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WRDC

ATSC 3.0 station
Durham/Raleigh/ Fayetteville, North Carolina United States
City	Durham, North Carolina
Channels	Digital: 14 (UHF) Virtual: 28
Branding	MyRDC
Programming
Affiliations	28.1: MyNetworkTV (2006–present) 28.2: Charge! (O&O) 28.3: Comet (O&O)
Ownership
Owner	Sinclair Broadcast Group (Raleigh (WRDC-TV) Licensee, Inc.)
Sister stations	broadcast: WLFL, WTVD (news share agreement) cable: Bally Sports South
History
First air date	November 4, 1968 (56 years ago) (1968-11-04)
Former call signs	WRDU-TV (1968–1978) WPTF-TV (1978–1991)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 28 (UHF, 1968–2009) Digital: 27 (UHF, until 2009) 28 (UHF, 2009–2019)
Former affiliations	Primary: NBC (1968–September 1995) UPN (September 1995–Spring 1998, Summer 1998–2006) Independent (Spring–Summer 1998) Secondary: CBS (1968–1971) UPN (January–September 1995)
Call sign meaning	We Serve Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill
Technical information
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	54963
ERP	1,000 kW
HAAT	624 m (2,047 ft)
Transmitter coordinates	35°40′29″N 78°31′39″W / 35.67472°N 78.52750°W / 35.67472; -78.52750
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Website	myrdctv.com

WRDC, virtual channel 28 (UHF digital channel 14), is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station licensed to Durham, North Carolina, United States and serving the Triangle region (Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill–Fayetteville). Owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, it is part of a duopoly with Raleigh-licensed CW affiliate WLFL (channel 22). Both stations share studios in the Highwoods Office Park, just outside downtown Raleigh, while WRDC's transmitter is located in Auburn, North Carolina.

History

Prior use of channel 28 in Raleigh

Channel 28 in Raleigh was initially occupied by WNAO-TV, the first television station in the Raleigh–Durham market and North Carolina's first UHF station. Owned by the Sir Walter Television Company, WNAO-TV broadcast from July 12, 1953, to December 31, 1957, primarily as a CBS affiliate with secondary affiliations with other networks. The station was co-owned with WNAO radio (850 AM, now WPTK; and 96.1 FM, now WBBB), which Sir Walter had bought from The News & Observer newspaper after obtaining the television construction permit. After the Raleigh–Durham market received two VHF television stations in 1954 and 1956 (WTVD and WRAL-TV, respectively), WNAO-TV found the going increasingly difficult, as did many early UHF stations. The station signed off December 31, 1957, and its ownership entered into a joint venture with another dark UHF outlet that was successful in obtaining channel 8 in High Point.

WRDU-TV/Triangle Telecasters

The current incarnation of channel 28 launched on November 4, 1968 as WRDU-TV at 2:00 PM with an episode of the CBS soap Love is a Many Splendored Thing followed by the NBC soaps The Doctors and Another World. . Apart from using the same channel frequency, it was unrelated to WNAO-TV; while WRDU-TV was licensed to Durham, WNAO-TV was licensed to Raleigh. The new station's studios were on North Carolina Highway 54 in southern Durham (now a DaVita Inc. dialysis center), with a transmitter near Terrells Mountain in Chatham County. The station's first owner was Triangle Telecasters, headed by Durham businessman Reuben Everett, his wife Katherine and their son, Robinson O. Everett, and whose business partners included Roland "Sandy" McClamroch, then-mayor of Chapel Hill who also founded radio station WCHL.

On paper, WRDU took over as the Triangle's NBC de facto affiliate. NBC had not had a full-time affiliate in the Triangle since 1962, when WRAL-TV dropped that network in favor of ABC (except for the Huntley–Brinkley Report newscast), leaving CBS affiliate WTVD to shoehorn NBC programming onto its schedule. Although the Triangle had been large enough to support three full network affiliates since the 1950s, there were no commercial VHF allotments available due to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules against short-spacing. The Triangle was sandwiched between the Piedmont Triad to the west, Greenville–Washington–New Bern to the east, Wilmington to the south, and Richmond and Hampton Roads to the north, and the FCC felt there was no room to drop in a third VHF license. Prospective station owners were skeptical about the prospects for a UHF station in a market which stretched from Chapel Hill in the west to Goldsboro in the east. Not only did UHF stations did not cover large amounts of territory very well at the time, but the All-Channel Receiver Act, which required television manufacturers to include all-channel tuning, had only been passed four years earlier. However, this new station took advantage of one form of compensation the old channel 28 could not: cable TV. After four years of deliberation by the Raleigh city council, Cablevision came to the city the same year the station launched, and WRDU was available to Raleigh and Burlington subscribers almost as soon as it went on the air.

