E. W. Scripps Company

Scripps headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio
Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: SSP (Class A) S&P 600 Component
Industry	Broadcast television, broadcast radio
Founded	November 2, 1878; 142 years ago (November 2, 1878) (as the Penny Press) in Cleveland, Ohio
Founder	Edward W. Scripps
Headquarters	Cincinnati, Ohio , United States
Key people	Rich Boehne (chairman) Adam P. Symson (President & CEO)
Revenue	US$1.42 billion (2019)
Operating income	US$127 million (2016)
Subsidiaries	Ion Media Katz Broadcasting Triton Digital
Website	www.scripps.com

The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is headquartered inside the Scripps Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.^[1] Its corporate motto is "Give light and the people will find their own way", which is symbolized by the media empire's longtime lighthouse logo.^[2]

In terms of market reach, Scripps is the second largest operator of ABC (which is owned by The Walt Disney Company by way of its Walt Disney Television subsidiary) affiliates, behind the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and ahead of Hearst Television and Tegna. Through Ion Media, it owns Ion Television, Ion Plus and Qubo (the latter two will cease broadcasting on February 28, 2021).

History

19th century

The E. W. Scripps Company was a newspaper company founded on November 2, 1878, when Edward Willis Scripps published the first issue of the Cleveland Penny Press.^[3]

In 1894, Scripps and his half-brother, George H. Scripps, organized their various papers into the first modern newspaper chain. In July 1895, it was named the Scripps-McRae League to reflect the leadership of Cincinnati Post general manager Milton A. McRae, a longtime partner.^[4][5] The company expanded during the decade to publish newspapers in California, Denver, Chicago, Dallas and Nashville and elsewhere.^[3]

20th century

In early November 1922, the Scripps-McRae League was renamed Scripps-Howard Newspapers to recognize company executive Roy W. Howard.^[6] On November 23, the E. W. Scripps Company was incorporated and placed in trust for Scripps' children and grandchildren.^[7] The company's shares were divided into two types: Class A Common Shares, which were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and common voting shares, which were not publicly traded and elected a majority of the company's directors. (A number of media companies, including the New York Times Company and the Washington Post organization, are governed by this system so that the descendants of the company's founders can keep control of the company.^[8]) E. W. Scripps died in 1926.

On June 2, 1902, Scripps founded the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), based in Cleveland, Ohio, as a news report service for different Scripps-owned newspapers. It started selling content to non-Scripps owned newspapers in 1907, and by 1909, it became a more general syndicate, offering comics, pictures and features as well. It moved from Cleveland to Chicago in 1915, with an office in San Francisco. NEA rapidly grew and delivered content to 400 newspapers in 1920 and about 700 in 1930.^[9] Today, it is oldest syndicate still in operation.

Scripps created the United Press news agency in 1907 by uniting three smaller syndicates and controlled it until a 1958 merger with William Randolph Hearst's smaller competing agency, INS, to form United Press International. With the Hearst Corporation as a minority partner, UPI continued under Scripps management until it was sold off in 1982.^{[10][11][12][13]} A separate wire service, the Scripps Howard News Service, operated for 96 years from 1917 to 2013.^[14]

United Feature Syndicate was formed in 1919 as a division of UP to distribute editorial columns, features and comic strips, and became a dominant player in the syndication market in the fall of 1931 thanks to Scripps' acquisition of the New York World, which controlled the Pulitzer company's syndication arms, Press Publishing Co. and World Feature Service.^{[15][16][17][14]} In May 1978, Scripps merged United Feature Syndicate and Newspaper Enterprise Association to form United Media Enterprises.^[18][19]

The company expanded its newspaper holdings throughout the pre-World War II period, acquiring many titles and merging them, including the Rocky Mountain News and Knoxville News-Sentinel. A trickle of closures and sales occurred over the next few decades. In 1966, Scripps' New York World-Telegram was merged into the New York World Journal Tribune, which closed in 1967. Papers in Indianapolis, Washington, Houston and Fort Worth were closed in the 1960s and 1970s, and the former flagship Cleveland Press was sold in 1980. Scripps also closed properties in Memphis, Columbus, Thousand Oaks and El Paso throughout the 1980s and 1990s, while selling the Pittsburgh Press in 1992.

