In 1980, Emmis Broadcasting founder Jeffrey Smulyan purchased his first radio station, WSVL-FM Shelbyville, Indiana.

In July 1981, Smulyan changed the format from country music to adult contemporary and renamed the station WENS and later to WLHK.

[3] In 1987, Emmis made a series of purchases including WQHT, WYNY, and WNBC in New York, WKQX in Chicago, WJIB in Boston, WKUU and KXXX in San Francisco, and KKHT in Houston.

[4] Chairman and CEO Jeff Smulyan purchased the Seattle Mariners Major League Baseball team in 1989.

[citation needed] In 1991, Emmis sold two more stations: WLOL to Minnesota Public Radio[6] and KXXX, San Francisco, to Alliance Broadcasting.

[18] Emmis added Cincinnati Magazine to its publishing group, as well as KIHT-FM and KPNT-FM in St. Louis to its rock collection.

[20] Emmis acquired a lot of media in the same year including Texas Monthly,[21] WRXP in New York, WTHI and WWVR in Terre Haute, and six television stations in Honolulu, New Orleans, Green Bay, and Mobile, Alabama, from SF Broadcasting and in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Ft. Myers, Florida, from Wabash Valley Broadcasting[22] RadioNow was launched in Indianapolis as a Top 40 format.

However, on April 15, 2009, KMVN switched to Spanish-language programming, KXOS, under a seven-year Local Marketing Agreement with Grupo Radio Centro of Mexico City.

[26] On January 12, 2011, the share price of Emmis stock surged 42% as insiders speculated that the company could be close to selling off several of its radio stations.

[31] On October 12, 2016, Emmis announced that it would sell its radio stations in the Terre Haute cluster to Midwest Communications and DLC Media.

[32][33][34] On March 1, 2017, Emmis announced it had sold four of its magazines (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and Orange Coast) to Hour Media Group, LLC for $6.5 million.

The announcement came after Emmis made a deal in April with its lenders to seek $80 million worth of divestments by January 2018 to amend its credit agreement.

[36][37][38] On January 30, 2018, Emmis announced it would leave the St. Louis market, selling KSHE and KPNT to Hubbard Broadcasting, and KFTK and KNOU to Entercom.

Major clients include: Amazon, AT&T, CVS Health, Coca-Cola, Ford, Ernst & Young, Michelin among many others.

[47][48] Launched in August 2013 through a radio industry agreement with Sprint Corporation,[49] the app was preloaded on some devices, and available for download in the Google Play Store of Android applications.

[51][52] TagStation allows broadcasters a web-based platform for managing supplemental content for delivery to the NextRadio app,[53] HD Radio receivers,[54] and connected car dashboards.

[50] Emmis announced on September 9, 2008, that it had teamed up with digital radio network WorldBand Media and would be using the "HD-3" subchannels to produce programming for the South Asian communities in Chicago (on WLUP), Los Angeles (on KPWR), and New York (on WQHT), and would include a combination of local and international content that should be available by mid-October 2008.