CBS17 / FOX8 WGHP
U.S. center
Background
WGHP signed on October 14, 1963, in High Point, North Carolina, as an ABC affiliate owned by Southern Broadcast Company. It changed hands several times — Gulf Broadcasting (1978), Taft Broadcasting (1984), New World Communications (early 1990s) — before affiliating with Fox on September 9, 1995. Fox sold the station to Local TV LLC in 2008; Tribune Company then acquired it in 2013 for $2.75 billion. Nexstar purchased Tribune Media for $6.4 billion in 2019, folding WGHP into its portfolio. WNCN (now CBS17) signed on in 1988 as an independent UHF station (then called WYED) in the Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill market; Outlet Communications bought it in 1994 and NBC acquired it through the late 1990s, then sold it to Media General in 2006. WNCN switched from NBC to CBS on February 29, 2016 — the same day longtime CBS affiliate WRAL-TV became NBC's carrier — and Nexstar absorbed Media General in January 2017. Independent raters, including Media Bias/Fact Check, score both stations' journalism near the center with high factual reliability. At the corporate level, Nexstar's relationship with the Trump administration has been financially significant: the Trump FCC and DOJ approved Nexstar's $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna (completed in 2026), an approval that followed Nexstar's decision to pull late-night programming from its stations under White House pressure — a business and regulatory accommodation rather than an editorial directive applied to local newscasts.
Sources
- WGHP – Wikipedia
- WNCN – Wikipedia
- Nexstar Media Group – Wikipedia
- WNCN – Raleigh – Bias and Credibility (Media Bias/Fact Check)
- Nexstar Nation – Columbia Journalism Review
- Trump administration approves Nexstar-Tegna local TV merger
- WFMY, WGHP would have same corporate owner in $6.2 billion Nexstar deal
- Nexstar Media Group Profile – OpenSecrets
Profile compiled 2026-07-19; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.