WRAZ (TV) - History

History

A construction permit to build a TV station in Raleigh, North Carolina on UHF channel 50 was originally owned by The Reverend James Layton's Tar Heel Broadcasting. Layton entered the under-construction station, originally known as WACN, into a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Capitol Broadcasting, under which the station would be run out of WRAL's studios with transmission facilities on the WRAL tower near Auburn, NC.

On September 7, 1995, the station signed on as WRAZ (variation of WRAL), taking over the WB affiliation after WNCN in Goldsboro went to NBC. A subsequent re-branding occurred in 1996 to "WB 50" to reflect the network affiliation. On August 1, 1998, Fox announced it would not renew its contract with Raleigh's WLFL when that station got involved in a dispute with the Sinclair Broadcast Group over prime time newscast slots. Even though the network later relented, it still managed to seek a new affiliation with WRAZ leaving WLFL to pick up programming from The WB. Following the affiliation switch, reality and talk shows as well as first-run court shows were added to the lineup and cartoons were cut to Saturday mornings.

In 1998, WRAZ's main offices and master control relocated to the Diamond View office building in Downtown Durham next door to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and the American Tobacco complex. Capitol Broadcasting would buy WRAZ outright in 2000, however unlike most new duopolies that start sharing the same studios elsewhere, its studios remained in Durham. In most markets, such a duopoly would not have been allowed under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules which forbid one person from owning two of the four largest stations in a single market. However, the FCC allowed Capitol to buy WRAZ since it was the Triangle's sixth-rated station at the time. To this day, it is the largest Fox affiliate owned in a duopoly with another big three station. Along with WRAL, WRAZ began digital broadcasting in late-2000 from a transmission tower near Garner.

On September 10, 2007, the station added the Retro Television Network (RTV) to its second digital subchannel which also aired live Durham Bulls home games. At one point in time, WRAL operated a 24-hour local weather channel on WRAZ's third digital subchannel. Known as the "WRAL Weather Center Channel", this could also be seen on Time Warner Cable digital cable channel 252. It switched to This TV on March 30, 2009 and featured the jointly-owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Weigel Broadcasting 24-hour movie channel. At some point, WRAZ-DT3 became a standard definition simulcast of its main feed and moved to digital cable channel 150. As part of the DTV transition on June 12, 2009, WRAZ shut down its analog transmitter at 1 in the afternoon and continued to broadcast on its pre-transition digital channel (49). However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display its virtual channel as 50.1. In recent years, WRAZ has been carried on cable in Haw River, which is within the Greensboro media market. In addition, WRAZ is not carried in Robbins, Moore County nor any Fox affiliate. The closest Fox affiliate to Robbins is WGHP.