Even after channel 28's return, NBC continued to allow WTVD right of first refusal for its programming. The network was reluctant to offer WRDU a full-time affiliation, believing the Everetts lacked the financial wherewithal to run the station, so it let WTVD continue its established practice of cherry-picking higher-rated programs from NBC and CBS (in the same way that WTVD selected the higher-rated CBS and ABC programs when WNAO-TV was in business), leaving WRDU to carry the lower-rated shows as well as NBC's news programming. By November 1969, this situation prompted channel 28 to petition the FCC for recourse against WTVD taking shows back from them that they had already rejected. In 1971, the FCC intervened on behalf of Triangle Telecasters (in part due to the commission's policy aims of protecting the development of UHF stations, by setting a precedent for similar cases elsewhere). The ruling forced WTVD to choose one network; it ultimately chose CBS. NBC had no choice then but to sign with WRDU by default; the network was rather displeased about having to settle for a low-power UHF owned by a family with comparatively limited capitalization. As such, NBC's relationship with channel 28 got off on a bad footing and would never really recover. WRDU's affiliation with NBC stabilized network scheduling for central North Carolina viewers for the first time in a decade, and also made on-air and print promotion easier for WRDU. Nonetheless, the damage had been done, in terms of station identity and loyalty, making things vastly more difficult in the years to come.

In addition, WRDU's main competitors, WTVD and WRAL, were among their respective networks' strongest Southern affiliates, having cultivated audiences over the previous dozen years or so on VHF channels; the same problem that derailed WNAO-TV essentially remained unchanged. As late as 1971, many households in the region likely still had sets made before 1964. Before then, viewing UHF stations usually required buying a separate converter, and even then the picture quality was marginal at best. As such, most of those viewers had never bothered to purchase converters to receive UHF signals, seeing no need for them. Even after channel 28's debut, the station was all but invisible in the Triangle, as most viewers ignored the publicity surrounding the 1968 launch (of course, others were uninterested, perceiving WRDU's shows as low-quality WTVD cast-offs). WRDU also had to deal with longer-established NBC affiliates on VHF such as WSJS-TV in Winston-Salem (now WXII-TV), WITN-TV in Washington and WECT in Wilmington, all of which provided at least "Grade B" coverage to the outer portions of the market. Channel 28's transmitter was located on the Orange–Chatham County line on the market's western fringe, providing only a Grade B signal to Raleigh proper and rendering it practically unviewable over the air in southern and eastern Wake County. A channel 70 translator went on air in May 1969 to improve WRDU's coverage in eastern Wake County; in 1972, that translator moved to channel 22 and from the top of the BB&T Building in downtown Raleigh to the top of a newly constructed retirement home nearby.

Another thing that caused WRDU problems in its early years was Triangle Telecasters' frequent preemption of network shows for syndicated programs. The Everetts believed they could get more revenue from local advertising than from network airtime payments, due to WRDU's low ratings keeping compensation rates very low in turn. The preemptions only increased during NBC's ratings struggles in the 1970s. Even so, some of that was likely prompted by NBC's already-strained relationship with the station, rooted in the network's chagrin over the 1971 FCC decision effectively forcing it onto an undesirable UHF channel (see above). Generally speaking, NBC was considerably less tolerant of its stations substituting alternative programming for its feed than ABC or CBS. However, when NBC demanded that Triangle Telecasters clear the entire NBC schedule with no preemptions, the Everetts turned the demand down. NBC was in no position to do anything about it because of the lack of any competition to the three commercial stations in the market. WUNC-TV (channel 4) was the highest station on the dial in the market, but it was already a PBS station and remains so to this day and thus was out of consideration for a commercial station. NBC was stuck with channel 28, and would be for over the next two decades. Ironically, one time WRDU chose not to preempt a network program, they still faced criticism for different reasons; the program was Franco Zeffirelli's mini-series Jesus of Nazareth and those lodging complaints were religious leaders fearing it would offend their beliefs. This was in spite of the fact that some of the station's preemptions of network shows were for Billy Graham crusades and the fact that the station also had the local rights to The PTL Club. The station was also home to Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon until 1979 when it moved to WTVD.

