WTVD (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Durham, North Carolina, United States, serving the Research Triangle area. Owned and operated by the ABC television network through its ABC Owned Television Stations division, it maintains studios on Liberty Street in downtown Durham, with news bureaus in Raleigh and Fayetteville. The station's transmitter is located in Auburn, North Carolina.
WTVD began broadcasting on September 2, 1954, as the first VHF television station in the Raleigh–Durham area. It was originally owned by Durham radio interests, including WDNC and the former owners of WTIK, and broadcast from a converted jail and sanatorium in Durham. The station was originally affiliated with NBC and ABC, becoming a sole NBC affiliate after the 1956 sign-on of WRAL-TV in Raleigh. This changed after a group headed by Lowell Thomas acquired WTVD in 1957. The group—which named itself Capital Cities Television and later Capital Cities Communications—had strong ties to CBS, whose local affiliate WNAO-TV was a disadvantaged UHF station, and the station became a CBS affiliate with supplemental programming from ABC (1957–1962) and NBC (1962–1971). During this era, the station was on the first network for Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball and aired a long-running magazine show, At Home with Peggy Mann, and local newscasts. The present downtown Durham studios opened in 1978.
Capital Cities purchased ABC in 1985, prompting WTVD and WRAL-TV to switch affiliations. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, WTVD was in close competition with WRAL-TV, the market's traditional news leader, for overall ratings leadership, adding newscasts as well as a news bureau in Fayetteville. Since then, WTVD has generally rated a more distant but competitive second-place. With the increasing population weight of Raleigh and Wake County in the Triangle, WTVD has over the years devoted more resources to covering the area, including opening the present downtown Raleigh studio in 2005. Most newscasts originated from Raleigh between 2018 and 2025.
History Construction and early years
In 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ended its multiple-year freeze on new television station grants. Durham, North Carolina, was allocated one channel in the VHF band, channel 11, and three applicants had sought stations in Durham prior to the freeze: Mary Pickford Rogers, Harold H. Thoms, and Durham Radio Corporation. When the freeze was lifted, a fourth group, Durham Broadcasting Enterprises, also filed. The latter two applicants were each associated with Durham radio stations, Durham Radio Corporation with WDNC and Durham Broadcasting Enterprises with WTIK. These were the only two applicants that continued pursuing their stations after the freeze; the FCC dismissed the Pickford and Thoms applications on October 9, 1952, and ordered the two radio stations into comparative hearing for the channel. WDNC, anticipating a win, set up a television workshop across the street from its studios and made plans to build a new facility for WDNC radio and television were it to obtain the permit. WTIK sold shares in its proposed station to 58 residents of Durham.
The hearing opened on November 18, 1953, but after a month, the two radio stations entered into negotiations on a possible merger. The deal, announced at noon on December 24, was the front-page story of that afternoon's edition of The Durham Sun, proclaiming "Durham Gets Christmas Gift—Bids For TV Station Combined". The agreement parceled out the television station ownership, with the Duncan and Fletcher families (major stockholders in WTIK), WTIK's 58 television shareholders, and Durham Radio Corporation each owning 25-percent interest. Because WDNC joined WTIK's application, WTIK radio had to be sold. An FCC hearing examiner recommended approval of the permit grant to the merged applicant on January 13, 1954, and the permit was officially awarded on January 21. Though the permit was originally designated WTIK-TV, in view of the fact that WTIK would need to be divested, the call sign WTVD (Watch Television, Durham) was secured. It had previously been registered for fictitious use by the 20th Century Fox film studio in the 1953 film Taxi. At the time, the FCC granted call signs for two-year terms to fictitious stations in movies and books.
Durham Broadcasting Enterprises now had to find a studio site for the new station. The group took interest in a former tuberculosis sanatorium, which had been closed the year prior when the city of Durham and Durham County discontinued financial support. This facility, built in 1926 as a jail and converted later into a Works Progress Administration sewing center and the sanatorium, was converted for television use. One ward had high ceilings and was refitted as a studio; the X-ray room became a darkroom for film processing; and other wards were converted into offices and shop space. Lebanon Peak was selected as the transmitter site, where work began in mid-May. The station affiliated with NBC, which only had one VHF affiliate in the state (WSJS-TV in Winston-Salem), and ABC. WTVD began broadcasting test patterns on August 12 and regular programs on September 2. In 1955, effective radiated power was increased to the high-VHF maximum of 316,000 watts. The next year, WRAL-TV (channel 5) opened in Raleigh and took with it the NBC affiliation. Some CBS programs also aired on channel 11; CBS's regular affiliate in the market was WNAO-TV (channel 28), a UHF station.
