Gray Television

Gray Television

Gray Television, Inc. is a communications company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with administrative offices in Albany, Georgia. Established in 1946 by James H. Gray a naturalized New Englander who moved to Southwest Georgia to form Gray Communications System (now Gray Television Group) which has grown since 1993 into a modern day, successful television group based out of Atlanta, Georgia through a series of acquisitions ranging from 1993-2002.

Gray Television currently owns 36 television stations serving 30 mainly mid-size and small-size media markets. (The highest-ranked market Gray serves is Knoxville, Tennessee, the 59th ranked market in 2008.) One of the stations is affiliated with FOX, 6 are with ABC, 10 are with NBC, and 17 are affiliated with CBS (making Gray the largest independent owner of CBS affiliates in the country).

Among their stations, Gray also operates a total of 38 digital subchannels. Eleven of the subchannels are affiliated with MyNetworkTV, 7 are with The CW, 5 are with FOX, 1 carries Universal Sports, 1 repeats a cable-only ABC station, and 5 broadcast weather information exclusively.

The combined station group has 21 stations ranked #1 in local news audience and 21 stations ranked #1 in overall audience within their respective markets based on the results of the average of the Nielsen February, May, and July and 2008 ratings reports. The combined TV station group reached approximately 6.1% of total U.S. TV households.

In 2006, the company spun off its five daily newspapers and wireless messaging business into the newly formed Triple Crown Media, which subsequently merged with Host Communications.

On July 30, 2009, Gray Television was awarded a contract to manage seven Young Broadcasting stations. Through December 31, 2012 Gray will earn $2.2 million and an opportunity to earn additional specified incentive fees if certain performance targets are exceeded.