WRAL-TV Creative Director Shelly Leslie celebrates a great first day with NBC with a new friend perched in front of the WRAL station.
NBC joined the WRAL-TV family on Monday, February 29, 2016, a day of celebrations that began when CBC President & CEO Jim Goodmon flipped the switch in Master Control to broadcast The Today Show. WRAL-TV Creative Director Shelly Leslie described the day best: “How big was day one of #NBConWRAL? It was epic. Record breaking, in fact. Yes, I am proud as a peacock.”
The ratings showed that the move to NBC is going to be a good one for the Big 5.
“Day one is in the books, and the ratings were far beyond any of our expectations,” said WRAL-TV Vice President & General Manager Steve Hammel. “We boosted key NBC programming by as much as 265% and we broke a few records while we were at it.”
Here are the day-one headlines based on Nielsen ratings for the same week in 2015.
- WRAL’s dominant #1 rated morning news drives TODAY ratings up 265% to #1 in time period beating Good Morning America. TODAY set a record as highest rated ever in Raleigh DMA.
- Lester Holt and NBC Nightly News is up more than 200% driven by WRAL’s #1 rated 6:00PM newscast. NIGHTLY set a record as highest rated ever in Raleigh DMA.
- WRAL’s #1 rated powerhouse late news pushes The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to #1 in time period up more than 60% and dominating late fringe.
- In primetime, the NBC hit show The Voice grew 19% from its spring premiere last year.
“We absolutely blew by our first day goals,” Hammel told the WRAL-TV staffers. “Frankly I don’t see how day one could have been any better. I hope you share my excitement and look forward to rewriting local television history over the weeks, months and years to come. We must continue to work hard, innovate news coverage and grow our ratings throughout the broadcast day. Our goal is always to be a better television station tomorrow than we were today.”
Tune in to WRAL-TV for the winning combination of the Triangle’s leading newscast and the ever-popular NBC programming.
Thanks to WRAL-TV’s Shelly Leslie for this capcom photo.