Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/Milton Grant/archive1

Milton Grant

Milton Grant (1923–2007) was an American disc jockey and owner of television stations. After a career in radio and television in the Washington, D.C., area, where he made his mark as a disc jockey and hosted the regionally influential The Milt Grant Show on TV from 1956 to 1961, he turned to broadcast station management. He founded Washington's WDCA-TV in 1966; he sold it in 1969 but remained general manager until 1980. He then owned TV stations primarily by way of three vehicles: a partnership with Sidney Shlenker that started two highly successful stations in Texas; the Grant Broadcasting System, which lost its three stations in bankruptcy; and Grant Communications/Grant Broadcasting System II, which operated in midsize and smaller markets and continued in business after Milton Grant's death until 2014.

Broadcast stations owned by Milton Grant

16 articles

• KGCW
• KLJB
• KLRT-TV
• KTXA

• KTXH
• WBFS-TV
• WDCA
• WFXR
• WGBO-DT

• WLAX
• WNYO-TV
• WPSG
• WWCW
• WZDX

Contributor(s): Sammi Brie

The proposed Good Topic consists of Grant's biography, his eponymous TV show (which is independently notable), and all the operating television stations he owned in part or full (WLAX and WEUX share an article). This is the second GT in broadcasting (KTXA is also in the ON TV GT) and a third is planned which will have some of these articles. --Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 19:17, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose: Is the various stations' association with the guy significant enough to merit their inclusion in a topic together? Five of the articles don't contain even a single mention of Milton Grant, and in most of the others he's just mentioned in passing as one of various owners in the station's history. On the other hand, the stations where you say he established his notability (WINX, WOL, and WTTG) aren't included. This topic doesn't seem well focused on this man's life and notable work to me. Sorry, it's clear that an enormous amount of work has gone into promoting all of these articles; I just don't see a shared topic. -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 20:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  @Bryanrutherford0: These are the stations he owned (he never owned WTTG or the radio stations), and some of them have very significant association with Grant. Grant built WDCA, KTXA, KTXH, and WBFS, and comprehensively rebuilt (in terms of programming and/or facility) WGBO (as in "Grant Broadcasting"), WPSG (as WGBS — Grant Broadcasting System), WNYO (which had been a Christian station for years), and KGCW (which was off the air when he bought it). Grant's station ownership tenure is unusual in that he owned stations in four discrete eras (WDCA; KTXA/KTXH; the Grant Broadcasting System; and then the smaller stations he owned at his death). All of them except WDCA used the same logo style—even the tiny Fox affiliate in La Crosse/Eau Claire, Wisconsin. KLRT-TV is probably the most fringe, as he never ran the station (he owned 25%), but I wanted to cover my bases and had substantial material left over from KASN to improve it. I designed the GT scope in such a way as to include Grant, his eponymous show, and the TV stations he owned. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 06:35, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  If that's the scope you want, then the name of the proposed topic should be changed to something more like "broadcast stations owned by Milton Grant", and the Milt Grant Show should be cut, since it has nothing to do with any stations he owned. Even then, again, it doesn't seem like his ownership was important to all of these stations, since his name doesn't come up at all in their articles. Sorry to be a downer! -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 13:33, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  I've gone ahead and made the changes to focus it on the broadcast stations, but I fundamentally and thoroughly disagree with your assertion that "his ownership wasn't important". Here, I will go through, fundamentally, and tell you the things that happened under Grant at each of these stations... Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 17:16, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

  • KGCW: This station was off the air and bankrupt when acquired by Grant in 1995. Grant put it back on the air in 1996 using the resources of KLJB.
  • KLJB: Grant owned this station for 20+ years, during which time it started a local 9 p.m. newscast. The newscast was outsourced, which spawned a whole company, Independent News Network.
  • KLRT: Probably a fringe inclusion since Grant owned 25 percent and was not involved directly in its operation, but for completeness it is here as he did own some of it.
  • KTXA and KTXH: The first stations owned in part or whole by Grant since the 1960s. Grant's "full-grown" model to independent stations was perfected here, aided—in hindsight—by economic tailwinds. KTXH in particular was enormously successful.
  • WBFS: This was the station in what later became Grant's home market (he moved to and died in Fort Lauderdale) and heralded the start of the Grant Broadcasting System—whose bankruptcy and collapse was said to have ended an independent stations bubble.
  • WDCA: Grant put the station on the air in 1966; while he sold it in 1969, he remained general manager until 1980 and was instrumental in its programming policy and management.
  • WFXR (and WWCW, which simulcast for most of their history under Grant): Among the quieter pickups, but important nonetheless. Grant reached a deal to have a newscast for the station.
  • WGBO: That's G for Grant. This was the worst-performing of the Grant Broadcasting System stations by a country mile and helped drag the whole thing into bankruptcy.
  • WLAX: See above but a decade after WFXR.
  • WNYO-TV: Grant engineered the license swap that returned this facility to being a commercially run station after it was made Christian in 1990. His relationship with The WB, started in Buffalo, resulted in him receiving The WB affiliations in three of his other markets.
  • WPSG: This was WGBS, as in Grant Broadcasting System. It had existed prior to 1985 but was a non-factor with subscription TV programming. It was essentially a new station in facilities and programming.
  • WZDX: On the quieter side, but after GBS failed, this station marked his return to station ownership and was built up considerably under him.

