Guy Gannett Communications

Guy Gannett Communications was a family-owned business consisting of newspapers in Maine and a handful of television stations in the eastern United States. The company was founded by its namesake, Guy P. Gannett, in 1921, and managed by a family trust from 1954 to 1998, when it sold most of its properties to The Seattle Times Company and Sinclair Broadcast Group.

William Howard Gannett, of Augusta, Maine, first published Comfort magazine in 1888—an eight-page advertisement for a patent medicine—but it was his son, Guy Patterson Gannett, who headed the push into daily journalism. After a stint helping with the magazine after his 1901 graduation from Yale University, the junior Gannett went into local politics. By 1920, he was a prominent citizen in Portland and two daily newspaper owners—representing the Portland Herald and the Portland Daily Press—had asked him to buy them out. Gannett invested in both companies.

In 1921, he completed his purchase of the two Portland papers, merging them into one Portland Press Herald, and also bought the Waterville Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Maine. In 1925 he added, for US$550,000, the Portland Evening Express and Daily Advertiser and Portland Sunday Telegram. Four years later, Guy Gannett Publishing Co. tacked on the Kennebec Journal in Augusta.

At first, the company expanded beyond newspapers with WGAN radio (1938) and television (1954) stations in Portland only (WGAN-TV was renamed WGME in the 1980s). In 1967, Guy Gannett began to buy television properties outside Maine.

On February 1, 1991, succumbing to industry-wide declines in revenues at afternoon newspapers, Guy Gannett closed the Evening Express and merged it with the Portland Press Herald. Daily circulation of the Express was given at 22,000 to 23,000.