"The company's history can be traced back to 1835, when the Bounty Land Register was one of four newspapers in Illinois. Over the next century, a number of mergers followed. In 1935, the company was renamed the Quincy Herald-Whig, and it still operates under that name today. The company moved into radio in 1947 and began television broadcasts in 1953.
The corporation was formed in Quincy on July 1, 1926, as a publishing company upon the consolidation of Quincy Herald, direct descendant of the Illinois Bounty Land Register first published in Quincy in 1835, and the Quincy Whig-Journal, descendant of the Quincy Whig founded in 1838.
The Herald was purchased in September 1891 by three men from Rockford, Charles L. Miller, Hedley John Eaton and Edmund Botsford. Miller had earlier founded the Rockford Daily Register, that city's oldest newspaper. Subsequently, Miller brought to the Herald his brother-in-law and nephew, respectively, Aaron Burr Oakley and Ray M. Oakley, the first two generations of the Oakleys in the newspaper business in Quincy. Miller spent four years in Quincy, returning to Rockford in 1896 to join Harry M. Johnson in ownership of the Rockford Republic. He retired as editor of the Republic in 1913 and died in 1921. Hedley Eaton retired in 1913 and died in 1936. Eaton's son John Dewitt Eaton stayed with the paper as Advertising Manager until his retirement in 1955.
Two brothers from Decatur, Frank M. Lindsay, Sr. and Arthur O. Lindsay, Sr. bought the Quincy Whig in 1915, with Arthur Lindsay taking up residence in Quincy as president and manager. Frank Lindsay remained in Decatur with the Decatur Herald and formed an association with another Illinois newspaper family, the Schaubs. In 1920, the Lindsays consolidated the Whig and The Quincy Journal, founded in 1883.
QNI entered broadcasting in 1947, the year it started Quincy's first commercial FM station, WQDI. The following year QNI purchased Quincy Broadcasting Co. to operate WGEM, the city's second AM station. WQDI became WGEM-FM in 1953.
Quincy Broadcasting produced the Quincy region's first television broadcast on September 4, 1953, with the launch of WGEM-TV, the area's NBC affiliate. Quincy Broadcasting also operates the Hotel Quincy, which houses the studios of WGEM AM-FM-TV, as a residential/transient hotel.
In 1969, QNI and six other newspaper entities formed American Newspapers Inc., which bought The New Jersey Herald in Newton, New Jersey, converting the semi-weekly to a daily and Sunday publication in 1970. QNI acquired controlling interest in American Newspapers in 1980 and became sole owner in 1986.
Beginning in the 1970s, QNI began a major expansion into television. WSJV in Elkhart, Indiana (serving South Bend) was acquired in 1974; KROC-TV (renamed KTTC) in Rochester, Minnesota in 1976; WHIS-TV (renamed WVVA) in Bluefield, West Virginia in 1979; KTIV in Sioux City, Iowa in 1989; and WREX-TV in Rockford in 1995. All of the stations were also NBC affiliates at their acquisitions except for WSJV and WREX, which were ABC affiliates; however, in 1995, WSJV dropped ABC for Fox, and soon thereafter WREX joined NBC. Also in 1995, The Merchant, a weekly shopper in Quincy was purchased by the company.
In June 2001, QNI purchased from Shockley Communications Corporation five ABC affiliates in Wisconsin: WKOW-TV in Madison, WAOW-TV in Wausau; WYOW in Eagle River (a satellite of WAOW); WXOW-TV in La Crosse; and WQOW-TV in Eau Claire (a semi-satellite of WXOW). Also purchased from SCC at the time was ProVideo of Wisconsin, Inc. consisting of a component digital online suite and a fully integrated non-linear online suite in Madison, Wisconsin. Concurrent with the Shockley Communications Corporation purchase, KTTC entered into a shared services agreement with KXLT-TV, the Fox affiliate in Rochester, Minnesota. KTTC provides all services for KXLT excluding sales, traffic, and programming.
On July 1, 2006 QNI purchased KWWL, the NBC affiliate in in Waterloo, Iowa, from Raycom Media. In February 2009, QNI purchased Crandon, Wisconsin's WBIJ from the widow of the station's founder, with the intention to operate the station as a satellite station of WAOW; QNI subsequently renamed the station WMOW to conform with its other Wisconsin properties.
On February 11, 2014, Quincy announced plans to acquire a number of small and mid-market stations from Granite Broadcasting, including WEEK-TV in Peoria, KBJR-TV in Superior, Wisconsin, KRII in Chisholm, Minnesota (a satellite of KBJR), and WBNG-TV in Binghamton, New York (the company's first CBS affiliate; WEEK and KBJR/KRII are NBC affiliates). As part of the deal, Quincy will also purchase WPTA, the ABC affiliate in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from Malara Broadcast Group, and provide services to ABC affiliate WHOI and MyNetworkTV affiliate WAOE in Peoria, NBC affiliate WISE-TV in Fort Wayne, and CBS affiliate KDLH in Duluth, Minnesota."
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