Granite Broadcasting


Granite Broadcasting LLC is a broadcasting holding company in New York City which owns one television station in the United States, in Syracuse, New York. Granite was founded by W. Don Cornwell and Stuart Beck in 1988, and was the first African-American station group in the United States considered to be a "major" station operator.
Granite's chairman/CEO is Peter Markham, with Duane Lammers as COO.
WWW Official Site

History

W. Don Cornwell left Goldman Sachs' investment banking department in 1988. He co-founded Granite Broadcasting Corporation with Stuart Beck on February 8, 1988. In 1993, it purchased two stations from Meredith Corporation, which included WTVH in Syracuse and KSEE in Fresno for $38 million.
In 1997, Granite purchased television station KOFY-TV for $143.8 million, becoming their largest station purchase. Cornwell was CEO and chairman of Granite until resigning in 2009. During his time with the company, Granite expanded to 23 channels and 11 markets. 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.
Granite declared Chapter 11, Title 11, [United States Code|Chapter 11 bankruptcy] 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. It emerged from bankruptcy in June 2007, under the control of private equity firm Silver Point Capital.
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.
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 for $110 million. Most of its remaining stations, along with the Malara Broadcast Group's two stations, went to Quincy Newspapers and SagamoreHill Broadcasting. SagamoreHill was subsequently withdrawn from the Quincy transaction.
In July 2015, a reworked deal was reached to have SagamoreHill acquire WISE, the SSA between WISE and WPTA, 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. On September 15, 2015, the FCC approved the deal, which was completed on November 2.
WTVH, Granite's last station, 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. On December 17, 2025, it was announced that Granite would sell WTVH to Deerfield Media.

Station list

Former

Media marketStateStationPurchasedSoldNotes
FresnoCaliforniaKSEE19932013
San Francisco–San JoseCaliforniaKNTV19902002
San Francisco–San JoseCaliforniaKOFY-TV19982018
PeoriaIllinoisWEEK-TV19882015
PeoriaIllinoisWHOI20092015
PeoriaIllinoisWAOE19992014
Fort WayneIndianaWPTA19892005
Fort WayneIndianaWISE-TV20052015
DetroitMichiganWMYD19972014
KalamazooMichiganWWMT19951998
LansingMichiganWLAJ19961998
ChisholmMinnesotaKRII20022015
DuluthMinnesotaKBJR-TV19882015
DuluthMinnesotaKDLH20052015
BinghamtonNew YorkWBNG-TV20062015
BuffaloNew YorkWKBW-TV19952014
AustinTexasKEYE-TV19941999