WIBW

What WIBW does

WIBW is a local broadcast television station licensed to Topeka, Kansas, serving the Topeka metropolitan area and surrounding Northeast Kansas communities. Founded in 1953 and currently operated by Gray Local Media, Inc. (a wholly-owned subsidiary of publicly-traded Gray Television, Inc., NASDAQ: GTN), the station delivers local news, weather forecasting, sports coverage, and community programming across multiple platforms. Its product portfolio includes over-the-air television broadcasting on WIBW-TV, a premium streaming subscription service (WIBW+), weather alert services (First Alert WeatherCall and WIBW WeatherCall), comprehensive sports coverage spanning college and high school athletics, on-demand video galleries, and a Job Hub employment listings platform. The station's technology stack combines traditional broadcast infrastructure (including NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0) with digital streaming via wibw.com and Roku, supported by social media distribution and email newsletters.

WIBW's business model is anchored on advertising revenue, monetizing its local audience through the sale of broadcast television and digital ad inventory to local businesses, healthcare providers, manufacturers, and service providers in the Topeka market. A secondary revenue stream is generated through Gray Digital Media Topeka, a digital marketing services arm offering targeted digital advertising to local advertisers. Subscription-based revenue is emerging through WIBW+ and weather alert services. The station serves two primary customer segments: local viewers (free audience) and local businesses/advertisers (paying customers), with a geographic segmentation approach focused on the Topeka DMA.

The station's competitive positioning rests on a long-established local brand, FCC-licensed broadcast exclusivity, multi-platform distribution, and signature community programming initiatives such as 'We the People,' 'Good Kids,' 'Salute Our Heroes,' and 'Kansas Cold Cases' that drive viewer engagement and advertiser affinity in ways national outlets cannot replicate at the local level.

Name

WIBW

Legal name

Gray Local Media, Inc.

Website

https://wibw.com

Company type

Public

Founded year

2002

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

WIBW is a local broadcast television station in Topeka, Kansas, operated by Gray Television, delivering local news, weather, sports, and community content to Northeast Kansas viewers and monetizing its audience through advertising and digital marketing services sold to local businesses.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Local Broadcast Television

NAICS

Television Broadcasting Stations (516120)

SIC

Television Broadcasting Stations (4833)

akta.pro primary industry

Network-Affiliated Local TV Stations (ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX/CW/Telemundo/Univision, etc.) (MPABACAE)

akta.pro secondary industry

Local News & Weather Stations (MPABACAJ)

Keywords

• Local news broadcasting
• Television advertising
• Weather forecasting
• Sports coverage
• Digital streaming

Headquarters

HQ city

Topeka

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Others

Revenue model

1. Advertising Sales: WIBW generates primary revenue through the sale of advertising time on broadcast television and digital platforms. Local businesses purchase advertising slots during news programs, weather segments, sports broadcasts, and other programming. The station also offers digital marketing services through Gray Digital Media Topeka (gdmtopeka.com).

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

WIBW is a local broadcast television station (WIBW-TV) serving the Topeka, Kansas metropolitan area and surrounding Northeast Kansas communities. It produces and distributes local news, weather forecasting and severe weather alerts, Kansas sports coverage, and community-oriented programming via over-the-air broadcast, cable/satellite carriage, website streaming, and connected TV apps. The station is owned and operated by Gray Local Media, Inc., a subsidiary of Gray Television, Inc. (NASDAQ: GTN).

