WRDC

WRDC

Durham/Raleigh/ Fayetteville, North Carolina
City of license	Durham, North Carolina
Branding	MyRDCTV
Slogan	My Raleigh My Durham My Chapel Hill
Channels	Digital: 28 (UHF) Virtual: 28 (PSIP)
Subchannels	(see article)
Affiliations	MyNetworkTV
Owner	Sinclair Broadcast Group (Raleigh (WRDC-TV) Licensee, Inc.)
First air date	November 4, 1968
Call letters' meaning	Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill
Sister station(s)	WLFL
Former callsigns	WRDU-TV (1968–1978) WPTF-TV (1978–1991)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 28 (UHF, 1968–2009) Digital: 27 (UHF, until 2009)
Former affiliations	Primary: NBC (1968–1995) UPN (1995–2006) Secondary: CBS (1968-1971)
Transmitter power	725 kW
Height	585 m
Facility ID	54963
Transmitter coordinates	35°40′35″N 78°32′8″W / 35.67639°N 78.53556°W / 35.67639; -78.53556
Website	www.myrdctv.com

WRDC, channel 28, is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station that is licensed to Durham, North Carolina, United States and serves North Carolina's Triangle region. The station is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, as part of a duopoly with CW affiliate WLFL (channel 22). The station's studios are located in the Highwoods Office Park, just outside downtown Raleigh, and its transmitter is located in Auburn, North Carolina.

WRDC is carried on analog cable channel 12 in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Fayetteville and most of their suburbs, and channel 10 in Cary, Garner, Clayton, Smithfield, and Carrboro. On Time Warner Cable, WRDC is shown on digital channel 128 in standard definition and 1128 in high definition.

History

WNAO-TV

In July 1952, Sir Walter Television Co. applied for WETV, a TV station to serve the Raleigh-Durham TV market. The company considered Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Roanoke, Virginia and even Durham, but selected Raleigh due to the number of colleges in the area, qualified personalities, and Reynolds Coliseum, as well as the people's strong desire for a TV station. In October, the Federal Communications Commission approved the request. On February 13, 1953, Sir Walter completed the purchase of WNAO radio (850 AM, now WPTK; and 96.1 FM, now WBBB) from the owners of The News & Observer.

The expected sign-on date was April 27, but the new station experienced numerous delays in getting transmitter equipment.

On July 12, 1953 at 5:25 p.m., WNAO-TV began broadcasting on channel 28 as the Triangle's first television station^[1] (fourteen months before WTVD debuted) and the state's first-ever UHF station.^[2] However, television manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuning capability on their sets at the time. Until the Federal Communications Commission required all-channel tuning in 1964, UHF stations were unviewable without a converter. Even with one, the picture was barely viewable.

With WRAL-TV (channel 5) signing on that year with an NBC affiliation, WNAO-TV was dealt another blow. The station had struggled for viewership for much of its brief existence, and the presence of a new station simply made the situation worse. Channel 28 shut down at the end of 1957.^[3]

As an NBC affiliate

Channel 28 stayed dark until November 4, 1968, when WRDU-TV, licensed to Durham and unrelated to the earlier station,^[4] began operations. The new station had studios located on NC Highway 54 in southern Durham, with a transmitter located near Terrell's Mountain in Chatham County. The station was first owned by Triangle Telecasters, headed by the Everett family of Durham: Reuben Everett, his wife Katherine and their son Robinson.^[5]

Officially, WRDU took over as the Triangle's NBC affiliate. NBC had not had a full-time affiliate in the Triangle since 1962, when WRAL-TV dropped that network in favor of ABC, leaving CBS affiliate WTVD to shoehorn NBC programming onto its schedule. Although the Triangle had long been large enough to support three full network affiliates, there were no commercial VHF allotments available, and 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. UHF stations did not cover large amounts of territory very well at the time.

Even after channel 28's sign-on, NBC continued to allow WTVD right of first refusal for its programming. WTVD chose to cherry-pick higher-rated programs from NBC and CBS, leaving WRDU to carry the lower-rated shows as well as NBC's news programming.^[6] 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), forcing WTVD to choose one network;^[7][8] ultimately WTVD chose CBS. Still, the damage had been done, in terms of station identity and loyalty, making things vastly more difficult in the years to come.

Additionally, WRDU's main competitors, WTVD and WRAL, were two of the strongest performers for their respective networks, having built up followings over the previous dozen years or so on VHF channels – the same problem that derailed WNAO-TV essentially remained unchanged. WRDU also had to deal with longer-established NBC affiliates in nearby Winston-Salem (WSJS-TV, now WXII), Washington (WITN-TV) and Wilmington (WECT) being available over the air with strong VHF signals in much of the surrounding area. Channel 28's transmitter was located on the Orange-Chatham County line, providing only grade B signal coverage in Raleigh itself and rendering it practically unviewable over-the-air in southern and eastern Wake County.

However, one problem that could not be blamed on outside factors was Triangle Telecasters' frequent preemption of network shows for syndicated programs, presumably because it believed it could get more revenue from local advertising than from network airtime payments. As NBC's popularity declined precipitously through the 1970s, WRDU only increased the number of preemptions.