Durham Life era

Without a sale, WRDU would have gone off the air.

By 1975, the station was running out of money and the Everetts wanted out. Realizing that the station would go dark again if it continued on this trajectory, they looked for a new owner. After two years of negotiations, the Durham Life Insurance Company, which owned the Triangle's oldest radio station, WPTF (680 AM), bought WRDU-TV from the Everetts in May 1977 and changed its call sign to WPTF-TV on August 14, 1978, coinciding with a major signal overhaul and new 1,300-foot (400 m) transmitter tower near Apex that brought channel 28's coverage area into far closer parity with WRAL-TV and WTVD than had previously been the case. This was Durham Life's second attempt to get into television. It was one of two applicants for channel 5 in the 1950s and had made extensive preparations for its television station, buying cameras and rehearsing announcers. However, the FCC shocked Durham Life when it awarded the license to the much smaller Capitol Broadcasting, owner of WRAL radio (AM 1240, now WPJL, and 101.5 FM) as WRAL-TV. Before buying channel 28, Durham Life had been interested in building a new station on channel 22.

In addition to the upgraded signal, Durham Life, which had far larger financial resources than Triangle Telecasters could have ever managed, invested a considerable amount of money into its new purchase by upgrading the news department and purchasing $500,000 in new equipment. It also added a weekday children's show entitled Barney's Army, which was hosted by the namesake Aniforms puppet and ran from 1979 to 1983, long after the genre had disappeared from most other American stations. The show consisted of short interstitials between cartoons and other children's shows along with a viewer call-in game called TV Pow along with local musical acts and educational segments. This youth-centered daytime schedule came at a cost to soap opera viewers and to NBC itself: Another World was absent from the station during its 90-minute expansion from 1979 to 1980; a station representative argued the syndicated shows were more profitable. Still, the move did not happen without opposition from the network and from angry calls and letters from viewers who had actually watched the show on WPTF. Meanwhile, the next closest stations still playing the show in its regular time slot were WECT in Wilmington, WITN-TV in Washington, and WAVY-TV in Portsmouth, Virginia, all of which were VHF stations. Likewise, the station's refusal to show Texas prompted viewer outrage, and less than a year after the station added the show only after the network moved it to a mid-morning time slot, NBC canceled it.

Amid indications that Durham Life shared the Everetts' programming attitude despite a more powerful signal, Channel 28 still faced the audience-loyalty problems it had under Triangle Telecasters. As NBC's ratings slump worsened, it further strained the already shaky WPTF-NBC relationship. Even the few hits the network had at the time, such as Diff'rent Strokes and The Rockford Files, performed poorly for the station. In November 1979, WRAL's 6 p.m. newscast attracted a 30 rating, WTVD's a 16, and WPTF-TV's a measly 1. The highly profitable radio stations continued to make money, but the broadcasting division of the Durham Corporation—broken off from Durham Life Insurance and subject to two hostile takeovers that it successfully fought off —posted losses because of channel 28. It also continued to preempt NBC programming, albeit less often than the 1970s. Despite attempts to reach Black viewers with some syndicated programming choices, WPTF-TV even preempted Maya Angelou's TV movie Sister, Sister when NBC aired it despite its being set in North Carolina and despite Angelou teaching at Wake Forest University. The station defended its programming philosophy by pointing to its most acclaimed and popular examples of first-run syndicated programs such as The Muppet Show and TV-movies from Operation Prime Time. Things like this did not sit very well with NBC, who steadily lost patience with WPTF but saw no way out of this agreement because they had nowhere else to go since no option higher up the dial existed yet in the Raleigh–Durham market. There were other NBC affiliates in the South at the time that were even further down the dial, such as WPCQ-TV (channel 36) in Charlotte, North Carolina, WLTZ (channel 38) in Columbus, Georgia, WMGT-TV (channel 41) in Macon, Georgia, and WTWC-TV (channel 40) in Tallahassee, Florida, but it was WPTF that had done the most to fight for the right of first refusal for NBC shows and exercise it at will. Channel 28 could also justify its reliance on syndicated programs by pointing out how they got higher ratings than its nightly news broadcasts. The station even went as far as to cut back its news programming to brief cut-ins from 1983 to 1986, much like Superstation WTBS in Atlanta, Georgia had at the time. Channel 28 had already eliminated the 11:00 p.m. newscast in 1982 while moving the 6:00 p.m. newscast to 5:30 with NBC Nightly News moving to 7:00 p.m. so it could air Star Trek instead. It also dropped NBC News Overnight, arguing to a local newspaper that the station would lose money on the show compared to just showing nothing at all and signing off after Late Night with David Letterman.

