The story
The company currently known as "Farm Progress" started in 1819 with the American Farmer magazine. Prairie Farmer started in 1841, followed by Wallaces Farmer in 1855, which helped chronicle the vast changes in Iowa agriculture as well as provide information to help farmers trim costs and boost profits. Three generations of the Wallace family, Henry Cantwell Wallace, Henry A. Wallace, and Henry Browne Wallace, owned and operated Wallaces' Farmer, which was then a newspaper.
The Farm Progress affiliate Prairie Farmer purchased radio station WLS from Sears in 1928 and operated it primarily as a service to farmers. The station moved to the Prairie Farmer Building on West Washington Street in Chicago, Illinois where it remained for 32 years.
In 1959, American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters bought the Farm Progress Group, largely to acquire WLS and consolidate it with ABC station WENR. In 1986, ABC merged with Capital Cities. In 1991, Capital Cities/ABC acquired the farm magazines of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. In 1996, the Disney Company purchased Capital Cities/ABC. In 1997, the Disney Company sold the Farm Progress Companies to Rural Press. Rural Press merged with Fairfax in 2007. In 2012, Fairfax sold Farm Progress to Penton Media. On November 2, 2016, Penton was bought by the UK based company Informa. Farm Progress and its publications were integrated into the Informa Markets Division.
From Wikipedia’s article on Farm Progress, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3