WWJ-TV
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| Channels | |
|---|---|
| Branding | CBS Detroit; CBS News Detroit |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| WKBD-TV | |
| History | |
First air date | September 29, 1975 |
Former call signs | WGPR-TV (1975–1995)[1] |
Former channel numbers |
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| Independent (1975–1994) | |
Call sign meaning | derived from former sister station WWJ radio |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| 72123 | |
| ERP | 380 kW |
| HAAT | 326.7 m (1,072 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 42°26′52.5″N 83°10′23.1″W / 42.447917°N 83.173083°W |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WWJ-TV (channel 62), branded as CBS Detroit, is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is owned and operated by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division, and is sister to WKBD-TV (channel 50), an affiliate of The CW. The two stations share studios on Eleven Mile Road in the Detroit suburb of Southfield; WWJ-TV's transmitter is located in Oak Park, Michigan.
Founded as WGPR-TV in 1975 by William V. Banks and the International Free and Accepted Modern Masons as an extension of WGPR (107.5 FM), channel 62 in Detroit was the first Black-owned television station in the continental United States. Though its ambitious early programming plans catering to the Black community were not entirely successful due to economic and financial limitations, the station still produced several locally notable shows and housed a fully-staffed news department. WGPR-TV helped launch the careers of multiple local and national Black television hosts and executives, including Pat Harvey, Shaun Robinson, Sharon Dahlonega Bush, and Amyre Makupson. The original studios for WGPR-TV, still in use by the radio station, have been preserved as a museum and recognized as a historical landmark with inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1994, when a major affiliation switch threatened to leave CBS without an affiliate in the Detroit market after multiple failures to secure a more successful station, the network bought WGPR-TV and dropped all existing programming in favor of CBS and syndicated programs, changing the call sign to WWJ-TV the following year. The station has made multiple unsuccessful attempts at producing local newscasts since becoming CBS-owned, and was regarded as little more than a "relay transmitter" for network programming despite technical upgrades and a 2000 merger into then-UPN affiliate WKBD. From assuming the affiliation in 1994 until 2001, from 2002 to 2009 and again from 2012 until 2023, WWJ-TV was the only station directly owned by any of the "Big Three" networks not to have any significant local news presence. A full news department, known as CBS News Detroit, began operation in January 2023 as an extension of CBS News's streaming service.
Prior use of channel 62 in Detroit
[edit]On September 15, 1968, WXON-TV began broadcasting on channel 62.[3] Licensed to nearby Walled Lake, Michigan, WXON-TV operated on channel 62 for four years. In 1970, it purchased the construction permit of WJMY, a channel 20 station that was built out but which its owner, United Broadcasting, had no financial resources to operate, for $413,000 in United's expenses related to the permit.[4] Land mobile interests pushed back against the sale, seeking that channel 20 be reassigned for their use in metro Detroit.[4] The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the move in June 1972,[5] and WXON moved from channel 62 to channel 20, using the former WJMY construction permit, on December 9, 1972.[6]
WGPR-TV
[edit]Built by Masons
[edit]We don't believe anybody else can do as well presenting black culture as we ourselves.
