West Virginia Media Holdings
West Virginia Media Holdings is a media chain in West Virginia. It owns television stations in each of the four main media markets in the state, as well as a weekly newspaper.
The group owns WOWK-TV in Huntington, WVNS-TV in Lewisburg, and WTRF-TV in Wheeling, West Virginia, which are all affiliated with the CBS network; and WBOY-TV in Clarksburg which is affiliated with NBC. WVNS and WTRF also carry Fox on their digital subchannels, while both subchannels carry MyNetworkTV in addition to Fox as a secondary affiliate. It also owns the State Journal weekly newspaper.
The group was founded in 2001. The idea was to share reporting among the four stations in order to better cover the state. WOWK handles most coverage of state government affairs, while WBOY handles most coverage of West Virginia University sports. The largest private investor in the company was Bray Cary, who served as president and CEO. Cary was formerly an executive with NASCAR, and was responsible for its television contract, and was also involved in syndication of college basketball games.
In August 2008, both WTRF and WBOY began carrying ABC programming on their digital subchannel. Previously, longtime ABC affiliate WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh served both markets as the de facto ABC affiliate and remains on cable in both markets (Fox Ohio Valley replaced WPGH on Comcast systems as the only Fox affiliate on the Comcast channel lineup).
On November 17, 2015, WVMH announced that it would sell its stations to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group for $130 million. The company will take over the stations' non-license assets under a time brokerage agreement in December 2015 until the formal completion of the deal, expected in late-2016. The two companies viewed the acquisition as being a complement to Nexstar's WHAG-TV, whose coverage area includes the Eastern Panhandle region. Nexstar CEO Perry A. Sook is an alumnus of WOWK.[1] The State Journal is not included in the sale and will remain with WVMH.[2]
