WLFL (channel 22) is a television station licensed to Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, serving the Research Triangle area as an affiliate of The CW.

The two stations share studios in the Highwoods Office Park, just outside downtown Raleigh; WLFL's transmitter is located in Auburn, North Carolina.

The local newscast continued, but ratings fell behind WRAZ's competing effort; it was converted to the News Central hybrid format and discontinued in March 2006, replaced shortly thereafter with a program produced by ABC affiliate WTVD.

[6] Springfield became the full owner of the construction permit at year's end,[7] and the station even began purchasing movie packages,[8] but ownership soon reverted to the Sanford group, which discontinued its plans for WJHF.

[16] However, Carolina Christian soon found that the former WRDU transmission facility was inadequate to cover the Raleigh–Durham area, and the group sought to raise $1 million in temporary financing to get the station going.

[26] On November 5, 1984, Family Television announced it would sell WLFL to S&F Communications Corp., a group led by Stephen D. Seymour and Stuart D. Frankel,[27] with a call sign change to WMVZ planned for when the new owners took over.

[30] TVX, in announcing the purchase, informed investors that it would likely have to sell WNRW in Winston-Salem to buy WLFL; the two stations' signals overlapped, a combination then generally not allowed by the FCC.

[32][a] During 1986, WLFL also became the market's first Fox affiliate when the network launched on October 9,[34] and it leased space in a distribution center on Front Street in Raleigh.

[39] The company was to pay Salomon Brothers $200 million on January 1, 1988, and missed the first payment deadline, having been unable to lure investors to its junk bonds even before Black Monday.

[40] While TVX recapitalized by the end of 1988,[41] Salomon Brothers reached an agreement in principle in January 1989 for Paramount Pictures to acquire options to purchase the investment firm's majority stake.

[44] Paramount made one major move in its three years of owning WLFL: it allotted $2.6 million to start a 10 p.m. local newscast on the station beginning September 21, 1992.

This would bring the Raleigh–Durham market back to three television newsrooms, as WPTF-TV had discontinued newscasts the year before shortly before changing its call letters to WRDC.

The merged operation was housed at the former WRDC facility in the Highwoods area;[47] the Front Street studio was then used by the incoming NBC affiliate, WNCN, to start its news department.

[48] WLFL gained additional competition, particularly in the area of news, when WRAZ (channel 50) began broadcasting as an affiliate of The WB in September 1995.

This included an option—exercisable between July 1, 2012, and March 31, 2013—for Fox parent News Corporation to buy a combination of six Sinclair-owned stations (two CW/MyNetworkTV duopolies and two standalone MyNetworkTV affiliates) in three out of four markets; WLFL and WRDC were included in the Fox purchase option, along with Sinclair stations in Cincinnati (WSTR-TV), Norfolk (WTVZ), and Las Vegas (KVCW and KVMY).

[62] Fox announced in January 2013 that it would not exercise its option to buy any of the Sinclair stations in the aforementioned four markets; it chose instead to purchase WJZY and WMYT-TV in Charlotte from Capitol Broadcasting.