E. W. Scripps Company
The E. W. Scripps Company, also known as Scripps Howard, is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is headquartered at the Scripps Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.[2] 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.[3]
Not to be confused with other organizations named Scripps.Company type
November 2, 1878 (as the Penny Press) in Cleveland, Ohio
- Kim Williams (chairman)
- Adam P. Symson (president & CEO)
US$2.29 billion (2023)
US$−753 million (2023)
US$−948 million (2023)
US$5.41 billion (2023)
US$1.16 billion (2023)
c. 5,200 (2023)
In terms of market reach, Scripps is the second largest operator of ABC affiliates, behind the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and ahead of Hearst Television and Tegna. Scripps also owns a number of free-to-air multi-genre digital subchannel multicast networks through its Scripps Networks division, including the Ion Television network and Scripps News.
The company started out in the newspaper business, expanding into radio in the mid-1930s and television in the mid-1940s. It sold off its newspaper holdings in 2014 and exited radio in 2018.
History[edit]
19th century[edit]
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.[4]
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.[5][6] The company expanded during the decade to publish newspapers in California, Denver, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, and elsewhere.[4]
20th century[edit]
In early November 1922, the Scripps-McRae League was renamed Scripps-Howard Newspapers to recognize company executive Roy W. Howard.[7] On November 23, the E. W. Scripps Company was incorporated and placed in trust for Scripps' children and grandchildren.[8] 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).[9] 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.[10] Today, it is the 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.[11][12][13][14] A separate wire service, the Scripps Howard News Service, operated for 96 years from 1917 to 2013.[15]
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.[16][17][18][15] In May 1978, Scripps merged United Feature Syndicate and Newspaper Enterprise Association to form United Media Enterprises.[19][20]
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 1985, the company went into home video foray with its acquisition of Kartes Video Communications in an effort to expand the marketplace.[21] Two years later, Scripps Howard sold off Kartes Video Communications back to its founders, after an aborted deal where Scripps-Howard's acquisition of Hanes failed.[22]
In 1997, Scripps bought daily newspapers in the Texas cities of Abilene, Wichita Falls, San Angelo and Plano, plus the paper in Anderson, South Carolina, from Harte-Hanks Communications, along with 25 non-daily newspapers and San Antonio-based KENS-TV and KENS-AM.[23] The purchase price was to be between $605 and $775 million, depending on a federal ruling.[24] (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.[4] 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 SportSouth (currently Bally Sports South) in 1990 (in a joint venture with Turner Broadcasting and TCI), 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 and was traded on the NASDAQ.[4] It owned 20 daily newspapers and 9 television stations at the time, and cable systems in 10 states. The company completed a new downtown Cincinnati headquarters, the 35-story high-rise Scripps Center, in 1990.[25] In 1991, Scripps transferred its shares to the New York Stock Exchange.
21st century[edit]
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.[26][27] At that point, United Media, and by extension the Scripps Company, exited the syndication business.[28]
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.[29] 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.[9]
In December 2013, Scripps purchased Newsy for $35 Million.[30]
On July 30, 2014, Scripps and Journal Communications announced that the two companies would merge and spin-off their newspaper assets.[31] 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.[32] The FCC approved the deal on December 12, 2014, and it was approved by shareholders on March 11, 2015.[33] The merger and spinoff were completed on April 1, 2015.[34][35] 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.[36] In June, it acquired podcast service Stitcher from Deezer.[37]
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.[38] The purchase was completed on October 2, 2017.[39] On May 22, 2018, Scripps announced that it was changing its common stock listing back from the NYSE to Nasdaq, which occurred on June 4, 2018.[40]