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 callsign to WPTF-TV on August 14 of the following year.^[9] This was Durham Life's second attempt to get into television; it had previously bid for the channel 5 allotment in 1956 before the FCC awarded the license to the much smaller Capitol Broadcasting as WRAL-TV. Durham Life invested a large amount of money into its new purchase, building a new 1,300-foot (400 m) transmitter tower near Apex, which gave the station a coverage area comparable to those of WTVD and WRAL-TV.^[10] It also heavily invested in the station's news department, and added a kids' show entitled Barney's Army, which ran from 1978 to 1983. However, channel 28 was still reeling from the audience-loyalty problems it had inherited from Triangle Telecasters. It did not help that this came at a time when NBC was experiencing a precipitous ratings slump.

WRAL and WTVD switched affiliations in 1985 after WTVD's owner, Capital Cities Communications, bought ABC, but WPTF saw little windfall from the switch. At one point in the 1980s, even with NBC's powerful primetime lineup, 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. The station also continued to preempt NBC programming, albeit at a reduced rate compared to the amount of network shows it declined in the 1970s. This did not sit very well with NBC, which has historically been far less tolerant of preemptions than the other networks.

Understandably enough, by the summer of 1991, Durham Life wanted out of broadcasting entirely. Durham Life broke up its entire broadcasting unit and sold off individual stations to various owners. WPTF-TV was sold to Paul Brissette, who changed the callsign to WRDC, after the three major cities in the Triangle – Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. It also rebranded the station as "TRI-28". The new owners made the station profitable almost immediately. However, this momentum stalled when Brissette laid off virtually the entire news department in a cost-cutting move in July 1991.

UPN affiliation

The former "UPN 28" logo, used from 2002 to 2006.

By the mid-1990s, NBC, obviously embarrassed and angry about its poor performance in one of the country's fastest-growing markets, finally had enough with WRDC and was looking to move its programming to another station. It got its chance in 1995 after WNCN (channel 17, formerly WYED-TV), licensed to Goldsboro but located just outside of Raleigh in Clayton, boosted its signal to five million watts to provide greater coverage to the Triangle market. 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 WB Television Network, NBC quickly cut a deal with Outlet to move its Triangle affiliation to WNCN.

However, NBC's contract with WRDC did not run out until September 3, 1995. Starting in January 1995, WNCN began airing all of the NBC programming that WRDC had turned down. When NBC's affiliation contract with WRDC ran out in September, WRDC became an affiliate of the United Paramount Network. It had already been airing UPN programming during the late night hours beginning in January. As such, WRDC no longer had a decent amount of programming to preempt, since UPN only programmed on Monday and Tuesday nights at the time, and only ever provided primetime programming Monday through Friday. WRDC also picked up several syndicated shows that WNCN no longer had time to air.

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 owned by Edwin Edwards, a former executive with WLFL's owner, the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The Smith family, founders and owners of Sinclair, held 97% of Glencairn's stock, leading to allegations that Sinclair was using Glencairn to do an end run around FCC rules forbidding television station duopolies. Sinclair and Glencairn allegedly further circumvented the rules by merging WRDC's operations with those of WLFL's under a local marketing agreement. Although WLFL was the senior partner, 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. 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. However, UPN and Sinclair patched up their dispute, and UPN programming returned to WRDC in the summer. Sinclair purchased WRDC outright in 2001; this was possible because WNCN had by this time passed WRDC as the fourth-rated station in the Triangle. The FCC's duopoly rules do not allow one person 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.^[11][12] 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.^[13] 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 is the junior partner.

The station currently runs a two-minute segment called Brand Newz hosted by Christopher Martin, one half of 1980s hip-hop comedy duo Kid 'n Play. In recent years, WRDC has been carried on cable in multiple areas within the Greensboro and Greenville media markets in North Carolina.^[14]

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair Broadcast Group 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).^[15] In January 2013, Fox announced that it would not exercise its option to buy any of the Sinclair stations in the four aforementioned markets.^[16]

Digital television

Digital channel

WRDC previously broadcast TheCoolTV on a second digital subchannel, but the network was dropped from all Sinclair stations on August 31, 2012.^[18]

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 12 p.m. on June 12, 2009, the station's digital signal relocated to its analog-era UHF channel 28.^[19]

TV 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) 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 return to the newly built broadcast tower completed in early 1991 near Garner, which also included the transmission signal for WRAL-TV and WRAZ, as well as WRAL-FM, WQDR-FM, and a couple of low-power television stations in the area. In the early 2000s, the digital signals of WRAL-TV, WRAZ and WRDC signed on from an adjacent 2,000-foot candleabra 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.

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, made little headway in the ratings. This was in marked contrast to its radio sister WPTF, one of the most respected radio news operations in North Carolina.

On July 31, 1991, in a cost-cutting move, Paul Brissette (whose company, Brissette Broadcasting, had just acquired the station) fired almost all of the entire news department staff and most of the production crew. One disgruntled ex-employee, in a bitter joke, suggested that the station's new WRDC callsign really stood for "We Really Don't Care." ^[20] 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 NBC network shows and syndicated programming; these newsbriefs eventually were discontinued outright in 1993, leaving WRDC without news programming for the station's remaining two years as an NBC affiliate.

Newscast titles

• Triangle News (1970s)
• NewsCenter 28 (late 1970s–1980s)
• Newsbeat 28 (1986–1990)
• WPTF-TV 28 News (1990-1991)
• TV-28 Newsbreak (newsbriefs, 1991–1992)
• TRY 28 Newsbreak (newsbriefs, 1992–1993)

References

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
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WRDC
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WRDC-TV