Grant Broadcasting System II
Based in
Roanoke, Virginia,
Grant Broadcasting System II (also known as "Grant Broadcasting") is an owner of various TV stations in the US, mainly Fox affiliates in the midwest.
Grant Broadcasting was founded in 1990 by Milton Grant, who, in addition to being President of Grant Broadcasting, also serves as President and General Manager for many of his stations.
Milton Grant was originally a radio announcer and host in the Washington, DC area, whose program in the 1950s was heard simultaneously on many of the capitol's radio stations. Later in the 1950s, he hosted a popular dance program for
WTTG,
The Milt Grant Show.
Grant's first foray into station ownership first came in 1966, when his new company, the Capitol Broadcasting Corporation, established
WDCA. That station was sold off to the Superior Tube Company in 1969. (WDCA is currently owned by
Fox, as a
UPN affiliate.)
In 1980, Grant was part of an investment group who established
KTXA in Dallas and
KTXH in Houston, both sold off to
Gulf Broadcasting in 1985. (
KTXA is now owned by
CBS, while
Fox owns
KTXH. Both are affiliated with
UPN.)
In 1984, while preparing for the sale of KTXA and KTXH, Grant established the original Grant Broadcasting System, starting with
WBFS in Miami, then later expanding to the acquisitions of
WGBO in Chicago and
WGBS in Philadelphia. However, in 1987, this first incarnation of Grant Broadcasting went bankrupt, after overpaying for syndicated programming, while its competitors took the best barter programming. It was even worse in Chicago, where all of WGBO's competitors took all the bartered shows available to them, leaving WGBO with holding the bag.
In 1989, Grant's stations were repossessed by its creditors after Grant failed to meet the bankruptcy agreements. The creditors used these stations to form "Combined Broadcasting" (no relation to the earlier "Combined Communications", which was sold in the early-1980s to
Gannett). Today,
CBS owns
WBFS and WGBS (now
WPSG) as
UPN affiliates, while
WGBO became a station owned and operated by and affiliated with
Univision.
In 1990, Grant started to rebuild is broadcasting empire, under the name "Grant Communications", later renamed "Grant Broadcasting System II" (the "II" representing his second try to build a chain). His first station was
Huntsville, Alabama's
WZDX, which he acquired in March 1990.
Today, Grant owns five TV stations. He was also a former owner of
Buffalo's
WB affiliate,
WNYO-TV, which he acquired in 1996, but sold off to
Sinclair in 2001.
Grant Broadcasting stations share a logo style: even the original 3 Grant stations used this style. It consists of a colored channel number with white extensions around it mimicking the edges of the channel number.
*
KLJB â€" biography of Milton Grant
