Construction and WB affiliation
In March 1985, five applicants were placed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into comparative hearing to determine which one would receive a construction permit to build channel 50 in Raleigh.[1] The commission awarded the permit to the L Broadcasting Company, owned by Fred and Evelyn Barber and Eleanor J. Brown. Fred Barber and Brown had broadcasting connections; the former was the general manager of WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh after previously serving in that post at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, and the latter was director of personnel for Gannett's television stations. The loser in the original decision was Cotton Broadcasting Company, whose owner, Grant Cotton, had put WLFL (channel 22) on the air and pledged to divest his interests in that station if awarded channel 50.[2] This initial decision was appealed to the FCC review board by Cotton. The board overturned the initial decision and granted channel 50 to Cotton, finding that administrative law judge James Tierney had made a mistake in not accounting for his divestiture pledge.[3] By 1990, Cotton had secured a transmitter site in Apex, North Carolina, and was about to search for studio space to put channel 50 into operation. He believed that the station's location in Raleigh would be an advantage over the region's second independent station, Fayetteville-based WKFT (channel 40).[4]
Cotton filed to transfer the permit to Tar Heel Broadcasting, a not-for-profit company founded by Jim Layton, in 1994.[5] The station announced its forthcoming existence as WRAZ in July 1995, including an affiliation with The WB. Tar Heel entered into a local marketing agreement (LMA) with the Capitol Broadcasting Company, owner of WRAL-TV, which provided its transmitter tower, programming, and facilities to operate the new station.[6] It signed on the air on September 7, 1995, with a 50-episode marathon of The Andy Griffith Show.[7]
The WRAZ license was sold by Tar Heel Broadcasting in 1996 to Carolina Broadcasting System, owned by former state deputy treasurer Thomas H. Campbell. The ownership change meant little in practice, as the LMA with Capitol Broadcasting remained intact.[8] The owners did some public service programming independent from WRAL; in 1998, WRAZ began airing the Carolina Broadcasting System–produced NC Spin, a weekly political roundtable.[9]
Fox affiliation
WLFL had been the Fox affiliate in the Raleigh–Durham market since the network started in 1986. By 1995, however, it was owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. In late November of that year, Fox announced that it would move its network affiliation in Norfolk, Virginia, from Sinclair-owned WTVZ to WVBT, a station that—like WRAZ—was a WB affiliate programmed by one of the market's established stations, when its current affiliation agreement with Sinclair expired in September 1998.[10] Three weeks later, Sinclair revealed in a terse announcement, citing nothing more than "different philosophical views about the future", that Fox had decided to replace WLFL with WRAZ in the network beginning in 1998; Sinclair apparently had little confidence in Fox plans to expand to daytime and late night slots as well as in the area of news.[11] The additional network shows threatened to encroach on lucrative fringe periods where the Sinclair stations made money.[12] Even though relations improved between Sinclair and Fox, the network had already signed affiliation agreements with its new Raleigh and Norfolk stations and carried out the switch on August 1, 1998,[13]
Newscasts
Concurrently with its 1995 sign-on, WRAZ began airing a nightly prime-time newscast from WRAL-TV at 10 p.m.[23] The half-hour newscast competed with WLFL's hour-long 10 p.m. news, which debuted two years prior. As with the rest of the station after the affiliation switch of 1998, Capitol decided to separate WRAZ's news presentation and talent from that of WRAL-TV, though it continued to come from the WRAL studios, to better match the Fox network's imaging and serve a different audience. After becoming the Fox affiliate, WRAZ's newscast doubled its viewership share year-over-year while WLFL slumped.[24] In 2002, WRAZ debuted a 7 a.m. extension of WRAL-TV's morning show, Fox Morning Connection.[25]
In 2003, Capitol Broadcasting opted again to tie WRAZ's news brand to WRAL's, rebranding the newscasts as WRAL News on Fox 50 and reintegrating it with WRAL's pool of on-air personalities.[26] WLFL, whose newscast had remained a steady competitor to WRAZ's, slipped definitively behind when Sinclair converted the WLFL news operation to its News Central hybrid format;[27]
