Aside from a brief period in the 1970s when lead anchor Ron Hunter led WGR-TV's newscasts to the top of the Nielsen ratings, WGRZ was historically the third-place station in the Buffalo market through most of its first four decades on the air. It trailed usual market leader WKBW-TV and heritage station WBEN-TV, later WIVB-TV. WGRZ, WIVB-TV and WKBW-TV have been among the highest-rated television stations in the country and all three are fiercely competitive in the market's local ratings. Both WGRZ and WIVB-TV benefited from WKBW-TV's decline in the late 1990s; WGRZ had the further advantage of investment from Gannett, a major nationwide multimedia company (something WKBW had when it was owned by Capital Cities Communications, which had sold channel 7 in 1986 upon its acquisition of ABC to comply with ownership limits rules in place then, which WKBW was affiliated with, then as now).