The move of WXON-TV from channel 62 to channel 20 left the former available for assignment again in Detroit. On October 10, 1972, less than two months before WXON vacated the channel, W.G.P.R., Inc., the owner of WGPR (107.5 FM), applied to the FCC for a new construction permit on channel 62.[1] On May 31, 1973, the FCC approved the application. What made this action noteworthy was the nature of WGPR: it was owned by the International Free and Accepted Modern Masons, loosely tied to Freemasonry with an exclusive Black membership. Founded in 1950 by Dr. William V. Banks in Canton, Ohio, the Masons boasted 350,000 members a quarter-century later.[8][9] Purchased by the Masons in 1964,[10] WGPR-FM was one of three Black-owned radio stations in Metro Detroit, and one of four that directly programmed to the Black community; it was lower-rated and placed a heavy emphasis on gospel music and religious fare, particularly on Sundays. However, it was still seen as valuable; the Masons rebuffed an offer of $1.5 million for WGPR-FM in 1973 (equivalent to $10,878,936 in 2025).[11]
WGPR-TV thus became the first Black-owned television station in the mainland United States,[12] as the two television stations in the U.S. Virgin Islands, WSVI and WBNB-TV, were Black-owned.[13] Banks promised a schedule of mostly locally produced programs and news focusing on items of interest to Detroit's Black community,[12] telling Jet, a nationally known weekly magazine aimed at the Black community, that the station "will provide in-depth penetration into the problems, goals, aspirations and achievements of Blacks and related ethnic groups".[14] The pursuit of a television station wholly owned and operated by Blacks was seen as particularly important given high television usage in the community; a 1975 Cablelines survey found Black people watched television at an average of 30 hours a week compared to 21 hours a week for Whites, while Black children watched television for seven hours every day.[15] Meanwhile, Banks's pursuit of a television station also had connections with the prior channel 62 in Detroit: Banks had analyzed purchasing WXON-TV, which was for sale for $1 million, but the Ford Foundation and four Detroit banks denied him financing. Following this, an attempt was made to acquire WJMY, which instead was sold to WXON-TV for them to move from channel 62 to channel 20.[16]
The construction process took nearly two years, in part because lenders were unwilling to loan money to finance the station's start-up.[17] However, work accelerated in 1975 as the Masons sold real estate holdings elsewhere to finance operations. A former industrial office building at 3146 East Jefferson Avenue was purchased to house WGPR radio and television, while federal government support expedited the purchase of steel necessary to erect a new transmitter facility.[18] Broadcasting began at noon on September 29, 1975, with recorded greetings from President Gerald R. Ford and Senator Robert P. Griffin.[19] Ford said in his address, "WGPR will serve as a symbol of successful Black enterprise. This is truly a landmark, not only for the broadcasting industry but for American society... I only wish I could be with you in person as WGPR goes on the air."[20] Banks credited President Ford for helping remove bureaucratic red tape for the Masons and overriding existing directives from The Pentagon for the steel purchase.[21] The Detroit Free Press hailed the station's sign-on in an October 3, 1975, editorial as "a new dimension and added stature to the area's entire telecommunications industry".[22]
Signing on with a local focus
[edit](Detroit) is a city of 1.4 million people, more than half of whom are Black. Yet, if you watch the other stations, you find that the programming is only about one or two percent Black. We felt that there was room for another station, one that speaks to a Black audience.
Channel 62 debuted in a television environment with a dearth of Black talent and programming. This was most acute in the areas of syndicated shows and advertising. James Panagos, WGPR-TV's vice president of sales, was unable to hire a Black ad salesman, so he set up a school to train TV sales professionals.[7] Some White employees were hired with the stipulation that they train Black employees in their fields.[23]: 38 Despite a national recession, WGPR-TV was able to secure $125,000 in advertising commitments from national companies including the major automakers and department stores Sears and Kmart, enabling them to cover all operating costs for the first year; an additional $300,000 was raised within the station's first 40 days on-air.[21]
I remember when I told my [parents] I wanted to go into journalism, but they had other ideas. They were used to women being in positions of... being a nurse, a very honorable profession, or a teacher, which is what my mother was. I told my father a broadcast journalist, he looked at me strangely, and said, 'well Pat I don't know about that. I mean, you don't look anything like Walter Cronkite...'
