WCAX-TV, Vermont’s CBS affiliate, has been sold for $29 million to a Georgia company by the family that founded the station in 1954, according a WCAX news report.
According to the WCAX report, a letter to station employees showed that the Martin family was struggling to see a prosperous future for WCAX under family ownership.
The Martins “say the challenges of operating a single station in a small market are ‘akin to being a small, open boat in an ever-intensifying storm. The threats are many and the odds of survival are shrinking,'" according to the report.
The buyer is Gray Television, Inc., which is traded under the symbol GTN on the New York Stock Exchange. According to the company's website, Gray Television "owns and/or operates over 100 television stations across 56 television markets." Those 56 markets, the company claims, "collectively cover approximately 10.6 percent of total United States television households."
The station is the second family-owned news business sold out-of-state in recent memory.
The Rutland Herald and Times Argus were sold in 2016 by the Mitchell family, which had owned the papers since just after World War II. The co-buyers of those papers are from Maine and New Hampshire.
Gray Television is expected to take control of WCAX on June 1, and the WCAX story says no layoffs are expected.
