MarketLilly Broadcasting
Company Profile

Lilly Broadcasting

Lilly Broadcasting, LLC is a privately owned American broadcasting company owned and operated by the Lilly Brothers.

History
WJRT-TV was sold to SJL Broadcast Management in 1989. In 1991, a SJL affiliated partnership, Media Communications Partners Limited Partnership, purchased WTVG. SJL announced the sale of WJRT-TV and WTVG to Capital Cities/ABC for $155 million in October 1994 after CBS signed a long-term deal with Meredith Corporation, owner of Flint's NBC affiliate, WNEM-TV. NBC was rumored to be courting WJRT-TV as a possible replacement for WNEM, prompting Capital Cities/ABC to buy the stations outright. The deal resulted in WTVG converting from an NBC affiliate to ABC. In 2002, SJL sold off WOWK-TV to West Virginia Media Holdings for $40.5 million. In April 2006, SJL sold off WBNG-TV to Granite Broadcasting for $45 million, this was followed on July 26, 2006 by selling WTAJ-TV and the licensee assets of WLYH-TV to Nexstar Broadcasting Group for $56 million, completely undoing the Gateway/SJL deal. On July 24, 2007, Montecito announced the sale of all of its remaining stations except WICU (KHON-TV, KOIN, KSNW and KSNT) to New Vision Television, ending the partnership between SJL and The Blackstone Group. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted approval of this sale in late-October of that year, and ownership was officially transferred on November 1. On March 1, 2009, the last station formally owned by SJL, WICU, transferred its copyrights to Lilly Broadcasting when it merged its news operations with crosstown sister station WSEE-TV. Though SJL still technically exists (and still ostensibly owns WICU), its visible operations have now been subsumed by Lilly Broadcasting. On November 3, 2010, Broadcasting & Cable magazine announced that SJL Broadcasting made an agreement with Disney to buy back WJRT-TV and WTVG, the two smallest stations in ABC's O&O portfolio. The sale was completed on April 1, 2011 with both stations general manager exiting their positions at change of ownership. Lilly announced on July 24, 2014, that it would sell both WJRT and WTVG to Gray Television in a $128 million transaction. In 2016, Gray announced that it would operate its bureau in Washington, DC, in cooperation with Lilly. On May 13, 2015, Hearst Television announced that it would sell KITV in Honolulu, Hawaii, and its satellites (KHVO in Hilo and KMAU in Wailuku) to SJL; the deal marks the return of the company to Hawaii, following its prior ownership of KHON-TV. The sale was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on July 10, 2015 and completed on September 1, 2015. Lilly Broadcasting re-entered radio in 2019 by purchasing the three-station cluster in Warren, Pennsylvania, that had previously been owned by Frank Iorio's Radio Partners; Iorio sold off his only other broadcast asset, Pittsburgh's WJAS, to another buyer in 2020. Lilly had previously owned and operated radio stations in Elmira before selling those off a few years after acquiring that cluster. On June 1 and September 2023, Lilly obtained the ABC and Fox affiliations for Guam respectively, as two cable-only channels after local KTGM and KEQI-LD were forced off the air as result of the damage produced by Typhoon Mawar in may 2023 on its transmitting facilities and studios. The company would latter make an offer to buy the two licenses from Sorensen Media Group and reconstruct their transmitting facilities in 2025. After both KEQI-LD and KTGM resumed operations on October 29 and 31 respectively, the FCC approved the sale on January 6, 2026 In April 2025, Lilly acquired WVXF, WVGN-LD in U.S. Virgin Islands and WSJP-LD in Puerto Rico from Caribbean Broadcasting. In December 2025, the company announced the establishment of the Glenora Radio Network, as its radio division merges with MediaOne Radio Group (the company holding a monopoly on radio in Jamestown, New York and also owning stations in Ashtabula, Ohio) under Lilly ownership. == Stations ==
Stations
Current stations • Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and city of license. Non-broadcast One Caribbean TelevisionCBS Puerto RicoCW IN TV Former stations ==Notes==
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