In its early years, WTVD produced local programming beyond the field of news. One of the station's first programs was At Home with Peggy Mann, a women's interest magazine that continued on the air for 26 years until Mann's retirement in December 1980. In 1956, a member of WTVD's staff, John D. Loudermilk, composed "A Rose and a Baby Ruth"; the song was acquired by a local record label and sung by George Hamilton IV, becoming a popular record. The next year, Floyd Fletcher was responsible for helping C. D. Chesley put together a network of stations to broadcast the 1957 NCAA basketball tournament, a precursor to Chesley's syndicated telecasts of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball.
Lowell Thomas purchase and change to CBS In 1957, the Durham Television Company, headed by veteran CBS News commentator Lowell Thomas, agreed to purchase WTVD from Durham Broadcasting Enterprises, retaining components of the old ownership in the station's management. Thomas also owned WCDA-TV serving Albany, New York. The merger was effective that August and created a new parent company, Capital Cities Television Corporation. It was so named because WCDA-TV and WTVD, serving Albany and Raleigh, broadcast to the capital cities of their respective states.
Thomas's purchase immediately raised speculation that an affiliation switch was coming. CBS was known to be unhappy with its affiliation with WNAO-TV. The prospect of affiliation shuffling if WTVD became an affiliate led Variety to speculate on effects for stations that overlapped WTVD's signal, such as WFMY-TV in Greensboro, an existing CBS affiliate. Rumors became reality on October 3, 1957, when WTVD announced it would become the Raleigh–Durham area's CBS affiliate in about six months' time. WNAO-TV, which was trying to get a VHF channel allocated for its use, announced it would close on December 31, in effect forcing the switch earlier than anticipated. At that time, programs had to be approved by their sponsors to switch stations; as a result, some CBS programs went unseen while arrangements were made to air them over WTVD. In the meantime, one ABC program made its way to WRAL-TV's lineup at WTVD's request. WRAL-TV became an ABC affiliate in 1962, and WTVD took its place in NBC's affiliate roster. With only channels 5 and 11 as network affiliates, the stations had to shoehorn as many programs as possible from three networks on two signals. WTVD had first call rights to CBS and NBC programs, which sometimes aired on WRAL-TV when they could not be scheduled on channel 11. The station was known to have a strong preference for CBS; in 1966, a columnist for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, opined that WTVD let NBC programs play a "poor second fiddle".
Raleigh–Durham gained a third commercial station in 1968, when WRDU-TV (channel 28) began in Durham. WRDU-TV had no primary network affiliation and instead aired those network programs not featured on WTVD's schedule, as well as NBC's national news programming. WTVD still had the right of first refusal to CBS and NBC programs; series that were successful could be selected by WTVD and thus removed from WRDU's schedule. WRDU's owner, Triangle Telecasters, petitioned the FCC in November 1969 for relief from this situation. In 1971, the FCC ruled in favor of Triangle Telecasters (in part due to the commission's then-policy of protecting the development of UHF stations), setting a precedent for similar cases elsewhere. The ruling forced WTVD to choose one network; it chose CBS, forcing NBC to sign with WRDU-TV by default ahead of the 1971–72 television season. This precedent became known as the "Raleigh Rule".
Move to downtown Durham In May 1976, the Durham Redevelopment Commission accepted a bid by Capital Cities for a land parcel, which would be divided with 4 acres gifted for a new county library and the remainder for a new studio for WTVD. The Liberty Street studio was completed in May 1978; the former studio was gifted to Carolina Christian Communications, the permittee of a new Triangle television station, WLFL (channel 22). On December 31, 1998, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the North Durham County Prison Camp. Includes December 28–31, 1998.
Less than a year later, on March 4, 1979, a fire starting in a prop area caused significant damage to the building, destroying three cameras and both studios. The newsroom suffered damage but not the control room. The station was back on the air the next day, with an executive conference room pressed into service as a makeshift news studio and business offices housing the entire news staff. Much of the rear suffered significant structural damage. Repair work was completed by August. Later that year, WTVD began broadcasting from a tower in Garner, which station officials claimed would expand its viewing area by 30 percent.
Affiliation switch to ABC In 1985, Capital Cities agreed to buy ABC. The deal put the company, which owned two CBS affiliates including WTVD, in a bind. ABC's existing Raleigh–Durham affiliate, WRAL-TV, was the higher-rated station, and some expected Capital Cities to put WTVD on the market. It did not, leading to an affiliation switch. WRAL-TV signed with CBS on July 12, setting up an affiliation change on August 4, 1985, three months before the FCC approved the Capital Cities–ABC merger.
The merger and affiliation switch came right as WTVD passed WRAL in total-day ratings for the first time and even by one survey had a slightly higher share of 6 p.m. news viewers, but with ABC then running a poor third in national ratings, WRAL moved back into the lead in total-day and news ratings. In the wake of the switch, WTVD—traditionally seen as the "Durham station"—sought to increase its ratings in Raleigh by projecting a regional image. By November 1987, WTVD had narrowly moved past WRAL-TV in the total-day and news ratings, a lead it held for several surveys.