WRAL and WTVD switched affiliations in 1985 after WTVD's owner, Capital Cities Communications, bought ABC. Despite an ad campaign designed to poke fun at it, saying "you know where to find us" to point out that NBC was still in the same place, WPTF-TV saw practically no windfall from the switch, a highly unusual occurrence then when two stations in a market switched networks, as the third station usually exploited the transition, and potential ensuing confusion, to its advantage. Even by the mid-to-late 1980s, with NBC's powerful prime time lineup leading the network from last place to first place in the national ratings, WPTF-TV was dead last in the Triangle television ratings. It even trailed WLFL, an independent station (and later, a Fox affiliate) that had only been on the air since 1981; its space on the dial, channel 22, was the one Durham Corporation had wanted first but passed on in favor of WPTF. Meanwhile, preemptions of NBC shows continued unabated. It even preempted the popular prime time dramas Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere, prompting over 400 angry calls and letters to the station. One short-lived NBC daytime show called Fantasy actually went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to hold auditions for guests despite the fact that WPTF did not even air it, and the network canceled the show a few months later.

Durham Corporation was able to make progress and begin making money again in its broadcasting unit in the 1980s. In 1987, the company moved the entire broadcasting unit, radio and TV, to new quarters in the Highwoods office complex costing $1 million. However, it made very little difference in the ratings. The 6 p.m. edition of Newsbeat 28 newscast not only saw no improvement on the same low ratings it garnered in the previous decade, but couldn't even beat WLFL's reruns of the former NBC sitcom Gimme a Break! (nor its replacement, Silver Spoons, another former NBC sitcom except for its last season in first-run syndication) as WTVD and WRAL maintained their leads. The next year, WPTF-TV appeared on the cable system in Fayetteville for the first time, a move cited as key in increasing station circulation and giving it more parity with WRAL and WTVD. During this decade, the station broke new ground by broadcasting in 3D and stereo sound before other stations (and in the case of the latter, ahead of the network itself) while also being the first station in the area to accept condom ads.

In August 1989, Durham Corporation opted to focus on its core insurance business and announced it was placing WPTF-TV up for sale. Durham Life sought as much as $45 million for the station. Despite putting on a positive face for the public that included the introduction of an anthropomorphic mascot named Petey F. Peacock, nature derailed the station's attempts to turn its fortunes around in a way that foreshadowed future changes in its relationship with NBC. On December 10, 1989, the towers of WPTF-TV and WRAL-TV near Auburn collapsed in an ice storm. The next day, Durham Corporation took WPTF-TV off the market due to the collapse; it had received lesser offers than it had expected. The first signs of trouble came earlier that year when a less severe ice storm still proved strong enough to knock the station off the air for 10 hours so maintenance workers could replace parts of a transmission line that sustained damaged from the ice. After temporarily broadcasting some programs over WYED-TV (channel 17) from Goldsboro, and WFCT (channel 62) in Fayetteville, the station reverted to its previous tower site until it could begin broadcasting from a new candelabra tower shared with WRAL-TV in late 1990.

Even when it began broadcasting on its own signal again, it still had to deal with the poor ratings of the nightly newscast, which was frequently trounced by other local news broadcasts and sitcom reruns, including but not limited to shows WPTF used to air when they were new. Channel 28 tried moving the 6 p.m. newscast to 7 p.m., displacing Hard Copy (which had actually gotten better ratings) and airing after NBC Nightly News instead of before it, with Cheers reruns taking its old time slot. By this time, they had also replaced lead anchor Terry Thill, who was also a producer, with Ben Garrett. Moving the early newscast actually made ratings worse, as it now had to compete with Jeopardy! on WTVD and Entertainment Tonight on WRAL. By this time their higher-rated competitors were also airing pre-6 p.m. newscasts. The firing of Terry Thill ultimately proved to be a grim harbinger of things to come for the news division. On top of that, the whole of Durham Life Broadcasting was suffering bad publicity due to Laurel Smith, general manager of WQDR-FM (the former WPTF-FM), facing accusations of sexual harassment by male employees while she was also involved in a child custody case with her ex-husband; a memo by company president Felton P. Coley told employees of the company's radio and TV stations, WPTF-TV included, not to talk about it publicly, a point made moot when she resigned. This would eventually prove to be the line in the sand as far as Durham Life Broadcasting was concerned.