In 1997, Scripps bought daily newspapers in the Texas cities of Abilene, Wichita Falls, San Angelo and Plano, plus the paper in Anderson, S.C. from Harte-Hanks Communications, along with 25 non-daily newspapers and San Antonio-based KENS-TV and KENS-AM.^[20] The purchase price was to be between $605 and $775 million, depending on a federal ruling.^[21] (Scripps eventually spun off all of its newspapers into Journal Media Group in 2015.)

Scripps made its first foray into broadcasting in 1935, forming a company called Continental Radio and buying radio stations WCPO in Cincinnati and WNOX in Knoxville. After the war, In 1947, Scripps opened its first television station, Cleveland-based WEWS-TV, with Memphis-based WMC-TV and Cincinnati-based WCPO-TV in subsequent years.^[3] It now owns dozens of TV and radio stations. In the 1980s and 1990s, Scripps became a cable television provider and also developed programming for cable, notably regional sports programming like the SportSouth Network in 1990, Food Network in 1993 and HGTV in 1994. (Scripps spun off its cable properties into Scripps Network Interactive in 2008.)

The company went public with an IPO in 1988.^[3] It owned 20 daily newspapers and 9 television stations at the time, with and cable systems in 10 states. The company completed a new downtown Cincinnati headquarters, the 35-story high-rise Scripps Center, in 1990.^[22]

21st century

In October 2007, Scripps announced that it would separate into two publicly traded companies: The E. W. Scripps Company (newspapers, TV stations, licensing/syndication) and Scripps Networks Interactive (HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network, Cooking Channel (formerly known as Fine Living), Travel Channel and Great American Country). The transaction was completed on July 1, 2008.

After a test launch at WFTS-TV in 2009, Scripps television stations launched YouTube channels in 2010. These are similar to YouTube channels operated by Hearst Television and LIN Television.

On February 24, 2011, United Media struck a distribution deal with Universal Uclick (now known as Andrews McMeel Syndication) for syndication of the company's 150 comic strip and news features, which became effective on June 1 of that year.^[23][24] At that point, United Media, and by extension the Scripps Company, exited the syndication business.^[25]

On September 12, 2011, Scripps partnered with Cox Media Group and Raycom Media to launch Right This Minute, a viral video program. On the same day, Scripps launched The List, a news magazine. Both were part of an approach for "homegrown" programming--programming created by Scripps. Raycom also launched America Now on the same day. The creator of RTM and The List applied this "homegrown" programming approach to Tegna in 2015, with the launch of T.D. Jakes. Scripps launched Let's Ask America in 2013 (now cancelled), partnering with Telepictures to do so, and Pickler and Ben in 2017.

On October 3, 2011, Scripps announced it was purchasing the television arm of McGraw-Hill for $212 million.^[26] This purchase nearly doubled the number of Scripps stations to 19 with a combined reach of 13% of U.S. households. Upon the 2012 death of E. W. Scripps' grandson, Robert Scripps, the Edward W. Scripps Trust was dissolved and its stock divided among the surviving trustees.^[8]

In December 2013, Scripps purchased Newsy for $35 Million.^[27]

On July 30, 2014, Scripps and Journal Communications announced that the two companies would merge and spin-off their newspaper assets.^[28] The deal created a broadcast group under the E. W. Scripps Company name and retaining the Cincinnati headquarters, and a newspaper company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, under the Journal Media Group name.^[29] The FCC approved the deal on December 12, 2014, and it was approved by shareholders on March 11, 2015.^[30] The merger and spinoff were completed on April 1, 2015.^[31][32] In turn, Journal Media Group was acquired by Gannett Company on April 8, 2016. Gannett had also shed their television and broadcast operations into a spin-off, Tegna, months after the Scripps-Journal merger.

In April 2016, Demand Media announced the sale of the humor/listicle website Cracked.com to E. W. Scripps.^[33] In June, it acquired podcast service Stitcher from Deezer.^[34]

On August 1, 2017, Scripps announced the purchase of Katz Broadcasting and its three networks plus Bounce which Katz operates, for $292 million, acquiring the other 95% of the company.^[35] The purchase was completed on October 2, 2017.^[36] On May 22, 2018, Scripps announced that it was changing its common stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to Nasdaq, which occurred on June 4, 2018.^[37]

Scripps newspapers

Syndicates

• United Media (1978-2011), composed of:
  • United Feature Syndicate (est. 1919) - syndicated many notable comic strips, including Peanuts, Garfield, Li'l Abner, Dilbert, Nancy and Marmaduke
  • Newspaper Enterprise Association (est. 1902) - originally a secondary news service to the Scripps Howard News Service, later evolved into a general syndicate; best known for syndicating Alley Oop, Freckles and His Friends, The Born Loser and Frank and Ernest, in addition to an annual Christmas comic strip^[38]

The distribution rights to properties syndicated by United Media were outsourced to Universal Uclick in February 2011. While United Media effectively ceased to exist, Scripps still maintains copyrights and intellectual property rights.^[23][24]

Scripps also operated United Press International (United Press from its 1907 inception until a 1958 merger with Hearst's International News Service) until selling it off in 1982.

