Wtvd 11 big weather
Sports reporter Tony Debo was the only survivor. On the night of December 6, 1991, a helicopter carrying a pilot and three WTVD employees from a high school football game in Wilmington, North Carolina crashed, killing three of the four members on board. In 1996, The Walt Disney Company acquired Capital Cities/ABC.
The transaction was finalized on January 3, 1986, making WTVD an ABC-owned station, the first network-owned television station in North Carolina. At that time, WTVD and WRAL-TV joined the small list of stations that have held primary affiliations with all of the "Big Three" networks. Five months later, on August 4, 1985, WTVD swapped affiliations with WRAL-TV and became an ABC affiliate. On March 18, 1985, WTVD's owner, Capital Cities, announced it was purchasing ABC. By that time, much of WTVD's operations had returned to normal, although it had resorted to temporary setups during the interim such as holding the newscasts in one of the meeting rooms that survived the aforementioned crisis unscathed. A fire on Macaused extensive damage to the newly built studio building however, the newsroom and a number of other key components had been rebuilt within a month. Its studios were relocated to their current location on Liberty Street in downtown Durham on a parcel of land it shares with the Durham County Library it also built its current tower in Auburn. In 1978, WTVD attempted to expand its broadcast coverage to the Fayetteville area, which had been without a television station of its own for nearly two decades. Channel 11 decided to go with CBS full-time, allowing WRDU to become an exclusive NBC station (it is now affiliated with myNetworkTV). In 1971 the Federal Communications Commission, intervening on behalf of WRDU's owners and in the interest of protecting the development of UHF, ordered WTVD to select one network. Although the market got a third commercial station six years later when channel 28 returned to the airwaves as WRDU-TV (now WRDC), WTVD "cherry picked" the most popular CBS and NBC programs, leaving WRDU with the lower-rated shows from both networks. That same year, the station first began broadcasting network programs in color, although it would not be until 1966 before the same was true for local programming.Īfter WRAL-TV took the ABC affiliation full-time in 1962, WTVD was forced to shoehorn CBS and NBC programming onto its schedule.This was a very unusual arrangement for what was then a two-station market. Around 1958, WTVD built a tower at its present transmitter site in Auburn to increase its coverage of the market. On May 22, 1957, the station's original owners sold their interest in WTVD to Albany, New York-based Hudson Valley Broadcasting Company, owners of WCDA-TV (now WTEN), to form Capital Cities Television Corporation (predecessor of Capital Cities Communications). During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. WNAO-TV stopped broadcasting at the end of 1957 due to financial difficulties, and CBS moved its primary affiliation to WTVD. WRAL-TV (channel 5), owned by local firm Capitol Broadcasting Company, started in 1956 and took over as the Triangle's NBC affiliate, leaving channel 11 with only ABC. The station's initial studios were located in a former tuberculosis sanitorium at Broad Street in Durham, with a transmitter located atop Signal Hill in northern Durham County. Channel 11 is the Triangle's oldest surviving television station, having signed on a few months after CBS affiliate WNAO-TV (channel 28). It was originally a primary NBC affiliate, with a secondary ABC affiliation.
Eight months later, on September 2, 1954, WTVD began broadcasting with a black-and-white film of The Star Spangled Banner, this was followed by You Bet Your Life. In December 1953, the two sides agreed to join forces and operate the station under the joint banner Durham Broadcasting Enterprises.
#Wtvd 11 big weather license
In 1952, two rival companies each applied for a license to build a television station in Durham on the city's newly allotted VHF channel 11 – Herald-Sun Newspapers (publishers of the Durham Morning Herald and the Durham Sun as well as the owners of radio station WDNC) and Floyd Fletcher and Harmon Duncan, the then-owners of WTIK radio. On September 23, 2009, the station filed an application to the Federal Communications Commission to increase its effective radiated power from 20.7 to 45 kilowatts. On Jat 12:30 p.m., WTVD remained on channel 11 when the analog to digital conversion was completed.