Granite Broadcasting

W. Don Cornwell left Goldman Sachs' investment banking department in 1988. He co-founded Granite Broadcasting Corporation with Stuart Beck on February 8, 1988.^[3][4] In 1993, it purchased two stations from Meredith Corporation, which included WTVH in Syracuse and KSEE in Fresno for $38 million.^[5]

In 1997, Granite purchased television station KOFY-TV for $143.8 million, becoming their largest station purchase.^[6] Cornwell was CEO and chairman of Granite until resigning in 2009.^[4] During his time with the company, Granite expanded to 23 channels and 11 markets.^[1] In April 2006, Granite acquired WBNG-TV in Binghamton from SJL Broadcasting, which was in the process of liquidating most of its broadcasting holdings, which paid $45 million to cost.^[7]

Granite declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy^[8] on December 11, 2006, mainly due to the complications of the 2006 United States broadcast television realignment which nullified the sales of the group's Detroit and San Francisco The WB affiliates due to those stations being left out of The CW because of CBS Corporation-owned stations in both cities taking the affiliation by default.^[9] It emerged from bankruptcy in June 2007, under the control of private equity firm Silver Point Capital (which also acquired ComCorp later that year).

In 2011, it filed a lawsuit against Nexstar Broadcasting Group for having the Fox affiliation to appear on WPTA's digital subchannel after WFFT's removal of it. The suit was settled in 2013, and WFFT reclaimed the Fox affiliation.^[10]

In February 2014, Granite reached deals to sell the majority of its stations. WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York and WMYD in Detroit were sold to the E. W. Scripps Company^[11] for $110 million (the latter forming a duopoly with Scripps-owned ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV). Most of its remaining stations (mostly in small markets), along with the Malara Broadcast Group's two stations, went to Quincy Newspapers and SagamoreHill Broadcasting (which originally planned to operate the LMA-controlled stations Granite currently provides services to for Quincy).^[12][13] SagamoreHill was subsequently withdrawn from the Quincy transaction.^[14]

In July 2015, a reworked deal was reached to have SagamoreHill acquire WISE, the SSA between WISE and WPTA (owned by Quincy), and have all of WISE's network affiliations moved to WPTA in exchange for its The CW Plus affiliation within nine months of the closure.^[15] On September 15, 2015, the FCC approved the deal,^[16] which was completed on November 2.^[17]

WTVH, which was the last remaining station in Granite's portfolio from 2018 until 2026, now serves only as an ATSC 1.0 beacon for the stations of Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair's main Syracuse station WSTM has operated WTVH under a local marketing agreement since 2009; on December 1, 2025, Sinclair moved WTVH's programming to a newly licensed station under its own ownership, WKOF, which operates on the ATSC 3.0 standard, as does WSTM. The remaining video services operating on the WTVH license are two Sinclair-owned digital subchannel networks, Roar and Charge.^[18] On December 17, 2025, it was announced that Granite would sell WTVH to Deerfield Media;^[19] which was completed on February 13, 2026.^[20]

Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and city of license.