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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–4.Back to highlights
Entries
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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WCHL begins broadcasting
WCHL, Chapel Hill's new commercial radio station, went on the air in January 1953 at 1360 on the dial with 1,000 watts, broadcasting from sunrise to sunset from a site on the Durham highway. General manager Sandy McClamroch ran it with partners Roy E. Fullen and Lonnie Dark; its first broadcast was set for January 18.
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WCHL declines to publicize the Walk Against Hunger during the Community Chest drive
General manager Jim Heavner, that year's chairman of the local Community Chest, said WCHL would not give public service time to the Walk Against Hunger because the station gave all its spots to the Community Chest during its campaign.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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The Village Companies sells WCHL to Curtis Media Group
The Village Companies sold WCHL, then the smallest of its dozen or so media outlets, to Curtis Media Group, which paired it with Durham's WDNC and moved it out of Chapel Hill.
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VilCom takes over WCHL's operations and brings the station back to Chapel Hill
Curtis Media kept ownership, but Heavner's VilCom took charge of the station's operations, planned a move to VilCom Circle in Chapel Hill by November 1 and an all-news and talk format, and aimed to make WCHL again the reference point for news of Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
