What Do You Remember?
The CBC & WRAL-TV History Project

On December 17, 1953, CBC’s now-Corporate Secretary Louise “Scottie” Stephenson arrived at the FCC office in Washington, DC, with WRAL’s then-Chief Engineer Virgil Duncan. The two held in their hands the final documentation for WRAL-TV’s application for the one VHF frequency reserved for Raleigh, North Carolina, channel 5. They arrived at the FCC just thirty minutes before the deadline.

Three years later in October, after a fierce legal battle in the nation’s capital, CBC’s founding father A.J. Fletcher led a gathering to break ground on the WRAL-TV station. Then, on the afternoon of December 15, 1956, he symbolically flipped the switch to begin broadcasting.

Do you recognize these pieces of WRAL-TV’s history?

WRAL-TV will commemorate its 50th anniversary in 2006, and the staff of Capitol Broadcasting Company has begun putting together the pieces of the station’s history in an effort to plan for the celebration and to gather the narrative of history before they slip away. CBC is calling all members of the community and company employees to help with the project. If you, or someone you know, have memories of WRAL-

TV or memorabilia from the station we want to know. Feel free to share anything from the mundane to the fantastic.

CBC established a committee to undertake this information-gathering project. If you have items at home or in the office that are the pieces to the puzzle of WRAL-TV’s history, whether these items can be borrowed by the committee to copy or originals you would like to donate to the library being created, please let us know.

Take some time to reminisce…who and what embodies CBC & WRAL-TV? We are also compiling a list of people to interview about the company history–people who can put pieces into place–those both past & present, employees and associates.

What do you remember?

If you have ideas, items or memories to share, please contact Doug Peedin at Capitol Broadcasting Company via email or phone (890-6007).