Little programming fulfilling the station's promise was available to the station in the syndication market, with reruns of the Bill Cosby drama I Spy being the highest-profile show, and the only one on WGPR-TV that starred a Black actor.[21] I Spy, Rawhide, and Up and Coming were aired as management felt the shows treated Black people respectfully and acceptably.[23]: 41 Consequently, channel 62 leaned heavily on local program production, much of it created from scratch by the station.[25] Proposed programs, not all of which were eventually produced, included a soap opera, A Time to Live, set at a bar; a live morning show with a studio audience, The Morning Party; and a children's show, The Candy Store, alongside other public service programming.[7] Local production would account for 90 percent of WGPR-TV's entire schedule, an amount unheard of for the market's larger and more established stations.[9] Vice president of programming George White, who joined WGPR-FM in 1970 as program director,[26] boasted that WGPR-TV would "operate as a complete production house".[27] Bill Humphries hosted Speaking of Sports,[23]: 39 which focused on local athletics and high school sports.[25] Conrad Patrick, one of the station's 15 White employees on a staff of 48, had planned to host a game show named Countdown,[28] which never aired.[8] Additional syndicated offerings like The Abbott and Costello Show, Get Smart, Felix the Cat, and assorted B-movies comprised the remainder of the schedule.[23]: 39 Prior to launch, one distribution company in Puerto Rico was interested in syndicating A Time to Live and The Scene internationally to Argentina and the Caribbean.[25] Several Black-focused public affairs shows—including Black on Black, which WGPR-TV and WEWS-TV jointly produced—and James Brown's syndicated variety series Future Shock were also carried.[23]: 41
One show, the live dance music program The Scene, drew on the success of WGPR radio and was among its most successful;[29] cars would sometimes clog Jefferson Avenue to see the stars arrive for tapings.[9] Scene co-host Nat Morris was originally hired in 1972 for WGPR-FM and was simply given directions to play music on the program as if he were a disc jockey, with the cameras focusing on the dancers throughout.[30] Often compared to American Bandstand and Soul Train, the program inspired multiple locally popular dance moves during competitions. A full-time talent coordinator was responsible for fielding mail-in requests for prospective on-stage dancers and booking singers and musical acts.[31] James Brown, The Gap Band, The Time and Jermaine Jackson were among the program's most notable musical guests.[32] Prince, then a part of The Time, had also been heavily promoted on WGPR-FM; he and the band gave the stations several gold records.[33] When Nat Morris took time off for a vacation, Panagos tapped Pat Harvey, who joined WGPR-TV in 1976[34] as a sales assistant, to be Morris's fill-in host dubbed "The Disco Lady". In addition to being on The Scene, Harvey hosted a daily five-minute public affairs show on WGPR-FM before joining WJBK-TV (channel 2), the market's CBS affiliate, in their community affairs department.[24] Harvey later found greater success as a news anchor for Chicago's WGN-TV and Los Angeles's KCAL-TV, becoming the highest-paid Black news anchor in the country in 1995 at the latter station after signing a multi-year $1 million contract.[34] Another early show, Rolling Funk, also featured dance music but in a roller derby environment, taped at the Safari roller rink in Inkster. This program was produced independently by a Black-owned production company with aspirations for syndication.[35]
The promise of WGPR-TV's news department lured Jerry Blocker away from WWJ-TV (channel 4), the city's NBC affiliate,[28] where he had become Detroit's first Black newsman in 1967.[36] Big City News initially aired twice a day,[28] intending to cover topics that the three network-affiliated TV newsrooms in town did not.[18] Big City News targeted Detroit's urban population and eschewed the suburban audience that was more interested in crime reporting that disproportionately covered Blacks:[23]: 41 Blocker explained that "there are many stories, both negative and positive, that are not being told, and that's what we're trying to get into".[37] Emphasis was given to positive stories about the Black community, social advocacy issues and community events.[8] Sharon Crews was the station's first weather presenter,[13] while Amyre Makupson (née Porter), later the host of WKBD-TV's 10 p.m. newscast,[38] got her start at WGPR-TV's news department.[39] Previously working in public relations, Makupson was laid off when the noon newscast she anchored was cancelled after 30 days due to lack of money, but she volunteered at the station for the next 18 months, later explaining, "you don't walk into a door without a tape... you have to get a tape from somewhere."[40] Employees often fell into their jobs in similar ways: Ken Bryant Jr., later a producer for WKBD/WWJ-TV, had been hired as a cameraman but wound up becoming the director of the first edition of Big City News.[23]: 38 The mere existence of a news department at WGPR-TV was credited with increasing the number of Black writers, anchors, and sources at the network-affiliated stations.[41] Big City News was also the first television news operation in Detroit to use videotape for news-gathering purposes, eschewing film entirely.[37]
Financial and technical challenges
[edit]After a year on the air, the fanfare and some of the more ambitious goals have been lost in the dust. In retrospect the station has done better than some expected—simply by surviving. But it has not lived up to all the rhetoric of those first weeks.
