Milton Grant
Milton Grant was an American disc jockey and owner of television stations. Born in New York City, it was in Washington, D.C., where he made his mark as a disc jockey at radio stations WINX and WOL. Beginning in the early 1950s, he began appearing on Washington television station WTTG. From 1956 to 1961, he hosted the six-time-a-week The Milt Grant Show on WTTG; it was Washington's primary teen dance show on TV and made him a Washington icon of the period. When WTTG abruptly canceled the show in 1961, Grant continued to host programs on a "Teen Network" of four regional radio stations.
In the 1960s, Grant shifted from being an on-air personality to a behind-the-scenes figure. He organized the Capital Broadcasting Company, which built Washington independent WDCA. Grant owned the station until 1969 and continued as its general manager until January 1980, when he resigned to pursue applying for and building his own station in the city. That never occurred, but Grant aligned with Sidney Shlenker and other investors to launch two independent stations in Texas in the early 1980s: KTXA in Fort Worth and KTXH in Houston. These stations were where Grant perfected his launch strategy for new stations to come on "full-grown", freely spending on syndicated programming and promotion. They were sold to Gulf Broadcasting in 1984.
Grant then started a second station group, Grant Broadcasting System, which built WBFS-TV in Miami, launched WGBS-TV in Philadelphia, and relaunched WGBO-TV in Chicago. Grant used the same strategy in these markets, and while particularly the Miami and Philadelphia outlets saw success, the prices paid for syndicated shows and a flat advertising market left the company overextended. In December 1986, GBS filed for bankruptcy protection; Grant lost control of the stations, which were transferred to a group of GBS bondholders operating as Combined Broadcasting.
In 1990, Grant returned to broadcast station ownership with the purchase of bankrupt WZDX, a Fox affiliate serving Huntsville, Alabama. The new company—known variously as Grant Communications or Grant Broadcasting System II—later acquired stations in Virginia, New York, Iowa, and Wisconsin, broadcasting Fox, The CW, and MyNetworkTV. After Grant's death in 2007, his family sold the stations to Nexstar Broadcasting Group and affiliated companies in 2014.
Early life
Grant was born on May 13, 1923, in New York City—a fact that was not well known during his life, as Grant was notoriously reticent to divulge it. He told Washington business publication Regardie's in an August 1988 cover story, "We're all so caught up in this age thing". After growing up in Plainfield, New Jersey, and studying economics and English at New York University and Columbia University, he first came to Washington after reportedly being recruited to the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, later telling stories of spying for the U.S. in north Africa and Italy.After the war, Grant returned to Columbia to finish his degree. He spent time in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at WARM, where he served as a color commentator on sportscasts. He returned to Washington in 1947 as a summer replacement at WTOP, then joined the staff of WINX as a disc jockey in 1950. By 1953, he had moved to WOL, where he hosted The Milt Grant Record Show.
''The Milt Grant Show''
Grant began appearing on television on March 7, 1954, when Washington station WTTG began airing a Sunday program known as Marion Showcase, which featured a movie, talent show, and dancing. In July 1956, Grant started a new program on the station: Milt Grant's Record Hop, which debuted on July 22, 1956, as a simulcast on WOL and WTTG. The program was supported by local police and civic organizations with the hope to be a "constructive approach" against juvenile delinquency. That October, WTTG extended a contract offer to Grant, which he accepted effective October 1; he then left WOL to become a full-time television broadcaster.Live from a ballroom at the Raleigh Hotel, The Milt Grant Show became the city's highest-rated local program by 1958. High-profile stars of the day, such as Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Frankie Avalon, Nat King Cole, Bobby Darin, Ike & Tina Turner, Harry Belafonte, Bob Hope, Connie Francis, and Fabian were guests on the show during its run. In addition to hosting the show, Grant was also the producer and sold advertising for such brands as Pepsi, Motorola, and Briggs ice cream; the kids on the program often knew the sponsors well. Grant got half of all advertising revenues in the first contract, a share that diminished as revenues increased; at one point, his contract was renegotiated because he earned more than John Kluge, the CEO of WTTG parent Metropolitan Broadcasting. The dancers—among them future reporter Carl Bernstein—were mostly White; Black dancers were only allowed on Tuesdays, and they were not allowed to dance with White partners.
