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 DTV subchannels (FOX59 and Fox Ohio Valley, respectively), 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 and Marshall University sports, while WBOY handles most coverage of West Virginia University sports.
The largest private investor in the company is Bray Cary, who serves 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.
WBOY is the only station that leads its DMA (designated market area) in the Nielsen ratings.
In August 2008, both WTRF and WBOY began carrying ABC programming on their digital subchannel (7.3 and 12.2, respectively; the aforementioned Fox Ohio Valley already occupies 7.2 on WTRF). 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).
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