WRAY-TV (channel 30) is a

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ea ...

licensed to

Wake Forest, North Carolina Wake Forest is a town in Franklin, Granville and Wake counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina; located almost entirely in Wake County, it lies just north of the state capital, Raleigh. At the 2020 census, the population was 47,601. That ...

, United States, serving the

Research Triangle The Research Triangle, or simply The Triangle, are both common nicknames for a metropolitan area in the Piedmont region of North Carolina in the United States, anchored by the cities of Raleigh and Durham and the town of Chapel Hill, home to ...

region as an

owned-and-operated station In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...

Tri-State Christian Television Tri-State Christian Television, Inc., doing business as TCT Network and TCT Ministries, is a religious television network in the United States. The network was founded in May 1977 by Garth Coonce and his wife, Tina Coonce. TCT Network includes t ...

(TCT). The station's transmitter is located on

Terrells Mountain Terrells Mountain or Terrell's Mountain is a hill in Chatham County, North Carolina, about 5–10 miles southwest of Chapel Hill. Terrells Mountain contains several radio transmission antennas, the tallest of which stands at the summit and rises ...

near

Chapel Hill Chapel Hill or Chapelhill may refer to: Places Antarctica * Chapel Hill (Antarctica) Australia *Chapel Hill, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane *Chapel Hill, South Australia, in the Mount Barker council area Canada *Chapel Hill, Ottawa, a neighbou ...

. WRAY-TV maintained studios on Expressway Drive in

Wilson Wilson may refer to: People *Wilson (name) ** List of people with given name Wilson ** List of people with surname Wilson * Wilson (footballer, 1927–1998), Brazilian manager and defender * Wilson (footballer, born 1984), full name Wilson R ...

until TCT ended local operations in June 2018.

History

The station was given the call letters WEOU on February 18, 1992. However, the station was granted a license on April 14, 1995. It signed on August 7 as WRAY-TV, originally licensed to

Wilson, North Carolina Wilson is a city in and the county seat of Wilson County, North Carolina, United States. Located approximately east of the capital city of Raleigh, it is served by the interchange of Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 264. Wilson had an estimated p ...

, and was initially a

semi-satellite A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...

of WFAY (channel 62; now

WFPX-TV WFPX-TV (channel 62) is a television station licensed to Archer Lodge, North Carolina, United States, broadcasting the digital multicast network Bounce TV to the Research Triangle region. It is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of th ...

), at that time Fayetteville's Fox affiliate; however, the station operated as an

independent station An independent station is an independent radio or terrestrial television station which is independent in some way from broadcast networks. The definition of "independence" varies from country to country, reflecting governmental regulations, marke ...

, as its signal overlapped with WLFL, at that time

Raleigh Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeas ...

's Fox affiliate. WRAY's programming changed more towards home shopping upon its sale to Ramcast Corporation in 1997; Ramcast quickly merged with the Global Shopping Network to become Global Broadcasting Systems, Inc. However, Global Broadcasting Systems soon ran into financial trouble, and filed for

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debto ...

on June 26, 1997. Its assets, including WRAY, were sold to the rival

Shop at Home Network The Shop at Home Network (more commonly known as just Shop at Home, Shop at Home TV, SATH) was a television network in the United States. Before its acquisition by Jewelry Television in 2006, Shop at Home (SATH NASDAQ) was a public company which s ...

in 1998. On May 16, 2006, Shop at Home parent The E. W. Scripps Company announced that the network would be suspending operations, effective June 22, 2006. However, it temporarily ceased operations on June 21, and WRAY switched to

Jewelry Television Jewelry Television is an American television network specializing in the sale of jewelry for both men and women. On-air and online, the network is mainly branded by its jtv initials in lower-case letters. It has an estimated reach of more than ...

(and, on June 23, a mixture of both networks), which remained until Scripps found a buyer for its stations. On September 26, 2006, Scripps announced that it was selling its Shop at Home stations, including WRAY, to

Multicultural Television Multicultural Broadcasting is a media company based in New York City founded by Chinese-American businessman Arthur Liu. It caters mostly to the Asian American community and owns television and radio stations in several of the top markets in mul ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

for $170 million. The sale of WRAY and sister stations KCNS in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

and WOAC in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the United States, U.S. U.S. state, state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along ...

was completed on December 20, 2006. Soon after the sale, all Shop at Home programming ceased in favor of a schedule consisting primarily of

infomercial An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. It generally includes a toll-free telephone number or website. Most often used as a form of dire ...

s. After Multicultural ran into financial problems and defaulted on its loans, the station was placed into a trust; in October 2009, a sale of WRAY-TV to

Marion, Illinois Marion is a city in Williamson and Johnson Counties, Illinois, United States, and is the county seat of Williamson County. The population was 16,855 at the 2020 census. It is part of a dispersed urban area that developed out of the early 20th ...

–based Tri-State Christian Television (via subsidiary Radiant Light Ministries, which had earlier acquired WOAC (now WRLM) from the trust), a chain of Christian television stations, was announced. On April 4, 2017, WRAY was identified by the FCC as receiving $41 million for the

spectrum reallocation The 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction, officially known as Auction 1001, allocated approximately 100 MHz of the United States Ultra High Frequency (UHF) spectrum formerly allocated to UHF television in the 600 MHz band. The spe ...

auction. WRAY changed its city of license to

and entered into a channel-sharing arrangement with WUNC-TV, along with sister station WLXI. With the 2018 FCC repeal of the Main Studio Rule, WRAY-TV's studio in Wilson was closed as part of a nationwide restructuring of TCT's operations into one hub from its Illinois base.

Technical information

Subchannel

Analog-to-digital conversion

WRAY-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

channel 30, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 42. Through the use of

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...

, digital television receivers display the station's

virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...

as its former UHF analog channel 30.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wray-Tv Wake Forest, North Carolina Television channels and stations established in 1995 1995 establishments in North Carolina RAY-TV Tri-State Christian Television affiliates