Belo Corp. (television)

Belo Corp. began as a Texas newspaper company in 1842, according to its own annual reports. Its television business started in 1950, when it bought WFAA-TV in Dallas/Fort Worth shortly after the station went on the air. Over the following decades it added stations around the country. In Texas, its 2012 annual report lists KHOU in Houston (acquired 1984), KENS in San Antonio (1997) and KVUE in Austin (1999) alongside WFAA.

In the late 1990s Belo also moved into cable news. During 1998 it turned a former newsprint warehouse in downtown Dallas into a digital television facility, and on January 1, 1999, it launched Texas Cable News (TXCN), a 24-hour statewide channel that used the newsrooms of its Texas stations. TXCN's signal reached cable systems by fiber or Ku-band satellite, and its start-up costs weighed on the results of Belo's smaller operations in 1998. Belo ran similar news channels in the Pacific Northwest, Boise, New Orleans and Phoenix.

By 2012 the Dallas company described itself as one of the nation's largest publicly traded pure-play television companies. It owned 20 stations, nine of them in top-25 markets, reaching more than 14 percent of U.S. television households in 15 markets, with ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW and MyNetwork TV affiliates. In its home market it also had a services agreement with KFWD-TV, licensed to Fort Worth. That year it reported net operating revenues of $714.7 million and about 2,465 full-time and 231 part-time employees, roughly 514 of them in unions. Its headquarters was a company-owned 17-story building at 400 South Record Street in downtown Dallas, next to the WFAA and TXCN facilities.

On June 12, 2013, Belo signed a merger agreement with Gannett Co. The deal closed on December 23, 2013. Belo became a wholly owned Gannett subsidiary, and its shareholders received $13.75 a share in cash. Its Texas stations kept broadcasting under new ownership. TXCN did not last: in March 2015 the new owner announced the channel would shut down after 16 years.