Outlet profile

CBS17

U.S. center, local broadcast

Owned byNexstar Media Group, Inc. (publicly traded; ticker: NXST)

FundingPrimarily local and national advertising revenue; also retransmission consent fees paid by cable and satellite providers

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The station first signed on April 11, 1988 as WYED-TV, a small independent outlet in Clayton, North Carolina, owned by the Beasley Broadcasting Group and carrying mostly Home Shopping Network programming. Outlet Communications acquired it in August 1994, renamed it WNCN ('North Carolina's News'), and launched a local newsroom in September 1995 when it became the market's NBC affiliate. NBC itself took ownership in 1996 and held the station for a decade before selling it to Media General in 2006 for roughly $150 million as part of a four-station deal. On February 29, 2016, WNCN switched network affiliation from NBC to CBS after longtime CBS affiliate WRAL-TV moved to NBC; the station rebranded as 'CBS North Carolina' and later 'CBS 17.' Nexstar Media Group completed its $4.6 billion purchase of Media General in January 2017, folding WNCN into one of the largest U.S. local-TV conglomerates. Nexstar's flagship cable channel NewsNation has drawn criticism from press-freedom groups and media critics for right-leaning tendencies and a notably soft interview with President Trump, and the company publicly courted the Trump administration for FCC approval of its proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna — a deal Trump endorsed in February 2026 and the FCC approved in March 2026 amid bipartisan criticism and lawsuits from eight state attorneys general. CBS17's own local news operation, however, is independently rated as least biased by Media Bias/Fact Check, with strong sourcing and no notable fact-check failures.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-07-02; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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