  Okay, I'm not interested in this getting belligerent. I'll just say that your bullet points above pretty much all seem to be reasons why these stations were important in Grant's business life, rather than reasons why Grant was important in the histories of the stations. I still don't see a topic. Sorry! -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 14:16, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

• Support: I reviewed a number of the articles (including Grant himself) and find that Sammi has justified the inclusion of these stations. MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 14:22, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. I've given this some thought over several days, and have come to the conclusion that I can't see how these form a unified topic of closely-related articles. --SilverTiger12 (talk) 14:50, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Since this is still open, if it helps consensus, I think this is too weak a connection to make a GT. Especially since they weren't owned by Grant personally, but rather his company. Sets an awkward precedent, because ownership can and does move around over time and is traded back and forth between holding companies. Corporate owner just isn't very high in the mind when people think of a station, either. It's still some amazing work, but maybe a regional connection would work better? e.g. {{Buffalo TV}} might work as a GT. SnowFire (talk) 18:32, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

  @SnowFire Wanted to respond to this before I request closure of this languishing nomination. The problem with taking an entire market to GT is that there are many low-power TV stations whose articles can't be reasonably improved due to sourcing depth. Buffalo has six of them. The closest I've come would either be Tucson (missing KWBA and the Univision station) or Sioux City (which sits in the coverage area of three different statewide PBS networks). I'd also like to know what you'd think about a GT of TVX Broadcast Group and stations—the company owned all the stations that would be in the GT, all the relevant pages are GAs now or are at GAN after improvement, and a number are shared with this nomination. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 23:56, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

  On the nomination: Eh, it could have been closed ages ago without need to force you to request closure yourself, but I think we may need new FTC/GTC coordinators (or for the existing ones to come off wikibreak). See Wikipedia_talk:Featured_and_good_topic_questions#Timeline/expectations - we've had a number of very easily closed noms sitting around for months. I suppose the risk of complaining is that you get asked to do it, but hey.

  On other corporate owners: Unfortunately, I think the same problems with this nomination would apply to TVX Broadcast Group. I just don't think a GT/FT "by corporate owner" would be a good idea for almost anything (not talking about just radio / TV here) - maybe if we're only talking direct subsidiaries that don't get passed around and sold between owners ever, and the company was defunct so there was no worry about future maintenance. But this is the equivalent of saying "maybe rare exceptions exist."

  On categorizing by location: I think Tucson or Sioux City would be interesting test cases then, yes. Something nice about categorization by locality is that there won't usually be much overlap (although I suppose it'll still happen in dense areas, e.g. some Northern NJ stations might be in both the NYC and the Philadelphia market). For the tougher markets, I'd argue you could perhaps define the criteria as "Major stations in the Buffalo area" with an explanatory note that "major" really means "high-power and cable". If you don't think that's viable... well, for perma-stubs, I'd argue that perhaps criteria 3c of WP:FTCRITERIA could be refined to remove the "only for lists" exception, and instead have an explanatory note that says articles with less than 300 words also qualify if they are comprehensive given the sources reasonably available. Even if that criteria isn't modified at all, there is a way around it: you could make a List of defunct stations in the Buffalo region list article or the like, and then merge WBES-TV, etc. there. That would handle the defunct stations at least, but the low-power ones like WNYB... yeah I dunno, those you'd probably be stuck getting to GA if you wanted to avoid an argument over whether "major" is a valid differentiator. SnowFire (talk) 08:32, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

• Closed with consensus not to promote - GamerPro64 00:17, 15 January 2024 (UTC)