlier proposed an alternate plan that would have had only the WAZE repeaters be transferred to the trust, which would have allowed the sale of WRBU and WZRB to TCT. The FCC approved the deal on February 2, 2014, and both WZRB and WRBU became Ion Television O&O afterwards. WZRB would keep carrying CW as second affiliate, but WKTC announced that they would become a CW affiliate on March 17.

Stations

Radio stations

(*)Lease Agreement with Gateway Creative Broadcasting, Inc.

Former television stations

References

{{Reflist

External links

Michael V. RobertsRoberts Companies
Companies based in St. Louis Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2011