In addition, Grant ventured into the record business. He founded Punch Records in December 1958, and he was one of the few DJs not to be mentioned in connection with the late-1950s payola scandals in the U.S. Prior to founding Punch, Grant had already made a connection with music. At one of Grant's record hops, Link Wray improvised a song that impressed the audience so much that Grant paid for it to be recorded at a Washington studio. Grant got songwriting credit for "Rumble"; Wray told NPR's Fresh Air in 2005, "Milt Grant smelt a dollar". Punch also released the regional hit "The Bug" by Jerry Dallman and the Knightcaps—also with a songwriting credit from Grant, though he only bought into the song—which was later featured in the soundtrack to the 1988 film Hairspray.
WTTG opted to cancel The Milt Grant Show after its April 15, 1961, edition. The move disappointed Grant, baffled media experts, and led high schoolers to picket The Washington Post, hoping to draw attention to their cause. With his cancellation from television, Grant began airing two weekend afternoon shows aired over Washington stations WPGC, WAVA, WINX, and WEEL, forming the "teen network". Shows originated live from such local haunts as recreation halls and amusement parks. However, he expressed continued fondness for the time he spent hosting The Milt Grant Show. In 1990, when he returned to Washington for a National Archives screening of the only surviving footage of the program, he told the assembled crowd, "It was a very important time of my life. We were part of the great new beginning of television and there was just so much energy. It made me fall in love with television and all its powers." Grant would later note the importance of his disc jockey years in his career as a television station owner: "I learned about the audiences and how to influence them so they respond to what you ask them to do."
WDCA-TV
A company headed by Grant, Capital Broadcasting Company, applied in November 1962 to build ultra high frequency channel 20 in Washington. The permit was awarded the next year, and WDCA-TV began broadcasting on April 20, 1966, emphasizing sports programming. With his pivot from talent to management, Grant stopped going by "Milt" and instead preferred "Milton". Grant sold the station to Superior Tube Company, a Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of metal tubing products, in 1969, but he remained station president and general manager. In a 1986 interview, Grant would admit that he "went to school" managing WDCA-TV, which—as a UHF station competing in a four-VHF market—was at a disadvantage. He told Broadcasting magazine, "No one had ever heard of UHF."During Grant's management tenure at channel 20, the station cemented itself as the second independent in Washington, behind WTTG, with a counterprogramming approach to program scheduling. Local programs ranged from monkey races during afternoon cartoons to late-night horror movies and coverage of the Washington Bullets basketball and Washington Capitals hockey teams.
Grant–Shlenker partnership
Superior Tube sold WDCA-TV to Taft Broadcasting for $15.5 million in 1979. Shortly after, Grant left channel 20 and applied for Washington's then-vacant channel 14. One reason he left was because his work habits—a late start and finish—clashed with the corporate culture of Taft.While that application was adjudicated, Grant joined a consortium led by Sidney Shlenker that was building two new independent stations in Texas. On January 4, 1981, KTXA began broadcasting to the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It aired a mix of subscription television programs from ON TV and conventionally available independent shows. November 1982 brought KTXH in Houston, which was a full-time commercial independent.
At the Texas stations, Grant iterated on a strategy that would initially be successful. KTXA had been the second of three new stations in six months in the Dallas–Fort Worth market, all of them hybrid commercial/subscription stations. In contrast to the other two hybrid startups that "merely appeared", Ed Bark of The Dallas Morning News wrote that KTXA had "burst into living rooms like a world-champion encyclopedia salesman", with nearly ubiquitous billboards, high-profile programming, and an emphasis on weekend movies. Grant declared the first month of KTXH—similarly fueled by high-profile programming and a plan to spend $250,000 on advertising in just two months—a success, fulfilling his goal of signing on a "full-grown TV station". KTXH also benefited from its other owners, which included Shlenker—owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team—and the Houston Sports Association, owner of the Houston Astros. Both teams were broadcast on the new station.
The pairing of KTXA and KTXH had proven to be successful and highly lucrative. Grant's aggressive programming and promotions strategy, plus a favorable climate for independent stations nationally, made the two stations highly profitable and attracted major bidders. Outlet Communications, the broadcasting division of The Outlet Company of Rhode Island, was one of several parties negotiating to buy KTXA and KTXH. However, negotiations fell through, and Grant instead sold the pair to the Gulf Broadcast Group for $158 million in May 1984. The sale was held up for several months at the FCC, which conditioned the purchase on Gulf divesting FM stations in both cities. The sale price was considered unprecedented given the short period of operation of the stations.