Schurz Communications, Inc. is an American broadband media group and cloud services provider based in South Bend, Indiana. It previously owned newspapers and television stations.

History

The company was founded in 1872 by Alfred B. Miller and Elmer Crockett with the creation of the South Bend Tribune. Over the years, the company grew through the acquisition of other newspapers, media outlets, radio and television stations, digital companies, broadband operations and cloud services provider. The expanding company was renamed Schurz Communications Inc. in 1976, when the newspapers division and the TV/broadcast division were split into separate entities. Schurz Communications announced on September 14, 2015 that it would exit broadcasting and sell its television and radio stations, including the Rushmore Media Company stations, to Gray Television for $442.5 million. Gray subsequently announced on October 1 that it would sell the KOTA-TV license to Legacy Broadcasting for $1, a deal that also includes the license for satellite station KHSD-TV and the station's subchannel affiliations with MeTV and This TV; a month later, on November 2, Gray announced that HomeSlice Media Group would acquire the Rushmore Media Company radio stations for $2.2 million, reuniting them with KBHB and KKLS, which Schurz had sold to HomeSlice in 2014 as part of its acquisition of KOTA-TV. Following the completion of these sales, Gray will retain KOTA-TV's ABC affiliation and transfer it to its existing television station in Rapid City, KEVN-TV; it will also retain KOTA-TV satellite stations KDUH-TV and KSGW-TV and convert them to satellites of KNOP-TV in North Platte, Nebraska and KCWY-DT in Casper, Wyoming (both NBC affiliates), respectively. In March 2015, the company sold the Imperial Valley Press newspaper based in El Centro, California. In September 2016, The American News and Farm Forum, owned by Schurz, acquired The Public Opinion newspaper in Watertown, South Dakota from United Communications. In February 2018, the company acquired the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Online Tech. The compliant hybrid cloud provider serves nearly 500 clients across the Midwest with its network of seven data centers and full suite of hybrid cloud services. In December of that year, Online Tech acquired the assets and products of IT provider Neverfail. The acquisition includes Neverfail’s five cloud nodes and assets in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. In January 2019, Schurz sold its publishing division and all its newspapers to GateHouse Media for $30 million. This included 20 regional papers and several special publications in Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Dakota. GateHouse later bought the Gannett newspaper chain, and the expanded network of newspapers adopted the Gannett name. In March 2019 Schurz Communications bought the city-owned local broadband company Burlington Telecom of Burlington, Vermont for a total of $30.8 million.

Rushmore Media Company

Rushmore Media Company, Inc. was a small radio broadcasting subsidiary, which owned and operated four radio stations and one television station in the Black Hills region of western South Dakota. The main offices and stations' studios are located at 660 Flormann St., Rapid City, South Dakota 57701. Rushmore Media Company's group consisted of:

Current properties

Broadband systems

Cloud Managed Services

Former properties

Newspapers

Radio

Television