Capitol Broadcasting Company has often been referred to as a “Digital Television Pioneer,” and for good reason. In the 1990s CBC led American television stations into the digital age—breaking barriers, setting standards and blazing a DTV (digital television) trail that other stations would follow.

CBC’s early work with digital television focused on the format known as High Definition (HD). WRAL-TV obtained the first experimental HDTV (high-definition television) license in June of 1996 and became the first commercial television station in the nation to broadcast a HDTV signal a little over one month later.

By 1998, WRAL’s digital experimentation moved from transmitters to production. On October 28, 1998, WRAL produced the first live news event in HD—John Glenn’s historic return to space. The station followed that up a year later with the nation’s first all-HD documentary—“The Cape Light.”

In 2000, WRAL-TV was ready to spread HD to its news operation. On Friday, October 13, 2000—WRAL-TV broadcast its entire 5pm newscast in HD from the NC State Fairgrounds. It was the first live, all-HD newscast ever produced. Only months later, on January 28, 2001, WRAL-TV converted all its studio newscasts to HD, making it the world’s first news operation to gather and present high-definition local news on a continuous basis.

In addition to HD programming, CBC found other innovative uses for the expanded bandwidth of the digital television spectrum. WRAL-TV multi-cast all 64 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games in 2000, splitting the bandwidth to allow the broadcast of up to four simultaneous games. Sister station WRAZ-TV/FOX 50 soon began broadcasting Durham Bulls home baseball games on its digital channel. And later, WRAL-TV used its new digital channel capacity to launch a 24-hour local news channel and weather channels.
On September 8, 2008, Capitol Broadcasting Company’s WILM became one of the first four television stations in the country to turn off its analog signal and move solely to digital transmissions.

Then on June 12, 2009, WRAL took part in the biggest change in broadcasting since the advent of color TV. CBC television stations joined others across the country in turning off their analog signals, completing the official nationwide conversion to digital television.

During this digital broadcasting transformation CBC brought leading edge technology to its other stations, including radio. WRAL-FM became the first licensed commercial radio station on the east coast to broadcast in HD Radio on December 20, 2002.