WTVD (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Durham, North Carolina, United States, serving the Research Triangle area.

Owned and operated by the ABC television network through its ABC Owned Television Stations division, it maintains business offices and master control facilities on Liberty Street in downtown Durham, with newscasts originating from studios on Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh,[citation needed] as well as news bureaus in Chapel Hill and Fayetteville.

[1] Originally christened with the call sign WTIK-TV, the station had to make a name change after the partners sold WTIK radio as a condition of the permit grant.

Ownership chose WTVD and was granted the change, but they had to wait—the call sign had been used in the 1953 20th Century Fox film Taxi for a fictional television station appearing in the movie.

At the time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed unassigned call letters to be used in fictional works for an exclusive two-year period, making them unavailable for actual broadcast use.

[3][4] Ten months after being granted its permit, on September 2, 1954, WTVD began broadcasting with a black-and-white film of "The Star-Spangled Banner", followed by You Bet Your Life.

A fire on March 4, 1979, caused extensive damage to the newly built studio building;[14] however, the newsroom and a number of other key components had been rebuilt within a month.

By that time, much of WTVD's operations had returned to normal, although it had resorted to temporary setups during the interim such as holding the newscasts in one of the meeting rooms that survived the fire unscathed.

[17] At that time, WTVD and WRAL-TV joined the small list of stations in the country that have held primary affiliations with all of the "Big Three" networks.

On the night of December 6, 1991, a helicopter carrying a pilot and three WTVD employees from a high school football game in Wilmington, North Carolina crashed when an engine bearing seized, killing three of the four people on board.

[18] Sports reporter Tony Debo, the only survivor, suffered a broken ankle; he was thrown free of the crash when his improperly installed seatbelt failed.

[19] The National Transportation Safety Board report published a year later cited the pilot's decision to continue the flight despite a known engine problem.

Other ABC stations in markets served by Time Warner Cable, such as New York City, Los Angeles and Houston, were also affected by the outage as well before the FCC forced TWC to restore service to those areas on May 2.

This is in contrast to most of its ABC stablemates (including sister stations WPVI-TV in Philadelphia and KFSN-TV in Fresno, California), which dominate their markets' news ratings.

[26] His co-anchor for much of the 1980s and 1990s, Miriam Thomas, abruptly left WTVD after nineteen years in November 2001. Notable former members of WTVD's news staff include musicians John Tesh and John D. Loudermilk, as well as former Good Morning America co-host David Hartman, ESPN personality Stuart Scott, and Nightline host Byron Pitts.

WTVD debuted an hour-long 4 p.m. newscast on May 26, 2011, to fill the void left by The Oprah Winfrey Show, whose long run in that time slot came to an end a day earlier.

[28][non-primary source needed] On September 11, 2023, WTVD, along with sister stations WABC-TV and WPVI-TV, launched an additional hour-long newscast at 10 a.m. which took over the time slot previously occupied by Tamron Hall.

The broadcast will continue to deliver news in a traditional format, and will also allow more focus to be placed on local newsmakers, and further discussion on topics addressed on Good Morning America and Live with Kelly and Mark.