The company traces its roots to the founding of the
Superior Evening Telegram in 1890 by John T. Murphy. He died in 1932, and the business passed to his son John Morgan Murphy, who acquired several other newspapers in the Upper Midwest and also expanded into broadcasting. The company sold off its print interests in 2003, leaving only its former broadcasting division. Nevertheless, it is still legally incorporated as the "Evening Telegram Company." The company was known as
Morgan Murphy Stations until 2007, when its trade name was slightly changed to
Morgan Murphy Media. On May 10, 2017, the company announced that it would acquire Saga Communications' television clusters in
Joplin, Missouri, including
KOAM-TV, and
Victoria, Texas, including
KAVU-TV. Saga will additionally acquire the assets of Fox affiliates in each market owned by Surtsey Media and operated by Saga under
local marketing agreements, including
KFJX in Joplin, Missouri and
KVCT in Victoria, Texas. Those stations' license assets were acquired by
SagamoreHill Broadcasting. The sale was completed September 1. In September 2018, it was announced that the company would invest in
Good Karma Brands to back its acquisition of the Milwaukee radio stations
WKTI and
WTMJ. On October 13, 2021, the company dropped its channels from
Dish Network due to a programming dispute. This dispute is in addition to Dish's dispute with
Tegna and is the 2nd time that a satellite TV company was involved with such conflicts (
DIRECTV had a conflict with the companies' stations in December 2020). In September 2023, the company acquired
The Marks Group's Michigan broadcasting properties—
WBKB-TV,
WBKP,
WBUP, and the
Houghton and
Iron River radio stations—for $13.375 million. The deal was closed on December 4. Morgan Murphy subsequently took over operations of
WJMN-TV, owned by Sullivan's Landing, LLC (following its acquisition from
Nexstar Media Group), via
joint sales and shared services agreements; WJMN-TV merged its operations into, and was converted into a satellite of, WBUP. ==Television stations==