WWJ-TV
WWJ-TV, branded 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, 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, 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
On September 15, 1968, WXON-TV began broadcasting on channel 62. 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. Land mobile interests pushed back against the sale, seeking that channel 20 be reassigned for their use in metro Detroit. The Federal Communications Commission approved the move in June 1972, and WXON moved from channel 62 to channel 20, using the former WJMY construction permit, on December 9, 1972.WGPR-TV
Built by Masons
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, applied to the FCC for a new construction permit on channel 62. 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. Purchased by the Masons in 1964, 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 placing 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.WGPR-TV thus became the first Black-owned television station in the mainland United States, as the two television stations in the U.S. Virgin Islands, WSVI and WBNB-TV, were Black-owned. Banks promised a schedule of mostly locally produced programs and news focusing on items of interest to Detroit's Black community, 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". 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. 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.
The construction process took nearly two years, in part because lenders were unwilling to loan money to finance the station's start-up. 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. Broadcasting began at noon on September 29, 1975, with recorded greetings from President Gerald R. Ford and Senator Robert P. Griffin. 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." Banks credited President Ford for helping remove bureaucratic red tape for the Masons and overriding existing directives from The Pentagon for the steel purchase. 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".
Signing on with a local focus
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. Some White employees were hired with the stipulation that they train Black employees in their fields. 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.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. I Spy, Rawhide, and Up and Coming were aired as management felt the shows treated Black people respectfully and acceptably. Consequently, channel 62 leaned heavily on local program production, much of it created from scratch by the station. 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. 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. Vice president of programming George White, who joined WGPR-FM in 1970 as program director, boasted that WGPR-TV would "operate as a complete production house". Bill Humphries hosted Speaking of Sports, which focused on local athletics and high school sports. Conrad Patrick, one of the station's 15 White employees on a staff of 48, had planned to host a game show named Countdown, which never aired. Additional syndicated offerings like The Abbott and Costello Show, Get Smart, Felix the Cat, and assorted B-movies comprised the remainder of the schedule. 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. 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.
File:Big_City_News_1976_ad.jpg|thumb|upright=1.13|Amyre Makupson, Doug Morison and Sharon Crews presented WGPR-TV's nightly Big City News in 1976.|alt=A black-and-white scan of a newspaper advertisement. In a box to the left, beneath the angled text "All News is Not the Same...", are illustrations of Porter, Morison, and Crews. To the right is text reading "Watch Big City News – It's Definitely Different! 7:30 PM Weekdays". On the bottom left is a stylized 62, which is connected to the bottom frame by a line above which is written on the right edge "WGPR TV 62" and below which is written "DETROIT".
One show, the live dance music program The Scene, drew on the success of WGPR radio and was among its most successful; cars would sometimes clog Jefferson Avenue to see the stars arrive for tapings. 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. 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. James Brown, The Gap Band, The Time and Jermaine Jackson were among the program's most notable musical guests. 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. When Nat Morris took time off for a vacation, Panagos tapped Pat Harvey, who joined WGPR-TV in 1976 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, the market's CBS affiliate, in their community affairs department. 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. 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.
The promise of WGPR-TV's news department lured Jerry Blocker away from WWJ-TV, the city's NBC affiliate, where he had become Detroit's first Black newsman in 1967. Big City News initially aired twice a day, intending to cover topics that the three network-affiliated TV newsrooms in town did not. Big City News targeted Detroit's urban population and eschewed the suburban audience that was more interested in crime reporting that disproportionately covered Blacks: 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". Emphasis was given to positive stories about the Black community, social advocacy issues and community events. Sharon Crews was the station's first weather presenter, while Amyre Makupson, later the host of WKBD-TV's 10 p.m. newscast, got her start at WGPR-TV's news department. 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." 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. 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. Big City News was also the first television news operation in Detroit to use videotape for news-gathering purposes, eschewing film entirely.