Grant Broadcasting

Grant Broadcasting System II (also referred to as Grant Communications and Grant Company) was an owner of various television stations in the United States, Based in Roanoke, Virginia.

Grant Broadcasting was founded in 1990 by Milton Grant (May 13, 1923 — April 28, 2007), who, in addition to being President of Grant Broadcasting, also served as President and General Manager for many of his stations.

Milton Grant began his career as a radio news director in his hometown of New York City. In the early 1950s he moved to Washington, D.C., where he became the host of several music programs, one of which (America's First Teen Radio Network) was heard simultaneously on four of the city's radio stations (WAVA, WPGC, WINX, WEEL). Grant moved to television in 1956 when he hosted a popular dance program for WTTG, The Milt Grant Show, which ran until 1961.

Grant's first foray into station ownership first came in 1966 when his new company, the Capitol Broadcasting Corporation, established WDCA-TV. That station was sold to the Superior Tube Company in 1969, but Grant remained with the station as its General Manager until WDCA was sold to Taft Broadcasting in 1979.

In 1981, Grant was part of an investment group who launched KTXA in Fort Worth, Texas (in 1981) and KTXH in Houston (in 1982). Grant both sold stations to Gulf Broadcasting in 1985 and days later these two stations were sold in a group deal to Taft Broadcasting.

In 1985, while preparing for the sale of KTXA and KTXH, Grant started the original Grant Broadcasting System, beginning with the sign-on of WBFS-TV in Miami in 1984, and later with the 1985 acquisitions of WGBO-TV in Joliet, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), and WGBS-TV 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.

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