Broadcasting

Scripps' broadcast television stations division--also commonly known as Scripps Media or Scripps Howard Broadcasting, currently owns or operates 62 television stations in forty-three markets, with full-power and low-power stations as well as rebroadcaster, translator, repeater and satellite stations included. Among them, nineteen ABC affiliates, twelve CBS affiliates, eleven NBC affiliates, six Fox affiliates, four CW affiliates, two MyNetworkTV affiliates, three specialty network affiliated stations and one station independent of any network affiliation.

Scripps also previously owned the Shop at Home Network from 2000 until 2006. Shop at Home in turn owned five television stations, all as a division of its cable network division.

In October 1995, Comcast announced the purchase of Scripps' cable provider operation.^[39]

From 1990 to 1995, Scripps was a partner in the regional sports network SportSouth, along with Turner Broadcasting and Tele-Communications, Inc.; in 1996 the network was sold to News Corporation and became Fox Sports South.

Attempts to use Shop at Home as a complementary service to Food Network and HGTV by selling products connected to personalities of those networks were middling compared to competitors QVC and HSN. On May 22, 2006, Scripps announced that it was to cease operations of the network and intended to sell each of Shop at Home's five owned and operated television stations.^[40]Jewelry Television eventually acquired Shop at Home, but Scripps still intended to sell its affiliated stations (Jewelry Television discontinued most Shop at Home operations in March 2008). On September 26, 2006, Scripps announced that it was selling its Shop at Home TV stations to New York City-based Multicultural Television for $170 million.^[41]

On October 3, 2011, Scripps announced it was purchasing all seven television stations owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies for $212 million; the sale is a result of McGraw-Hill's decision to exit the broadcasting industry to focus on its other core properties, including its publishing unit.^[42] This deal was approved by the FTC on October 31^[43] and the FCC on November 29.^[44] The deal was completed on December 30, 2011.^[45]

On February 10, 2014, Scripps announced it has reached a deal to acquire Buffalo ABC affiliate WKBW-TV and Detroit MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYD for $110 million.^[46] The sale was approved by the FCC on May 2, 2014 and was completed on June 16, 2014. This deal has created a duopoly between WMYD and ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV.

On January 25, 2018, it was announced that Scripps had placed its radio station unit for sale. The divestiture of these stations - which were acquired through the company's 2015 acquisition of Journal Communications - would result in the separation of Scripps's television stations in Tulsa, Omaha, Milwaukee, Boise and Tucson from their co-owned radio clusters (in the case of Tulsa, KJRH-TV would be separated from KFAQ for the second time; the two stations, then using the shared KVOO callsign, were first split up in 1970, when Central Plains Enterprises sold the then-KVOO-TV to Scripps).^[47] In June 2018, Griffin Communications reached a deal to buy the Scripps Tulsa radio cluster. The sale was completed on July 28, 2018. In July 2018, Good Karma Brands reached a deal to buy the Scripps Milwaukee radio cluster. The sale was completed on November 1, 2018.

On August 20, 2018, Scripps agreed to purchase ABC affiliates KXXV in Waco, Texas and satellite station KRHD-CD in Bryan, Texas and WTXL-TV in Tallahassee, Florida, which are being spun off from the Gray Television-Raycom Media merger in order to alleviate ownership conflicts involving Gray's ownership of CBS affiliate KWTX-TV and its semi-satellite KBTX-TV in the Waco market and CBS affiliate WCTV and Retro Television Network affiliate WFXU in the Tallahassee market.^[48][49]

On October 29, 2018, Cordillera Communications announced that it would sell all but one of its television stations to Scripps. KVOA in Tucson, Arizona is not included in the deal as Scripps already owns KGUN-TV and KWBA in that market, and Cordillera will concurrently sell KVOA to Quincy Media.^[50] The FCC approved the sale on April 5, 2019,^[51] and the sale was completed on May 1.^[52]

