Pressure of Truth
The news, with the spin made visible.
Outlet profile

CBS17 (WNCN, Nexstar)

U.S. center

Owned byNexstar Media Group, Inc. (publicly traded, NASDAQ: NXST), the largest local TV broadcasting company in the United States by station count
FundingPrimarily advertising revenue and cable/satellite retransmission fees; Nexstar reported roughly $2.4 billion in advertising revenue and record quarterly distribution revenue of $762 million in early 2025
On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The station signed on April 11, 1988 as WYED, a low-profile independent airing home shopping and religious programming from Clayton, North Carolina. Outlet Communications purchased it in 1994 and relaunched it in 1995 as WNCN — the Raleigh market's new NBC affiliate — with a full local newsroom. NBC sold the station to Media General in 2006. On February 29, 2016, WNCN switched affiliations from NBC to CBS after longtime CBS affiliate WRAL-TV declined to renew its CBS contract and moved to NBC; WNCN rebranded as CBS17. Nexstar Media Group acquired Media General for $4.6 billion, closing the deal on January 17, 2017, and absorbed CBS17 into a portfolio that now exceeds 200 local stations nationwide. Nexstar has drawn criticism from media watchdogs for centralizing script production and airing nearly identical content across multiple markets. Nexstar's national cable news outlet, NewsNation, has been rated 'center' for political bias by AllSides and Ad Fontes Media. In 2025, Nexstar hired lobbyist Jeff Miller — who served as finance chair of President Trump's second inaugural committee — to help secure FCC approval for a proposed merger with TEGNA, a deal publicly endorsed by President Trump in early 2026.

Sources

  1. WNCN – Wikipedia
  2. Nexstar Media Group – Wikipedia
  3. Nexstar Media Group Profile: Summary – OpenSecrets
  4. Nexstar, Sinclair spend millions lobbying to rewrite TV station ownership rules – OpenSecrets
  5. NewsNation Media Bias – AllSides
  6. CBS North Carolina rebrands as CBS 17 – CBS17.com
  7. Nexstar Media Group Navigates Ad Revenue Headwinds in Q1 2025 – AInvest

Profile compiled 2026-07-09; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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