News-Press & Gazette Company

News-Press & Gazette Company

Type	Private
Industry	Media
Founded	1845 (when St. Joseph Gazette was founded)
Headquarters	825 Edmond Street, St. Joseph, Missouri, USA
Key people	Brian Bradley (President) David Bradley (Chief Executive Officer) Henry H. Bradley (Executive Vice President and CFO)
Products	Newspapers Television Radio
Website	www.npgco.com

The News-Press & Gazette Company (NPG) is a media company based in St. Joseph, Missouri, wholly owned and operated by the Bradley family. It is presided by Brian Bradley and David R. Bradley, with Hank Bradley (retired), Eric Bradley and Kit Bradley serving on its Board of Directors. All are descendants of family patriarch Henry D. Bradley and his son, David Bradley, Sr.

News-Press & Gazette's properties include daily and weekly newspapers in Missouri and Kansas, 15 radio and television stations in California, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, Missouri and Texas. The NPG group generally concentrates on the Kansas City and St. Joseph areas for their newspapers, and the western United States for their broadcasting properties.

History

News-Press headquarters in St. Joseph

The company traces it roots back to the St. Joseph Gazette which began publishing in 1845. The paper chronicled much of travel into the Old West along the Oregon Trail and California Trail. It was the only newspaper that was sent west on the first ride of the Pony Express. The Gazette eventually merged with the News-Press by publisher Charles M. Palmer. When Palmer died in 1949, Henry D. Bradley was co-publisher of both papers starting in 1939 and bought them outright in 1951.

The Gazette ceased publication in 1988 when its sister, the afternoon News-Press, transitioned into a morning newspaper; however, the family kept the "Gazette" and "G" in the company name. The Bradley family expanded the focus by forming local cable television operator St. Joseph Cablevision in 1965. News-Press & Gazette expanded into broadcast television with the 1995 purchase of KVIA-TV in El Paso, Texas; this expansion continued into the 2000s with the launch of a 24-hour cable-only news channel for St. Joseph, St. Joe NOW, along with News-Press & Gazette's acquisition of several full-power and low-power television stations (such as KECY-TV in El Centro, California, KJCT in Grand Junction, Colorado and KTVZ in Bend, Oregon).

In 2011, the Bradley family sold the cable division, which by that time expanded its service area to parts of California and Arizona under the name NPG Cable, to Suddenlink Communications.^[1] On March 19, 2012, News-Press & Gazette announced it would establish a low-power television station in St. Joseph that would serve as the company's television flagship and the first broadcast station that the company built and signed on; it would be an affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company (with subchannel-only affiliations with The CW and Telemundo). The station was created using the K26LV-D station license (which it acquired, along with K16KF-D, from Sunrise, Florida-based DTV America 1, LLC on March 14 of that year);^[2][3] it launched on June 2, 2012 as KNPN-LD.^[4] On July 25, 2012, NPG announced an agreement to purchase ABC affiliate KMIZ and FOX affiliate, KQFX-LD from JW Broadcasting.^[5] The deal was consummated on November 1.

Major assets

Current properties

St. Joseph, Missouri area

• St. Joseph News-Press (St. Joseph, Missouri; flagship newspaper)
• Green Acres (St. Joseph, Missouri)

Northeast Kansas

• Atchison Globe (Atchison, Kansas)
• Hiawatha World (Hiawatha, Kansas)
• Louisburg Herald (Louisburg, Kansas)
• Miami County Republic (Paola, Kansas)
• Osawatomie Graphic (Osawatomie, Kansas)

Greater Kansas City metropolitan area

• The Daily Star-Journal (Warrensburg, Missouri)
• Gladstone Dispatch (Gladstone, Missouri)
• Johnson County Sun (Overland Park, Kansas)
• Kansas City Nursing News (Overland Park, Kansas)
• Kearney Courier (Kearney, Missouri)
• Liberty Tribune (Liberty, Missouri)
• Smithville Herald (Smithville, Missouri)

Television stations

Television stations owned and/or operated by News-Press & Gazette Company are a mix of full-power and low-power stations, most of which carry main channel affiliations with the Big Four television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox). Its stations also carry affiliations with The CW (with the company's CW outlets receiving their programming from The CW Plus programming service) and Spanish-language network Telemundo, via subchannel-only affiliations or affiliations with separately-licensed low-power stations that are rebroadcast as subchannels on its full-power stations in the respective markets.

Notes:

• (**) – Indicates that it was built and signed on by NPG.

Other notes:

• ¹ Owned by Northwest Broadcasting, NPG operates KYMA and KSWT via a resource sharing agreement.^[6][7][8][9]
• ² Owned by VistaWest Media, LLC, NPG operates these stations via a shared services agreement.
• ³ This channel was sold to Suddenlink Communications as part of its purchase of NPG's cable division but was reacquired by NPG in May 2012.^[10] It was originally operated as a cable-only channel prior to June 2, 2012.
• ⁴ Owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, NPG operates K42DJ.

Radio stations

Note:

Two boldface asterisks appearing following a station's call letters (††) indicate a station that is owned by Optima Communications, and operated by News-Press & Gazette;

Former assets

Television

Former stations

Other notes:

• ¹ KJCT used virtual channel 8 (and operated on analog channel 8 prior to 2009) and KKHD-LP operated on analog channel 20 under NPG ownership.

Cable operations

NPG owned cable systems under the name NPG Cable, Inc. On November 29, 2010, NPG announced that it had agreed to sell all of its cable systems to Suddenlink Communications for $350 million; the acquisition was closed on April 1, 2011.^[1][11] NPG Cable systems operated in the following communities:^[12]

• St. Joseph, Missouri
• Lake Havasu City, Arizona
• Parker, Arizona
• Blythe, California
• Bullhead City, Arizona
• Kingman, Arizona
• Flagstaff, Arizona
• Payson, Arizona
• Sedona, Arizona
• Mammoth Lakes, California
• June Lake, California
• Pine, Arizona
• Strawberry, Arizona

References

External links

• News-Press & Gazette Company-Official Site
• St. Joseph News-Press
• NPG Printing