Your Raleigh Ratings Leader

In the sea of Nexstars, Tegnas and Sinclairs, it is nice to see that a family owned station can still bring it in this business.

While family-owned Capitol Broadcasting Company WRAL (Raleigh) has had some trial and tribulations in the past year (like this one) the station is experiencing its best ratings in years.

WRAL has managed to solidify its position as the local ratings leader in its ongoing battle with Disney-owned WTVD (also known as ABC11) and Nexstar-owned WNCN (known as CBS 17).

The News Observer writes that after several years where the gap appeared to be closing, Nielsen reports for the first third of 2019 show that WRAL has now widened its lead over WTVD.

“WRAL is Number 1 overall, and even without Fox they can say that they’re Number 1 overall,” said professor Charlie Tuggle, after reviewing the ratings data. Tuggle is the Stembler distinguished professor of broadcast journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“TVD is down a little bit in most areas,” Tuggle said. “They’re both down a little bit at 11 p.m., but that said, that’s a clear lead for RAL.”

WRAL vice president and general manager Joel Davis says WRAL focuses on the fundamentals: “Looking at what types of stories we want to be covering and how we’re going to cover them, how we’re going to allocate our resources to be sure we’re covering the stories. ... At the end of the day I like to tell the staff, our gimmick is we do the news, and we do it better than anyone else.”

How refreshing is that?

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