On March 20, 2019, Scripps announced that it would acquire eight of the 21 (initially 19^[53]) stations being divested as part of Nexstar Media Group's $580 million (USD) acquisition of Tribune Media. The Tribune stations include CBS affiliates WTKR in Norfolk and WTVR-TV in Richmond--both in Virginia, along with Fox affiliates KSTU in Salt Lake City, Utah and WXMI in Grand Rapids, Michigan and CW affiliates WPIX in New York City, WGNT in Norfolk, Virginia and WSFL-TV in Miami, Florida. The only Nexstar station being acquired is CW affiliate KASW in Phoenix, Arizona--which would create a duopoly with longtime Scripps-owned ABC affiliate KNXV-TV. Also, Nexstar has the option to buy WPIX back between March 31, 2020 and December 31, 2021.^[54][55][56] The FCC approved the sale on September 16 with all of the transactions being completed on September 19.^{[57][58][59][60][61]}

On September 22, 2020, the company announced it was buying KCDO-TV and KSBS-CD for an undisclosed price, pending approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); this would make them sister stations to ABC affiliate KMGH-TV (channel 7).^[62] For the time being, KCDO has moved Grit to its primary 3.1 subchannel. The sale was completed on November 20.^[63]

On September 24, 2020, Scripps announced the acquisition of American media company Ion Media, including its networks, Ion Television and Ion Plus for $2.65 billion.^[64]

Scripps finally completed its sale of WPIX to Mission Broadcasting on December 30, 2020, which will also allow the company to keep three of the Ion stations that were slated to be sold to a new company, Inyo Broadcast Holdings. The sales of WPPX-TV in Philadelphia, KKPX-TV in San Francisco and KPXM-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota were contingent on whether or not the sale of WPIX would close and be finalized before Scripps completed its acquisition of Ion Media. ^[65][66]

Television stations

Notes:

• (**) - Indicates stations built and signed on by Scripps.
• (¤¤) - Indicates stations that were previously owned by McGraw-Hill prior to its acquisition by Scripps in 2011.
• (##) - Indicates stations that were acquired by Scripps from Granite Broadcasting in 2014.
• (§§) - Indicates stations that were previously owned by Journal Communications prior to its merger with Scripps in 2015.
• () - Indicates stations that were acquired by Scripps as divestitures from Gray Television's acquisition of Raycom Media in 2019.
• (?) - Indicates stations that were owned by Cordillera Communications prior to its acquisition by Scripps in 2019.
• () - Indicates stations that were acquired by Scripps as divestitures from Nexstar Media Group's acquisition of Tribune Broadcasting in 2019.

Other Notes:

• ¹ Owned by Gray Television; it is operated through a shared services agreement.
• ² Owned by SagamoreHill Broadcasting; it is operated through a shared services agreement.

Former Scripps-owned stations

Television

General commercial stations

Shop at Home owned-and-operated stations

Radio

Notes:

• (**) indicates a station that was built and signed-on by Scripps
• (++) indicates a station that was owned by Scripps but operated by Belo through a time brokerage agreement during Scripps' ownership
• (^^) indicates a station that was owned by Venture Technologies Group but operated by Scripps through a shared service agreement.

National Spelling Bee

Scripps also operates the national (US) spelling bee. The final competition is in Washington, DC, and it is broadcast on ESPN and ABC. Lower levels are organized by the school, then county and eventually to the final competition.

See also

• Edward W. Scripps
• Ellen Browning Scripps
• James E. Scripps
• Charles Scripps
• Scripps Howard Foundation
• Scripps Ranch
• Edward W. Estlow
• Scripps Networks Interactive

References

Sources

• Baldasty, Gerald J. (January 1, 1999). E.W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. p. [https://archive.org/details/ewscrippsbusi00bald/page/83 83. ISBN 0-252-02255-6.
• McRae, Milton Alexander (1924). Forty Years in Newspaperdom: The Autobiography of a Newspaper Man. New York City: Brentano's – via HathiTrust.
• Scripps, Edward Willis (1926). Gardner, Gilson (ed.). History of the Scripps Concern.

External links

• Official website
• Business data for E. W. Scripps Company:
  • Google Finance
  • Yahoo! Finance
  • Bloomberg
  • Reuters
  • SEC filings
• "Scripps Howard News Service". Archived from the original on January 11, 2007. Retrieved 2007.