They're the new kids on the block, they'll always be the new kids on the block, but TV station NBC-17 never stops fighting for respect -- and an audience for local news.

WNCN NBC-17 seems like a baby in the Raleigh-Durham market where, overall, NBC-17 still lags far behind half-century-old competitors WRAL (No. 1) and WTVD (No. 2) for news ratings.

Ever since NBC-17 began broadcasting local news in 1995 with an offbeat, casual-dress experiment that was quickly abandoned for a more conventional presentation, the station has struggled hard against two older, trusted brands.

In recent months, NBC-17's struggle is paying off somewhat. The Nielsen household ratings book for May 2008 shows promising growth.

"We don't have to be No. 1 to be an incredibly successful local business that's serving a local audience," says general manager Barry Leffler. "Our goal is to grow month-to-month, book-to-book, year-to-year."

Satisfying that goal, "NBC-17 News at 5 a.m." has gained roughly 50 percent more viewers since May 2007. The audience for its 6 a.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. news shows have also grown in the past year. (See box on 3D for details.)

While NBC-17 can rightly claim the largest growth or smallest drop in all these time periods, the fact remains that both WRAL and WTVD beat NBC-17 handily in all five of its weekday local news slots, even at 7 p.m., where NBC-17 has no local news competition except Time Warner Cable News 14.

WRAL takes a commanding lead in four of those slots, delivering an average four times as many households as NBC-17. WTVD, which leads the pack at 7 p.m. with "Jeopardy," and at 7:30 with "Wheel of Fortune," outpaces NBC-17 in news overall by more than 3-to-1.

Leffler says NBC-17 has no plans to compete against the other two stations with a noon newscast. He added that he hopes NBC-17 will begin producing newscasts in high-definition (as the other two stations already do) by early next year.

Getting a new look

There's an upbeat mood at NBC-17's North Raleigh studios. Renovations were completed early this year to give the newscasts a sleek, modern, blue-hued, cable-newsy look, with visible TV screens behind the anchors during the seated portion of the newscast (at times, the anchors are standing).

"I think the set really helps," says sports director Penn Holderness, when asked about the ratings improvements.

The old set had that traditional, single-background look of local news. The new circular one, with its anchor-desk-on-wheels, allows for several different "looks" for the show.

Along with the new looks, there's new blood. When Holderness started his job in July 2007, the nightly anchor desk was complete. Early that year, former MSNBC anchor Bill Fitzgerald came on board to co-anchor the nightly news with Melanie Sanders, the veteran of the bunch -- she's been there 5 years, and worked alongside several different anchors before Fitzgerald. Energetic meteorologist Wes Hohenstein joined the crew in September 2006.

"We made investment in our on-air talent, in terms of trying to create some longevity and consistency," Leffler says. Holderness, for one, sounds as if he plans to stick around for a while.

"This is not the biggest market I've ever been in," says Holderness, who grew up in Durham and passed up a gig at ESPN to come back home. "It's not the biggest station I've ever been at. It's probably the most satisfying job I've ever had in television. The leadership right now ... they trust me enough to do what I want to do and to take the time to do it."

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