WRAY-TV

WRAY-TV
Wake Forest–Raleigh–; Durham, North Carolina; ; United States;
City	Wake Forest, North Carolina
Channels	Digital: 20 (UHF), shared with WUNC-TV; Virtual: 30;
Programming
Affiliations	TCT
Ownership
Owner	Tri-State Christian Television; (Radiant Life Ministries, Inc.);
Sister stations	WLXI
History
First air date	August 7, 1995; 28 years ago (in Wilson, North Carolina; license moved to Wake Forest in 2018)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 30 (UHF, 1995–2009); Digital: 42 (UHF, until 2018), 25 (UHF, 2018–2019);
Former affiliations	Independent (1995–1997, 2006–2010); Global Shopping Network (1997–1998); Shop at Home (1998–2006);
Technical information
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	10133
ERP	1000 kW
HAAT	461.9 m (1,515 ft)
Transmitter coordinates	35°51′59″N 79°10′0.5″W / 35.86639°N 79.166806°W
Links
Public license information	Public file; LMS;
Website	www.tct.tv

WRAY-TV (channel 30) is a religious television station licensed to Wake Forest, North Carolina, United States, serving the Research Triangle region as an owned-and-operated station of Tri-State Christian Television (TCT). The station's transmitter is located on Terrells Mountain near Chapel Hill. WRAY-TV maintained studios on Expressway Drive in Wilson 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, and was initially a semi-satellite of WFAY (channel 62; now WFPX-TV), at that time Fayetteville's Fox affiliate; however, the station operated as an independent station, as its signal overlapped with WLFL, at that time Raleigh's Fox affiliate. WRAY's programming changed more towards home shopping upon its sale to Ramcast Corporation in 1997;^[4] Ramcast quickly merged with the Global Shopping Network to become Global Broadcasting Systems, Inc.^[5] However, Global Broadcasting Systems soon ran into financial trouble, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 26, 1997.^[6] Its assets, including WRAY, were sold to the rival Shop at Home Network in 1998.^[7]

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.^[8] However, it temporarily ceased operations on June 21, and WRAY switched to Jewelry Television (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 of New York City for $170 million.^[9] The sale of WRAY and sister stations KCNS in San Francisco and WOAC in Cleveland was completed on December 20, 2006. Soon after the sale, all Shop at Home programming ceased in favor of a schedule consisting primarily of infomercials.

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–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.^[10]

On April 4, 2017, WRAY was identified by the FCC as receiving $41 million for the spectrum reallocation auction.^[11] WRAY changed its city of license to Wake Forest, North Carolina^[2] and entered into a channel-sharing arrangement with WUNC-TV, along with sister station WLXI.^[1] 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.^[12]

Technical information

Subchannel

Subchannel of WRAY-TV on the WUNC-TV multiplex
Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
30.1	1080i	16:9	WRAY	TCT

Analog-to-digital conversion

WRAY-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 30, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on 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,^[13] using virtual channel 30.