Outlet profile

WRIC

U.S. center

Owned byNexstar Media Group (publicly traded, NASDAQ: NXST)

FundingLocal broadcast advertising; Nexstar is a publicly traded commercial media company with revenue derived primarily from local and national advertising and retransmission fees paid by cable and satellite providers

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

WRIC traces its roots to August 15, 1955, when it launched as WXEX-TV on channel 8 in Petersburg, Virginia, an NBC affiliate owned by Thomas Tinsley's Petersburg Television Corporation. In 1965 the station switched its network affiliation to ABC, a relationship it has maintained ever since. A 1969 studio fire forced a temporary relocation before the station settled into a new Chesterfield County facility. On April 23, 1990, when the station moved to its current studios on Arboretum Place in Chesterfield County, it adopted the call letters WRIC-TV. Ownership passed through several large media companies: Nationwide Communications (a subsidiary of Nationwide Mutual Insurance) acquired it in 1968, followed by Young Broadcasting in 1993, and then Media General in 2013. Nexstar Media Group took over when it purchased Media General in January 2017 and has owned the station since. Nexstar, which also operates the national cable channel NewsNation, has faced scrutiny over a Trump-backed proposed merger with Tegna that, if completed, would give Nexstar control over roughly 80 percent of local TV affiliates in key U.S. markets; NewsNation separately faced staff departures in 2025 amid concerns of a management-driven rightward editorial shift. WRIC's own local news operation, however, has received center and least-biased ratings from Media Bias/Fact Check and AllSides, reflecting a conventional local-affiliate approach with no opinion content.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-09-10; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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