Sale to FSF and switch from NBC to UPN

We have never seen a network affiliate with local news as low-rated as it was here. We could have quadrupled our spending on it and it would not make any progress.

While the company initially announced plans to retain its television and radio properties, Durham Life exited broadcasting and sold off individual stations to various owners. FSF TV, Inc., a Nashville, Tennessee-based company formed by Bev W. Landstreet III and Paul Brissette, a Boca Raton, Florida-based investor and president of Adams Television, bought WPTF-TV and changed the call sign to WRDC on October 25, after the three major cities in the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill), and rebranded the station as "TRI-28" (later rendered as "TRY-28"). Meanwhile, the company hired Vickie Street, former general manager of Adams-owned WWAY, the ABC affiliate in Wilmington, as general manager of WRDC, answering directly to Brissette. The new ownership made the station profitable almost immediately, but only after terminating virtually the entire news department in a cost-cutting move at the end of July 1991. Brissette said that the newscasts' ratings were so anemic that it would not be worth the effort to spend the money it would take to make them viable.

While the station was out of the red, the loss of news programming assured little to no goodwill from NBC about the future direction of the station. One disgruntled ex-employee bitterly suggested that the station's new call sign stood for "We Really Don't Care" while another compared the situation to the last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in which the new owners of the fictional WJM fired all the employees of the nightly newscast except Ted Baxter. Some argued that a last-place newscast was better than nothing and that the market needed more than two newscasts to serve it adequately. Meanwhile, the other stations Brissette had controlling interests in not only had news broadcasts, but successful ones as well. The station continued to employ a single anchor/reporter to helm local cut-ins that would air in and around NBC network shows and syndicated programming. Even these news briefs were canceled in 1994, two years after WLFL had launched a 10 PM newscast, leaving WRDC as little more than a "pass-through" for network and syndicated programming. However, one thing did not change: the station continued to preempt NBC shows, but they would not have them around much longer.

By the mid-1990s, even with the network still capitalizing on the success of its Must-See TV campaign, NBC's patience with WRDC was exhausted after over a quarter-century of mediocrity at best on channel 28. The station's anemic ratings in the Triangle were a particular embarrassment for NBC, as by then the Triangle had become one of the fastest-growing markets in the country, yet the station's ratings had not grown along with the growth of the region. Continuing preemptions and Brissette's all-but-nonexistent commitment to local news did not help matters. NBC began to look to move its programming to another station at the end of its affiliation agreement with channel 28. Unlike the 1970s, it had options this time around to go elsewhere and get a better arrangement, thanks in no small part to cable leveling the playing field between VHF and UHF outlets and a deregulatory-minded FCC ceasing active promotion of the development of UHF, leaving it to market forces. When WNCN (channel 17, formerly WYED-TV), licensed to Goldsboro but located just outside Raleigh in Clayton, boosted its signal to 5 million watts to provide greater coverage to the Triangle market, NBC finally saw an opportunity. WNCN's owner, Outlet Communications, had very good relations with NBC; it owned WJAR-TV in Providence, Rhode Island and WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, which were two of NBC's strongest and longest-standing affiliates. Although WNCN had just affiliated with the new WB Television Network, NBC quickly cut a deal with Outlet to move its Triangle affiliation to WNCN (it eventually purchased Outlet outright, making WNCN an owned-and-operated station for around a decade). Soon after the deal closed in January, WNCN began airing any NBC shows WRDC turned down as it took on a secondary affiliation with upstart network UPN.

