How it started
History
The company traces its roots back to the establishment of The Daily News in Galveston, Texas, in 1842, four years before the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States; the company sold The Daily News in 1923. In 1857, the company began publishing the Texas Almanac, a reference book focused on Texas, and on October 1, 1885, launched a second newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, based in Dallas, Texas.
On June 26, 1922, the company expanded into broadcasting with the sign-on of WFAA-AM (at that time, shared time with WBAP and WRR in Dallas, Texas).
In July 1926, A.H. Belo Corporation was founded when George Bannerman Dealey acquired a majority interest in the company. The company was named after Dallas Morning News founder Alfred Horatio Belo.
On January 30, 1950, the company announced the purchase of DuMont-affiliated Dallas television station KBTV (renamed WFAA after the acquisition) for $575,000. This purchase, approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 13, 1950, and completed on March 17, marked the company's entry into television broadcasting. The station switched its primary affiliation to NBC after the acquisition and was also affiliated with ABC on a secondary basis.
In 1963, the company acquired News-Texan Inc., a publishing company that owned suburban newspapers in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex; this subsidiary was later renamed Dallas–Fort Worth Suburban Newspapers Inc.
From Wikipedia’s article on Belo, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3