WRAZ (channel 50), branded on-air as Fox 50, is a television station licensed to Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Research Triangle area. It is locally owned by the Capitol Broadcasting Company alongside NBC affiliate and company flagship WRAL-TV (channel 5, also licensed to Raleigh) and Class A Catchy Comedy affiliate WNGT-CD (channel 34, licensed to both Smithfield and Selma). The stations share studios at Capitol Broadcasting headquarters on Western Boulevard in Raleigh, while WRAZ's transmitter is located near Auburn, North Carolina.
History
A construction permit to build a television station in Raleigh 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 the Capitol Broadcasting Company, under which the station would be run out of WRAL's studios with transmission facilities on the WRAL tower near Auburn.
On September 7, 1995, the station signed on as WRAZ (a variation of WRAL), taking over the WB affiliation after WNCN in Goldsboro switched to NBC. A subsequent rebranding occurred in 1996 to "WB 50" to reflect the network affiliation; later that year, Fox announced that it would not renew its contract with Raleigh's WLFL (channel 22) when the network got involved in a dispute with the station's owner, 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 once its affiliation contract with Fox expired on August 1, 1998. 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 Weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. The last WB program to air on WRAZ was a repeat airing of The Steve Harvey Show episode "Fool and the Gang" on July 29, 1998, at 9:30 p.m., but three days later, the first Fox program to air on WRAZ was Ned's Newt at 8:00 a.m. on August 1, 1998.
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 from Tar Heel Broadcasting in 2000. In most markets, such a duopoly would not have been allowed under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules which forbid one company from owning two of the four largest stations in a single market. However, WRAZ, as the Triangle's newest major station, was sixth in the ratings at the time. For this reason, the FCC allowed the sale. Unlike most new duopoly partners that start sharing the same studios elsewhere, its studios remained in Durham at the time. To this day, it is the largest Fox affiliate owned in a duopoly with a "Big Three" station.
In August 2012, WRAZ's master control merged with WRAL's in Raleigh. The office staff moved back to Raleigh over the next month.
Programming
Preemptions of controversial Fox programming
Capitol Broadcasting Company has had a history of preempting some Fox programming on WRAZ it deemed too risky or controversial. It was one of the few stations in the United States to refuse to air portions of Fox reality shows Temptation Island and Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Capitol viewed the programs as anti-family. Instead, the station showed reruns of other shows including classic off-network sitcoms such as Cheers, The Andy Griffith Show and Seinfeld. It used the same approach in 2003 by refusing to air additional episodes of Married by America claiming that the content of the show was demeaning to the institution of marriage (the preemptions of that series turned out to be a blessing for Capitol, as WRAZ didn't air an episode that ended up earning Fox and its stations FCC attention, along with a later-reduced fine, for its content). This also happened with Who's Your Daddy? in 2005, when WRAZ cited its treatment of adoption.