Product overview

WIBW operates as a local broadcast television station providing a unified media platform centered on TV broadcasting with multiple complementary digital services. The core offering is local television broadcasting of news, sports, weather, and community content, supported by digital extensions including the WIBW+ streaming subscription, weather services with alerts and radar, sports coverage spanning college and high school athletics, video-on-demand galleries, and a Job Hub employment platform. The station serves the Topeka, Kansas metropolitan area and surrounding Northeast Kansas communities.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• WIBW TV Broadcasting Local television broadcasting of news, sports, weather, and entertainment content to the Topeka, Kansas metropolitan area and surrounding Northeast Kansas communities, distributed over-the-air and via cable/satellite.
• WIBW+ Streaming Subscription Premium streaming subscription service offering extended on-demand content access beyond traditional broadcast schedules for WIBW viewers.
• WIBW Weather Service Weather forecasting, radar imagery, severe weather alerts, and First Alert WeatherCall subscription-based phone alert service for Topeka and Northeast Kansas.
• WIBW Sports Coverage Comprehensive sports programming including college sports coverage of Kansas teams, Kansas Prep Zone high school sports, Sunflower Sports Report, Coaches Show, and Scoreboard updates.
• WIBW Livestream Live video streaming of WIBW news broadcasts, weather coverage, and special programming events accessible via wibw.com and the Roku app.
• WIBW Video Gallery / Video Vault On-demand video archive featuring news clips, morning show segments, Video Vault, and weather forecast segments for online viewers.
• WIBW Job Hub Employment listings and job fair information platform connecting local Topeka-area employers with job seekers.
• Gray Digital Media Topeka (Digital Marketing Services) Digital marketing services offered to local businesses seeking advertising and marketing on digital platforms in the Topeka market.

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration5 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• Gray Television / Gray Local MediacoreOthersWIBW is owned and operated by Gray Television (Gray Local Media), one of the largest television broadcasting companies in the United States. Gray Television owns and operates multiple local television stations across the country, providing WIBW with corporate resources, shared technology, national advertising relationships, and operational support.

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Nexstar Media Group: Nexstar is the largest U.S. television station operator, owning network-affiliated stations across major and mid-sized markets. Comparable to Gray in scale, advertising aggregation, and operating model, Nexstar provides a useful benchmark for digital ad growth, retransmission consent economics, and OTT strategy at the local broadcaster level.
• Sinclair Broadcast Group: Sinclair is one of the largest U.S. local television station operators with a portfolio of network-affiliated and sports-centric stations. It is broadly comparable to Gray Television as a multi-station local broadcaster, and its stations face identical cord-cutting, OTT, and digital monetization dynamics that shape WIBW's forward economics.
• Hearst Television: Hearst Television owns and operates a portfolio of local broadcast stations serving major and mid-sized markets, with strong news and weather franchises. Comparable to Gray in its local-first content orientation and reliance on retransmission plus advertising revenue, Hearst provides an additional benchmark for small/mid-market station economics.
• Tegna Inc. Tegna operates network-affiliated local television stations in mid-sized U.S. markets, with a strong reputation for local news, weather, and digital content. Its station-level economics, advertising mix, and streaming strategies closely resemble those of Gray stations like WIBW, making it a directly relevant comparable for valuation and operating benchmarking.

Direct peers

• KWCH-DT / KSCW-DT: KWCH is the CBS-affiliated station serving the Wichita market and wider Kansas region. It competes with WIBW for statewide Kansas sports coverage (KU, K-State, high school), Kansas weather, and overlapping advertiser interest across Kansas, making it a direct in-state network-affiliate peer with similar CBS-affiliate economics.
• KAKEland (KAKE): KAKE is the ABC-affiliated television station in Wichita, Kansas, providing news, weather, and sports across central and western Kansas. It competes with WIBW for Kansas-wide sports rights, severe weather coverage, and statewide advertising budgets, paralleling the network-affiliate local broadcast model in an adjacent Kansas DMA.
• KSNT: KSNT is the NBC-affiliated local television station serving the Topeka, Kansas market. It directly competes with WIBW for the same local viewers, advertisers, and news/weather/sports coverage in the same DMA, and shares the multi-platform broadcast-plus-streaming operating model used by Gray Television stations.

Regional players

• KCTV5 (Scripps): KCTV5 is the CBS-affiliated station serving the Kansas City market, operated by Scripps, and sits in the broader Kansas media landscape adjacent to WIBW's Topeka coverage area. It competes for Kansas City-area viewership and Kansas-statewide sports/weather coverage, making it a regional comparable for the same network affiliation in a nearby DMA.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/wibw

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about WIBW