Longtime leader of Morgan Murphy Media and WBA Hall of Famer, Elizabeth Murphy Burns, has died. She was 79.
A Duluth-Superior native, her early broadcast career was served at television stations in Tucson and San Diego and in radio ownership in southern California. In 1975, she became part of the management team at WISC-TV, the Murphy family broadcasting station in Madison.
In 1980, she was named President of Morgan Murphy Stations which included WISC-TV and two radio and four television stations in Washington State and North Dakota.
In the ensuing decades, under her leadership, the Murphy media domain grew to include WISC-TV, Madison, and WKBT-TV, La Crosse, WPLV AM/FM, Platteville, WGLR AM/FM, Lancaster, and eight radio stations in Iowa and Washington State, as well as the popular monthly, Madison Magazine, a cable television channel, UPN14, in Madison and Murphy Entertainment Group, a video programming company.
Burns was the first woman elected to the CBS Affiliates Advisory Board and also served on the TVB Board of Directors and on the National Association of Broadcasters Board of Directors.
Burns recently retired from day-to-day leadership of the company.
She was inducted into the WBA Hall of Fame in 2005.