The station's early months were very rough: technical failures were common; broadcast hours were cut back; and much of the programming plans were curtailed after just one month when Banks felt the station was losing too much money.[9] Hopes of WGPR-TV making an immediate ratings impact by luring existing Black viewers from the other channels in the market—five licensed to Detroit proper and two in Windsor, Ontario—failed to materialize.[21] Commercials, particularly from the national clients that had made pledges to WGPR-TV, either failed to play correctly or would not play at all due to poor equipment; General Motors in particular withdrew their advertising but allowed the station to keep the money.[30] Banks's daughter, station vice president Tenicia Gregory, left a job as a college instructor to help run the station and never left, despite the early struggles. Gregory later said, "television turned out to be more than any of us thought... at the end of [1975], it was obvious that I couldn't walk away from it. It was impossible."[40]
Where promises of 90 percent local production had once been made by Banks, that figure was 30 percent by the end of 1975.[29] A Time to Live, the intended star program, was delayed heavily by a conflict-of-interest dispute involving its writers—both of whom were Black reporters for The Detroit News—and ultimately never aired, along with several other announced shows.[8] Substantial downsizing and reorganizations took place at WGPR-TV: the news department was reduced from twelve people to six,[23]: 42 and Blocker departed after less than a year on the advice of a doctor[9] while Sharon Crews left at the end of 1976 to join WGHP-TV.[42] Altogether, monthly payroll was trimmed from $35,000 to $18,000 by July 1977 alongside other austerity measures.[43] The station had lost as much as $15,000 a week (equivalent to $89,750 in 2025) during its first year on-air[23]: 42 amid threats of equipment repossession and closure.[9] WGPR's transmitter was damaged following an August 1976 thunderstorm, forcing the station to be off-the-air for an entire weekend while repairs were made.[44] Camera tube replacements for one of the two cameras The Scene used could not take place, as the $35,000 cost was deemed prohibitive, resulting in mismatched pictures from the cameras.[30] Even the technical innovation of using videotape became a hindrance due to continuous wiping, resulting in both degraded overall quality on-air and much of the station's early years being lost.[23]: 34
In 1977, one station vice president, Ulysses W. Boykin, testified before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications that "there appears to have been a conspiracy in the United States that has kept the Black minority out of meaningful participation in radio and television ownership [and] has prevented those Black-owned stations from getting a fair share of the business as well as any financing".[16] Advertising remained a primary obstacle as few White-owned businesses were willing or motivated to partner with Black-owned media, let alone channel 62, limiting the amount of local output that could be produced even further.[23]: 39–40 One major problem, however, was far beyond the station's control. Detroit's decreasing overall population and concurrently growing Black population—which by 1976 was larger than the total populations of either Louisville, Kentucky, or Nashville, Tennessee[8]—coupled with overall economic disinvestment, resulted in fewer opportunities for Black entrepreneurs.[23]: 42 One analysis of Black capitalism in Detroit during the mid-1970s saw as many as 90 percent of Black-run businesses failing in the first five years through a combination of managerial inexperience, under-capitalization, poor locations and bankers unwilling to offer loans.[8] Still, some ad agencies partnered with WGPR-TV despite minimal ratings: Young & Rubicam representative Judy Anderson explained, "There aren't any ratings. You've got to go by the seat of your pants... I believe in addressing the black market as much as you can."[43]
Turning to religion and creativity
[edit]Banks was able to keep the station afloat by brokering time to religious ministries.[9] The Masons, and Banks especially, held deep religious convictions and operated under Christian beliefs and values.[23]: 36 When the Masons purchased WGPR-FM in 1964, Banks gave the call sign (which originally stood for "Grosse Pointe Radio") the alternate meaning of "Where God's Presence Radiates".[45