Capitol Broadcasting president and CEO Jim Goodmon stated that CBS would only renew its affiliation with WRAL if it entered into a reverse compensation agreement—under which Capitol would be required to pay the network for the local rights to air its programming. NBC, on the other hand, took the line that an affiliation deal was a partnership. Goodmon saw the switch to NBC as "a business decision for the future." WRAL officially rejoined NBC at 7 a.m. on February 29. In a ceremony at the end of the morning newscast, Goodmon pressed a button decorated with the NBC peacock to switch to "Today". Meredith College professor Doug Spero suggested that WRAL's overall dominance in the Triangle was so absolute that it was in a position to become one of NBC's strongest affiliates, much as it was one of CBS' strongest affiliates. The feeling was mutual; according to NBC News correspondent Harry Smith, NBC officials felt like they had "just won the lottery" when they learned WRAL was rejoining NBC. Indeed, on the first day of WRAL's return to NBC, several dayparts saw NBC jump from third to first in the Triangle ratings at one stroke. Notably, "Today", the "NBC Nightly News", and "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" immediately saw major ratings gains in the market after their move to WRAL. The former two shows tallied their highest ratings on record in the Triangle on the day channel 5 officially returned to NBC, showing gains of well over 200 percent compared to their previous showings on WNCN. By contrast, CBS' competing programs lost more than half their audience share. The delay in the affiliation switch kept CBS' coverage of Super Bowl 50, which featured the Carolina Panthers (based in nearby Charlotte) as champions of the National Football Conference, on WRAL-TV. As an NBC station, channel 5 carried the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, making it the only television station to air the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup Finals, and the Summer Olympics from different networks in the same year. The station's digital signal is multiplexed: On June 19, 1996, the Federal Communications Commission awarded WRAL-TV the first experimental high-definition television license in the United States. The station, identified as "WRAL-HD", began digital television operations on UHF channel 32 over a month later, on July 23, 1996. The station's digital signal moved to channel 53 in March 2000. WRAL-TV was the first in the U.S. to broadcast a live sports program in high definition (on September 6, 1997), as well as the first HD newscast (on October 28, 2000).