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Granite Broadcasting LLC

Company type	Private
Industry	Television
Founded	1988; 38 years ago (1988)
Founders	W. Don Cornwell Stuart Beck
Fate	Acquired byQuincy Media
Successor	Quincy Media Gray Media
Headquarters	767Third Avenue, New York City,New York , United States
Key people	Peter Markham (Chairman andCEO) Duane Lammers (COO)
Owner	Silver Point Capital

Granite BroadcastingLLC is a broadcastingholding company inNew York City which owns one television station in the United States, inSyracuse, New York. Granite was founded byW. Don Cornwell and Stuart Beck in 1988,^[1] and was the first African-American station group in the United States considered to be a "major" station operator (though not the first minority-owned chain, a distinction held by the now-defunctAleut-owned Cook Inlet Broadcasting).^{[citation needed]}

Granite's chairman/CEO is Peter Markham, with Duane Lammers as COO.^[2]

W. Don Cornwell leftGoldman 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 fromMeredith Corporation, which includedWTVH inSyracuse andKSEE inFresno for $38 million.^[5]

In 1997, Granite purchased television stationKOFY-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 acquiredWBNG-TV inBinghamton fromSJL Broadcasting, which was in the process of liquidating most of its broadcasting holdings, which paid $45 million to cost.^[7]

Granite declaredChapter 11 bankruptcy^[8] on December 11, 2006, mainly due to the complications of the2006 United States broadcast television realignment which nullified the sales of the group'sDetroit andSan FranciscoThe WB affiliates due to those stations being left out ofThe CW because ofCBS 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 firmSilver Point Capital (which also acquiredComCorp later that year).

In 2011, it filed a lawsuit againstNexstar Broadcasting Group for having theFox affiliation to appear onWPTA's digital subchannel afterWFFT'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 inBuffalo, New York andWMYD in Detroit were sold to theE. W. Scripps Company^[11] for $110 million (the latter forming a duopoly with Scripps-owned ABC affiliateWXYZ-TV). Most of its remaining stations (mostly in small markets), along with theMalara Broadcast Group's two stations, went toQuincy Newspapers andSagamoreHill 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 acquireWISE, 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, Granite's last station, now serves only as an ATSC 1.0 beacon for the stations ofSinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair's main Syracuse stationWSTM 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 theATSC 3.0 standard, as does WSTM. The remaining video services operating on the WTVH license are two Sinclair-owneddigital subchannel networks, Roar and Charge.^[18] On December 17, 2025, it was announced that Granite would sell WTVH toDeerfield Media.^[19]

• Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state andcity of license.

• Company site (archived 19 January 1997)
• Company Profile at Forbes (archived 12 March 2007)
• List of company contacts and locations
• Don Cornwell interview April 17, 2000

• American companies established in 1988
• Mass media companies established in 1988
• Defunct television broadcasting companies of the United States
• Mass media companies based in New York City
• Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2006
• 2015 mergers and acquisitions
• Gray Media

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• Short description matches Wikidata
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