ABC11 Eyewitness News has been serving the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville communities for 70 years.
ABC11 WTVD hit the airwaves on September 2, 1954, on Channel 11 on the VHF band. It was the first successful and longest-running commercial television station in the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville viewing area. The station was founded by local broadcast pioneers Floyd Fletcher and Harmon Duncan under the company name Durham Broadcasting Enterprises.
The first studios were in a converted tuberculosis sanitarium on Broad Street in Downtown Durham.
WTVD started as an NBC affiliate and added a CBS affiliation later.
In 1976, the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville viewing area was the 63rd largest in the nation.
In 1978, WTVD built a new 32,000-square-foot broadcast facility at 411 Liberty Street in Durham, where one of two main high-definition studios remains to this day.
The Path to Disney
The history of ABC11 WTVD is intertwined with the history of two of the world’s greatest media companies, Capital Cities ABC and the Walt Disney Company. In 1957, WTVD became the second television station purchased by Capital Cities Television, which later purchased stations in many of the nation’s largest markets, including Philadelphia, Houston, Buffalo, and New Haven, CT. Capital Cities became so successful that it eventually purchased the entire ABC Television Network and ESPN. Disney became ABC11 WTVD’s parent company in 1995 when it acquired Capital Cities ABC.