• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, April 27, 2011

Station group Young Broadcasting, which emerged from bankruptcy last year, has tapped board member Tony Cassara as CEO. The company also announced that Vincent Young, who founded the company with his father in 1986, has left the board.

Vincent Young had been the chief executive for years before the bankruptcy proceedings. President and company veteran Deborah McDermott will continue to have the stations report to her; she reports to Cassara.

The company owns 10 stations, including the San Francisco MyNetworkTV affiliate KRON, where financial trouble helped spur the bankruptcy. Other properties include the ABC affiliates in Nashville and Richmond.

Young Broadcasting said KRON was profitable last year. Cassara stated that company-wide "local, national and political revenue grew exponentially in 2010, and company margins topped those of our publicly traded peers, including Nexstar, Sinclair, Lin TV, Gray TV and Belo."

Tom Sullivan is the board chairman replacing Vincent Young, the company said.

Cassara was a director at Univision from 2005-08 and worked with the company in an advisory role for years at Chartwell Partners, helping launch the TeleFutura network.

He was president of Paramount Pictures station group from 1993-2000, where he expanded it from six to 20 stations. Earlier in his career in 1977, he became the youngest general manager of Los Angeles station KTLA and with KKR, helped lead a leveraged buyout of it from Gene Autry. It was sold to Tribune in 1985 for more than double the buyout amount of $245 million.