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{{Infobox broadcast}} may refer to:

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WRDC-TV (UPN 28) is the UPN affiliate in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville) television market. It is licensed to Durham, but its studios are in the Highwoods office park just outside downtown Raleigh.

History

In 1953, WNAO-TV signed on channel 28 as the Triangle's first television station and the state's first UHF station. It was owned by the News and Observer, which had only gotten into broadcasting six years earlier when it opened WNAO AM-FM (now WRBZ-AM and WBBB-FM). However, television manufacturers weren't required to include UHF tuning capability at the time. UHF stations weren't viewable without a converter, and the picture was barely viewable even with one. It went dark in 1959. The fiscal loss for the N&O was so great that it got out of broadcasting entirely.

Channel 28 stayed dark until 1968, when WRDU-TV signed on as an NBC affiliate. For the next quarter-century, it was a textbook example of how not to be a network affiliate. It suffered from having longer-established NBC affiliates in Winston-Salem and Greenville being available over the air in much of the area. Also, its main competitors, CBS affiliate WTVD and ABC affiliate WRAL, were two of the strongest performers for their respective networks. It also frequently pre-empted NBC programming in favor of local shows.

The Durham Life Insurance Company, which owned the Triangle's oldest radio station, WPTF-AM, bought WRDU-TV in 1978 and changed the calls to WPTF-TV. It was Durham Life's second attempt to get into television; it had previously lost a licensing war with the much smaller Capitol Broadcasting for what became WRAL. Durham Life brought in a full-scale news operation, but had little success in the next 20 years. At one point, it was dead last in the Triangle television ratings behind WRAL, WTVD and even WLFL-TV, a station that had only been on the air since 1981. WRAL and WTVD switched affiliations in 1986 after WTVD's owner, Capital Cities Communications, bought ABC, but WPTF saw little windfall from the switch.

By 1992, Durham Life wanted out of broadcasting entirely. Its entire broadcasting unit was broken up and sold off to various owners. WPTF-TV went to the Communications Corporation of America, who changed the calls to WRDC (for Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill). The new owners made the station profitable almost immediately. However, it suffered a major loss in credibility by firing the entire news department. One disgruntled ex-employee suggested that the station's new calls really stood for "We Really Don't Care."

In 1995, NBC merged with Outlet Communications, which owned independent WNCN-TV, a Goldsboro-licensed station that had recently expanded its signal to cover just about the entire Triangle. By this time, NBC had finally had enough with channel 28 and was looking to move its programming elsewhere.

WRDC which would lose NBC in the Fall of 1995 began airing UPN programming in pattern beginning in January of 1995. Preempted NBC shows would run on Channel 17 until that Fall. WRDC was sold to Glencairm which would go into an local marketing agreement with Sinclair's WLFL 22. They continued UPN affiliation until Spring of 1998 when it would be dropped as a result of a dispute between Sinclair and UPN. A few months later UPN was reinstated on WRDC. They ran alot of talk shows, reality shows, court shows, dramas, and some sitcoms. In 2001, WLFL's owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group, purchased WRDC outright.

External links

• WRDC - UPN 28 Website

• Sinclair Broadcast Group
• UPN network affiliates