WTVD is a television station licensed to Durham, North Carolina, United States, broadcasting the ABC network to the Research Triangle area.
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21 Facts About WTVD
2.
Ownership chose WTVD and was granted the change, but they had to wait—the call sign had been used in the 1953 20th Century Fox film Taxi for a fictional television station appearing in the movie.
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3.
Ten months after being granted its permit, on September 2,1954, WTVD began broadcasting with a black-and-white film of "The Star-Spangled Banner", followed by You Bet Your Life.
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4.
Around 1958, WTVD built a 1,549-foot tower at its present transmitter site in Auburn to increase its signal coverage for the entire Raleigh–Durham–Fayetteville market; at the time this was the tallest man-made structure in the U S 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.
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5.
However, unlike WAPI-TV, WTVD managed to find room for The Ed Sullivan Show, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
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6.
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.
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7.
Five months later, on August 4,1985, WTVD traded networks with WRAL-TV and became an ABC affiliate.
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8.
For most of the last four decades, WTVD has been a solid second in ratings across the market, behind WRAL.
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9.
However, WTVD is still one of the strongest ABC stations in the country.
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11.
WTVD has a helicopter for newsgathering, which it refers to as "Chopper 11 HD".
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12.
WTVD has began to implement a drone for newsgathering, which it dubs as "Drone 11".
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13.
From 1973 to 1984, WTVD used the Eyewitness News brand for its newscasts, though its format was very similar to the Action News format pioneered by sister station WPVI-TV in Philadelphia.
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14.
WTVD called itself NewsChannel 11 from 1993 to 2000, when it changed back to Eyewitness News.
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15.
WTVD was among the last stations to use the Cool Hand Luke Tar Sequence theme in its broadcasts .
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16.
On June 26,2006, WTVD debuted a new primetime newscast for WB affiliate WLFL entitled Eyewitness News at 10 on WB 22.
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17.
WTVD debuted an hour-long 4 p m newscast on May 26,2011 to fill the void left by The Oprah Winfrey Show, whose long run in that time slot came to an end a day earlier.
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18.
Effective June 30,2020, under the provisions of the FCC's spectrum reallocation program, WTVD's transmissions moved to channel 9, while continuing to display channel 11 as its virtual channel.
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19.
In recent years, WTVD has been carried on cable in multiple areas outside of the Raleigh–Durham–Fayetteville media market.
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20.
On DirecTV, WTVD has been carried in Alamance County, which is within the Greensboro market.
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21.
WTVD was carried on cable in Brunswick County, Greenville, Williamston, Emporia, Virginia, and Bennettsville, South Carolina.
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