| Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina | |
|---|---|
| Branding | CW 22 (general) ABC 11 Eyewitness News |
| Slogan | TV to Talk About & Breaking News. Breaking Stories. |
| Channels | Digital: 27 (UHF) Virtual: 22 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | 22.1 The CW 22.2 The Country Network |
| Owner | Sinclair Broadcast Group (WLFL Licensee, LLC) |
| First air date | December 18, 1981 |
| Call letters' meaning | Light For Living (slogan used by original owner prior to sign-on) |
| Sister station(s) | WRDC, WMYA-TV, WMYV, WLOS, WXLV-TV |
| Former callsigns | WLFL-TV (1981-1993) |
| Former channel number(s) | 22 (UHF analog, 1981-2009) 57 (UHF digital) |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1981-1986) Fox (1986-1998) The WB (1998-2006) |
| Transmitter power | 725 kW |
| Height | 610 m |
| Class | DT |
| Facility ID | 73205 |
| Website | raleighcw.com |
WLFL is the CW-affiliated television station for North Carolina's Triangle licensed to Raleigh. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 27 (virtual channel 22.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter located in Auburn, North Carolina. The station can also be seen on Time Warner Cable channel 2 and in high definition on digital channel 1122. Owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, WLFL is sister to MyNetworkTV affiliate WRDC and the two share studios on Highwoods Boulevard in Raleigh. Syndicated programming on this station includes How I Met Your Mother, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Maury among others. It is one of three Sinclair duopolies in the state of North Carolina.
Contents |
On WLFL-DT2 and Time Warner Cable digital channel 123 is The Country Network.
| Channels | Name | Video | Aspect | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22.1 | WLFL-HD | 1080i | 16:9 | Main WLFL programming / The CW |
| 22.2 | Country | 480i | 4:3 | The Country Network |
The analog UHF channel 22 allotment was in planning stages as early as 1976 as a Christian-themed station with mostly Christian programs and some secular family shows. It would be operated by L.L. "Buddy" Leathers and his Carolina Christian Communications, a broadcasting company whose flagship was WGGS in Greenville, South Carolina. Carolina Christian had several construction permits in the Carolinas. This station's permit was bought out by Family Television in 1980 with the intention to sign-on in late-September 1981. However, those plans were scuttled due to technical problems and bad weather.
It finally went on-the-air as WLFL-TV (Light For Living) at 2 in the afternoon on December 18, 1981 with the movie Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing as its inaugural program following a day of test patterns. It was the Triangle's first full-market Independent outlet. Another earlier station with the same format (WKFT-TV now WUVC) had signed-on a few months before but did not have an adequate signal to most of the market at the time. WLFL was a typical UHF Independent running cartoons, dramas, westerns, old sitcoms, and old movies in addition to religious programming. While licensed to Raleigh, its studios were initially on Broad Street in Downtown Durham (the same building where WTVD set up shop in 1954) with its master control facility located with the transmission and tower facility near Apex.
In 1985, WLFL was purchased by the Norfolk, Virginia-based TVX Broadcast Group. The company upgraded the station's programming until it was actually the third-highest rated station in the Triangle area. A year later, TVX moved WLFL into new studios on Front Street in Raleigh just inside the Beltline/I-440. On October 6, 1986, it became a charter affiliate of Fox along with all other TVX stations. The station also replaced its original 1,000-foot (300 m) tower and one megawatt ERP transmission facility with a new 1,550-foot (470 m) tower and five megawatt visual, 500 kW aural ERP transmission antenna. TVX sold-off most of its medium market stations in 1988 following its purchase of Taft Broadcasting's Independent stations and Fox affiliates. It held onto WLFL until its merger with Paramount Pictures in 1991 after which the group was renamed Paramount Stations Group. By this time, it was one of the strongest Fox affiliates in the country. In 1993, the station dropped the -TV suffix from its call sign.
Paramount sold WLFL to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1994 and entered into a local marketing agreement (LMA) with WRDC the following year. That station was owned by Glencairn Broadcasting a separate entity the Smith family (who owned Sinclair) had a majority stake in thus creating a duopoly in the market even before Sinclair purchased WRDC outright in 2001. While WLFL was the senior partner in the deal, it vacated its Front Street studios that year and moved to WRDC's new facility in the nearby Highwoods office complex. WNCN-TV, which acquired the market's NBC affiliation from WRDC in 1995, moved into WLFL's old studios at the same time. In 1996, Fox announced it would not renew its contract with this station when it got involved in a dispute with Sinclair over programming issues during the 10 p.m. slot. Even though Fox later relented, it still managed to seek a new affiliation with WRAZ in 1998 leaving WLFL to pick up programming from The WB.
