Industry TV broadcasting Founders George Lilly, Brian Lilly | Founded 1984 | |
Headquarters San Luis Obispo, California, United States Type of business private Limited liability company Subsidiaries WENY Inc., SJL of Pennsylvania, Inc., KITV, Inc. | ||
Lilly Broadcasting, L.L.C. is a privately owned American broadcasting company owned and operated by the Lilly Brothers’ Brian Lilly and Kevin Lilly. The company was founded in September 1999 with the purchase of WENY-TV (ABC) and WENY-FM & AM radio. In 2002, Kevin Lilly purchased WSEE-TV (CBS) in Erie, Pennsylvania and have since added the CBS and The CW affiliates in Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and ABC in the Virgin Islands.
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Brian and Kevin Lilly are the sons of George Lilly, whose SJL Broadcast Management (also previously known as the Montecito Broadcast Group) was founded in 1984 and based in Montecito, California. SJL owns WICU-TV in Erie and the two Companies purchased 3 TV stations from Gateway Communications in 2000, and four stations from Emmis Communications in 2005.
Lilly Broadcasting most recently with Sankety Advisors purchased KITV (ABC) in Hawaii.
History
WJRT-TV was sold to SJL Broadcast Management in 1989. In 1991, a SJL affiliated partnership, Media Communications Partners Limited Partnership in 1991 purchased WTVG.
In 1995, SJL sold WJRT-TV and WTVG to ABC due to the possibly of WXYZ-TV changing affiliation to CBS as part of a large swath of television network affiliation changes occurring at the time.
On July 24, 2007, Montecito announced the sale of all of its remaining stations except WICU (KHON-TV, KOIN, KSNW and KSNT) to New Vision Television, ending the partnership between SJL and The Blackstone Group. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted approval of this sale in late-October of that year, and ownership was officially transferred on November 1.
On March 1, 2009, the last station formally owned by SJL, WICU, transferred its copyrights to Lilly Broadcasting when it merged its news operations with crosstown sister station WSEE-TV. Though SJL still technically exists (and still ostensibly owns WICU), its visible operations have now been subsumed by Lilly Broadcasting.
On November 3, 2010, Broadcasting & Cable magazine announced that SJL Broadcasting made an agreement with Disney to buy back WJRT-TV and WTVG, the two smallest stations in ABC's O&O portfolio. The sale was completed on April 1, 2011 with both stations general manager exiting their positions at change of ownership. Lilly announced on July 24, 2014, that it would sell both WJRT and WTVG to Gray Television in a $128 million transaction.
On May 13, 2015, Hearst Television announced that it would sell KITV in Honolulu, Hawaii and its satellites (KHVO in Hilo and KMAU in Wailuku) to SJL; the deal marks the return of the company to Hawaii, following its prior ownership of KHON-TV. The sale was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on July 10, 2015 and completed on September 1, 2015.
Stations currently owned or operated by Lilly or SJL
Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and city of license.