However, NBC remained affiliated with WRDC until September 10, 1995—a month earlier than planned, by mutual agreement between the two stations, ending a 27-year affiliation under three different owners. WNCN became the sole NBC affiliate in the Triangle, while WRDC became an exclusive UPN affiliate and the local affiliation for The WB intended for WNCN went to Capitol Broadcasting's newly-launched WRAZ (channel 50) that fall. Even before then, however, the station had started branding itself as "UPN 28" and all but stopped promoting NBC programming; it also delayed UPN's Monday and Tuesday night slates to air on Friday and Saturday nights instead of NBC's weak prime time lineup, which WNCN aired on those nights until September. The last NBC program to air on WRDC was an NBC Sunday Night Movie presentation of Tango & Cash on September 10, 1995 at 9:00 p.m.

With WRDC now a full-time UPN affiliate, it no longer had a decent amount of programming to preempt, solving that long-standing problem. UPN only programmed on Monday and Tuesday nights at the time, and would never air any programming on weekends. WRDC also picked up several syndicated shows that WNCN no longer had time to air. This left WRDC with mostly talk shows on its daytime lineup after nearly three decades of having played fast and loose with its carriage of NBC's morning and afternoon feed.

Despite his frugal management of WRDC, Brissette began sinking under the weight of massive financial problems and merged his group with Benedek Broadcasting later in 1995 (a year earlier, a sale to the Communications Corporation of America was approved by the FCC but never consummated ). However, since the merger left Benedek one station over FCC ownership limits of the time, WRDC was sold to Glencairn Ltd. Glencairn was nominally headed by Edwin Edwards, a former executive with WLFL's owner, the Sinclair Broadcast Group. However, the Smith family, founders and owners of Sinclair, held 97% of Glencairn's stock, so for all intents and purposes Sinclair now owned both stations. Sinclair further circumvented the rules by taking over WRDC's operations under a local marketing agreement, with WLFL as the senior partner. However, the combined operation was and still is based at WRDC's former studios in the Highwoods complex. Similar arrangements were in place at Glencairn's other eight stations, leading to allegations that Sinclair was using Glencairn to make an end-run around FCC rules forbidding television station duopolies. The FCC eventually fined Sinclair $40,000 for its illegal control of Glencairn.

Channel 28 briefly dropped its UPN affiliation in the spring of 1998 and became an independent station, as did most of the UPN-affiliated stations that Sinclair either owned or controlled, due to a dispute between UPN and Sinclair. During the dispute, UPN programming was available in the Raleigh market via out-of-market stations, such as WUPN in Greensboro and WILM-LD in Wilmington, on cable providers in the market and via Dish Network satellite services. However, UPN and Sinclair patched up their dispute, and UPN programming returned to WRDC in the summer. Sinclair purchased WRDC outright in 2001 after the FCC finally allowed duopolies. This was possible because WNCN had by this time passed WRDC as the fourth-rated station in the Triangle. The FCC's duopoly rules prohibit one company to own two of the four highest-rated stations by total viewership in a single market.

As a MyNetworkTV affiliate

On January 24, 2006, Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that The WB and UPN (which had only used its initials as its official name since 2000) would merge their higher-rated programs onto a new network, The CW. The news of the merger resulted in Sinclair announcing, two months later, that most of its UPN and WB affiliates, including WRDC, would join MyNetworkTV, a new service formed by the News Corporation, which is also owner of the Fox network. Sister station WLFL, which had been a WB affiliate since 1998, took the CW affiliation a few months later. This gave North Carolina two CW/MyNetworkTV duopolies, the other being WJZY/WMYT-TV in Charlotte. In both cases, the MyNetworkTV affiliate was the junior partner.

In recent years, WRDC has been carried on cable in multiple areas within the Triad and Greenville–Washington–New Bern markets.

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to a five-year affiliation agreement extension for Sinclair's 19 Fox-affiliated stations until 2017. This included an option, that was exercisable between July 1, 2012 and March 31, 2013, for Fox parent News Corporation to buy a combination of six Sinclair-owned stations (two CW/MyNetworkTV duopolies and two standalone MyNetworkTV affiliates) in three out of four markets; WLFL and WRDC were included in the Fox purchase option, along with stations in Cincinnati (WSTR-TV), Norfolk (WTVZ) and Las Vegas (KVCW and KVMY). In January 2013, Fox announced that it would not exercise its option to buy any of the Sinclair stations in the four aforementioned markets.