On January 24, 2006, CBS and TimeWarner announced that they would merge UPN and The WB to form "The CW". On February 22, News Corporation announced it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV. This service, which would be a sister network to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give UPN and WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming Independent. It was also created to compete against The CW. It was initially seen as a foregone conclusion WLFL would be The CW's Triangle affiliate. It was by far the stronger of the two stations in Sinclair's Triangle duopoly and network officials were on record as favoring the "strongest" WB and UPN stations.
However, when the new network announced its first group of stations outside the core group of Tribune Company and CBS Corporation-owned stations, WLFL was not on the list. In February, WRDC was announced as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. It was not until May 2 when Sinclair agreed to affiliate all of its former WB affiliates, not joining MyNetworkTV (including WLFL), with The CW. On February 17, 2009, the station completed its analog to digital conversion. It is one of three stations in the Triangle area, along with WRDC and Independent outlet WRAY-TV, that agreed to make the switch on the date even though the revised transition deadline had been changed to June 12. On the new date at noon, WLFL changed digital channels from 57 to 27. However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display its virtual channel as 22.1.
Sinclair was involved in a retransmission dispute with Time Warner Cable whose original carriage agreement ended on December 31, 2010. The issue involved fees the cable provider was willing to pay for programming on WLFL and WRDC.[1] Negotiations between the two parties were extended for another two weeks and were set to expire on January 15, 2011 if an agreement could not reached. Any blackout would, in effect, limit access for both WLFL and WRDC to a number of cable households within the market. However, both stations are also available through satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network along with AT&T's U-Verse service.[2]
After Fox required most of its affiliates to air local newscasts in the early-1990s or face disaffiliation, WLFL established a news department and launched a nightly prime time show known as Fox 22 Ten O'Clock News in 1992. It was the second attempt in the time slot since an Independent outlet in Fayetteville, WKFT, cancelled the area's first broadcast at 10 back in 1989. Unlike WLFL's operation, that station focused more on the southern parts of the Triangle market and sold advertising seen during the production specifically to those areas.
It began having newscast competition in September 1995 shortly after the sign-on of WRAZ. From the start, this effort was produced by WRAL and was also seen every night. However, since WLFL's hour-long news was firmly established in the market by that time, it remained a strong operation with a popular on-air team. After the station's switch to The WB in 1998, its nightly show became known as WB 22 News at 10. On August 16, 2004, WLFL's news department was downsized and converted into Sinclair's controversial News Central operation.
While local news and some sports remained based in Raleigh, the station shut down its weather department and began featuring national headlines, forecast segments, and other sports coverage based out of company headquarters on Beaver Dam Road in Hunt Valley, Maryland. In addition, it featured a one-minute conservative political commentary segment called "The Point". Hosted by Sinclair's Vice President for Corporate Relations, Mark E. Hyman, this feature was controversial as well and a requirement of all company-owned stations with newscasts until its discontinuation in December 2006. In September 2005, WLFL's nightly broadcast was cut down to thirty minutes in an attempt to boost its anemic ratings against WRAZ.
After a fourteen-year run, the station's remaining in-house news department was closed as a result of a cost-cutting move implemented by Sinclair as well as the systematic shut down of News Central. The last official airing of WB 22 News at 10 was on March 30, 2006 after which there was no local news for a short period. News Central sports anchor Mark Armstrong as well as WLFL news anchor and reporter Tamara Gibbs eventually joined WTVD. On June 26, 2006, WLFL entered into a news share agreement with ABC's owned-and-operated station WTVD. This resulted in a new nightly prime time newscast to debut known as ABC 11 Eyewitness News at 10 on WB 22.
Like the previous effort, the broadcast runs directly against the WRAL-produced newscast on WRAZ. Since establishing the arrangement, there have never been any plans announced for a weekday morning show on WLFL that would also be produced by WTVD. This is unlike WRAZ which offers a two-hour extension of WRAL's weekday morning broadcast at 7. Concurrent with its official affiliation switch to The CW on September 18, WLFL's newscast became known as ABC 11 Eyewitness News at 10 on CW 22. On April 21, 2008, WTVD became the second station in the Triangle behind WRAL and the eighth ABC-owned station in the United States to upgrade newscasts to high definition. However, the broadcasts on WLFL were not included due to the station's lack of an HD master control facility. As a result, it is still seen in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition.
Eyewitness News at 10 can currently be seen every night for 35 minutes from WTVD's studios on Liberty Street/US 70 Bus/NC 98 in Downtown Durham. In addition to those main facilities, that station also operates bureaus in Fayetteville (on Green Street) and Downtown Raleigh (on Fayetteville Street). During weather forecast segments, WLFL features WTVD's Doppler weather radar known as "First Alert Doppler XP". This is based at the latter's transmitter site southeast of Garner along the Wake County border with Johnston County.
Anchors
Reporters
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||