Newscasts

Shortly after signing on, WRDU established a news department. For many years, the station's newscasts placed last among the Triangle market's television stations, behind WRAL and WTVD. After Durham Life bought the station, it poured significant resources into the station's news department. Despite this, the news department, even with the power boost and increased resources, remained stubbornly in the ratings basement. This was in marked contrast to its radio sister WPTF, one of the most respected radio news operations in North Carolina. Not even a move of the 6 p.m. newscast to 7 p.m. in September 1990 could improve chronically low ratings.

On July 31, 1991, in a cost-cutting move, new owner Brissette Broadcasting fired nearly the entire news staff and most of the production crew. WRDC lost a good deal of credibility as a result and never recovered. The station continued to employ a single anchor/reporter to helm local news updates that would air during and around NBC network shows and syndicated programming; even these news briefs eventually were discontinued outright in 1994, leaving WRDC without locally-based news programming for the station's remaining two years as an NBC affiliate, with the only news programming aired coming from NBC News. The station has not run any news programming since September 1995, outside of Sinclair's required 'must-run' political programming and specials and news, sports, and entertainment updates on its website.

Notable former on-air staff

• Woody Durham – sports director, 1977–1981 (deceased)

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on the multiplexed digital signals of other Raleigh–Durham television stations:

WRDC previously broadcast TheCoolTV on a second digital subchannel, but the network was dropped from all Sinclair stations on August 31, 2012.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WRDC discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 28, on February 17, 2009, five months ahead of the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. It was one of three stations in the Triangle market, along with WLFL and WRAY-TV, that decided to switch on that date, even though the official transition date had been changed to June 12, 2009. Although it had an assigned digital channel that it would move to post-transition that differed from its original digital channel, WRDC continued to broadcast its digital signal on its pre-transition allocation (UHF channel 27). At noon on June 12, the station's digital signal relocated to UHF channel 28.

ATSC 3.0 lighthouse

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

On November 17, 2020, WRDC converted to ATSC 3.0, with simulcasts from WLFL, WTVD, WNCN and WUVC. Existing channels from WRDC are hosted by WLFL, WNCN and WTVD.

Transmitter tower

In 1986, WPTF erected a 2,000-foot (610 m) transmitter tower near Auburn, North Carolina, in an attempt to increase its signal coverage to include Fayetteville and other cities located south and east of Raleigh. That tower collapsed in December 1989, during an early morning winter ice storm that also claimed the nearby tower of WRAL-TV. WPTF managed to get back on the air several hours later by rebroadcasting its signal on both WYED-TV (now WNCN) for the Raleigh–Durham area and WFCT-TV (channel 62, now WFPX-TV) for the Fayetteville area.

A month following the WYED/WFCT simulcast, WPTF reactivated its old tower near Apex, which it had used from 1978 to 1986, allowing the station to resume its broadcasts on channel 28 as usual. That same tower was dismantled several years later and then donated to classical radio station WCPE-FM, who reassembled it at a spot near its studios in Wake Forest, North Carolina in 1993. WPTF would eventually join WRAL-TV in 1991 on a newly built 1,989-foot (606 m) broadcast tower at the latter's previous site, which also included the transmission signal for WRAL-FM, WQDR-FM, and a couple of low-power television stations in the area. Four years later, WRAZ would sign on from the tower as well. In the early 2000s, the digital signals of WRAL-TV, WRAZ and WRDC signed on from an adjacent 2,000-foot candelabra tower, which also includes the antennae for WLFL and WNCN. After the digital transition of 2009, WRDC-DT returned to full-time, full-power transmission of its digital signal from the same facilities, including transmission line and antenna, as the original analog transmitters, while sister station WLFL moved to WRDC's transitional UHF channel 27 facilities on the candelabra.

Notes

1. Though there was no interruption in production and they were broadcast in many other markets soon after NBC's cancellation of the show in 1986 as if it had never stopped at all, those last season episodes made their first appearances on a Raleigh–Durham station no less than two years after their production and initial airings in the rest of the country.

References

1. Miller, Mark K. (August 23, 2019). "Sinclair Closes $10.6B Disney RSN Purchase". TVNewsCheck. NewsCheckMedia. Retrieved August 23, 2019.
2. "Facility Technical Data for WRDC". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
3. Morrison, Bill (3 November 1968). "Our New TV Station Debuts This Week". The News and Observer. Raleigh, NC. p. 74. Retrieved 25 October 2021.
4. "UHF's bright outlook cited at dedications" (PDF). Broadcasting. February 10, 1969. p. 60. Retrieved May 20, 2020.
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External links

• My RDC website
• Raleigh Tower Disaster - includes pictures of the WRAL and WPTF-TV towers, which were destroyed in a December 1989 ice storm
• Template:BIA

v t e Sinclair Broadcast Group
Broadcast TV stations	Sorted by primary channel network affiliations ABC KAEF-TV KATU KATV KDNL-TV KHGI-TV / KWNB-TV KOMO-TV KRCR-TV KTUL KTVO KTXS-TV / KTXE-LD KVII-TV / KVIH-TV WATM-TV WBMA-LD WCHS-TV WCTI-TV WEAR-TV WGTU / WGTQ WHAM-TV WICD WICS WKEF WJLA-TV WLOS WPDE-TV WSET-TV WSYX WTVC WXLV-TV CBS KBAK-TV KBOI-TV KDBC-TV KEYE-TV KFDM KGAN KHQA-TV KIMA-TV / KEPR-TV KLEW-TV KRCG KTVL KUTV KVAL-TV / KCBY-TV / KPIC WGFL WGME-TV WHP-TV WKRC-TV WPEC WRGB WSBT-TV WTVH WWMT The CW KECA-LD KFRE-TV KUNS-TV KVCW KYUU-LD WBSF WBUI WCWF WCWN WFLI-TV WLFL WNUV WPNT WSTM-DT2 WSWB WTTO / WDBB WTVX WUCW WVTV WWHO Fox KABB KBFX-CD KBVU KCVU KDSM-TV KFOX-TV KFXL-TV KMPH-TV KOKH-TV KPTH KPTM KRXI-TV KSAS-TV / KAAS-TV / KOCW KSCC WACH WBFF WEMT WFXL WGXA WLUK-TV WMSN-TV WOLF-TV WPFO WPGH-TV WRLH-TV WRSP-TV / WCCU WSMH WTAT-TV WTGS WUHF WUTV WWCP-TV WYDO WZTV NBC KECI-TV / KCFW-TV / KTVM-TV / KDBZ-CD KMTR / KMCB / KTCW KRNV-DT KSNV WCYB-TV WEYI-TV WJAC-TV WJAR WNBW-DT WNWO-TV WOAI-TV WPBN-TV / WTOM-TV WPMI-TV WSTM-TV WTOV-TV WTWC-TV MyNetworkTV KMYU KNSN-TV KRVU-LD / KZVU-LD WABM WCIV WFGX WMYV WNYO-TV WQMY WRDC WSTR-TV WTCN-CD WTVZ-TV WUXP-TV WVTV-DT2 Spanish Azteca WWHB-CD Univision KEUV-LD KUCO-LD KUNP KUNW-CD / KVVK-CD / KORX-CA UniMás KKTF-LD Other stations Antenna TV KXVU-LD WYME-CD Comet KTES-LD Dabl KBTV-TV KFXA KMEG KMTW KMYS WMYA-TV WNAB WRGT-TV WWMB Catchy Comedy WVAH-TV TBD KENV-DT KXVO WDCO-CD / WIAV-CD WHOI WTTE WUTB Ind. KJZZ-TV WJTC KOCB Defunct KTOV-LP KXPX-LP WCGV-TV
Channels	Subchannel networks Charge! Comet TBD The Nest Defunct American Sports Network Cable channels Bally Sports Regional Networks Bally Sports app Marquee Sports Network Tennis Channel Tennis (magazine) WJLA 24/7 News (DC metro) YES Network Defunct Stadium College Sports
Programming	News Full Measure w/ Sharyl Attkisson The National Desk Defunct Circa News KidsClick News Central Ring of Honor Wrestling
Acquisitions	Act III Broadcasting Allbritton Communications Barrington Broadcasting Bonten Media Group Dielectric Communications Fisher Communications Four Points Media Group Fox Sports Networks Freedom Communications Guy Gannett Communications Heritage Media Newport Television River City Broadcasting
Operated by Sinclair under an LMA. Formerly separately licensed as WCGV-TV and merged with WVTV's spectrum, but remains on its former channel number as a separate station Joint Venture

• MyNetworkTV affiliates
• Charge! (TV network) affiliates
• Comet (TV network) affiliates
• Sinclair Broadcast Group
• 1968 establishments in North Carolina
• Television channels and stations established in 1968
• Television stations in Raleigh–Durham
• ATSC 3.0 television stations