WJBK
WJBK is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Owned and operated by the Fox network through its Fox Television Stations division, the station maintains studios and transmitter facilities on West 9 Mile Road in the Detroit suburb of Southfield.
WJBK's over-the-air signal covers all of Metro Detroit, along with Southwestern Ontario, Canada, surrounding the city of Windsor. The station is also carried on most cable systems in southeast Michigan, southwestern Ontario and northwest Ohio.
History
CBS affiliate (1948–1994)
WJBK-TV first signed on the air on October 24, 1948. It was the third television station to sign-on in Detroit and Michigan, after WWJ-TV and WXYZ-TV —all of which have signed on in a 14-month timeframe. Despite Detroit being a major television market, it only accommodated three VHF allocations due to being shortspaced between Flint and Saginaw to the north; Lansing to the west; Toledo to the south; and Cleveland ; Windsor, Ontario ; and London, Ontario to the east. For this reason, WJBK was assigned the final VHF channel in Detroit.At sign on, the first program broadcast by WJBK was a presentation of Lucky Pup at 6:15 p.m.. The station was originally an affiliate of both CBS and the DuMont Television Network. It was originally owned by Fort Industry Broadcasting, owned by George B. Storer and then based in nearby Toledo, Ohio. Fort Industry, which would later be renamed Storer Broadcasting, also owned WJBK radio, and 93.1 WJBK-FM. The station originally operated from Detroit's Masonic Temple until 1956, when its operations were moved to a purpose-built studio facility on Second Avenue in Detroit's New Center section, which would be occupied by PBS member station WTVS for nearly 40 years and is now being reconstructed for use as headquarters for the nonprofit Midnight Golf Program. WJBK-TV would eventually become an exclusive CBS affiliate by 1955, when Windsor, Ontario-based CKLW-TV became a DuMont affiliate. WJBK first broadcast in color around 1956. In 1970, the station moved to its current broadcast facilities on West Nine Mile Road in Southfield. Like most studio facilities built by Storer during that time, it resembles a Southern antebellum mansion.
The station went through a number of ownership and management changes with its parent companies in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1985, the equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts acquired Storer Communications, Incorporated in a leveraged buyout. Storer spurned offers from Knight-Ridder Newspapers, Tele-Communications, Inc. and Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., though Scripps-Howard would successfully acquire cross-town rival ABC owned and operated station WXYZ-TV in 1986 after the ABC-Capital Cities Communications merger was approved by federal regulators. KKR then sold all of the Storer broadcast assets, including WJBK, to Gillett Communications in 1987, after an attempt to sell the stations to Lorimar-Telepictures in 1986 failed. When Gillett went bankrupt in 1992, it reorganized the ownership of its television stations into SCI Television. The following year, in 1993, SCI was acquired by the film and television production company New World Communications.
Switch to Fox station (1994–present)
In May 1994, News Corporation, then-parent of the Fox network, purchased a 20% ownership stake in WJBK's owner New World Communications. Fox made the investment to comply with their winning bid for the broadcast rights to the NFL's National Football Conference. Fox outbid CBS for the NFL broadcast rights on the condition that it would improve the network's affiliate coverage in the larger television markets. As a result of Fox's investment, New World agreed to switch the network affiliations of most of the company's stations, including WJBK, to Fox. While WKBD-TV had been the Fox affiliate in Detroit since the network debuted on October 9, 1986, and had grown to be one of the network's strongest affiliates, Fox still considered WJBK a far-more desirable affiliation prospect on the strength of its VHF signal and the station's longtime news department.WJBK became Detroit's new Fox affiliate on December 11, 1994, after the station's affiliation contract with CBS ended, ending its 45-year affiliation with that network. With the switch, regular season games of the Detroit Lions' continued to air on WJBK, although there was a brief three-month interruption in coverage due to CBS losing the NFC rights for the first three months of Fox's NFC telecasts due to WKBD airing them. After losing Fox, WKBD was briefly an independent before joining the newly launched UPN a month later.
CBS found it difficult to find a new home in Detroit. WXYZ and Cleveland sister station WEWS-TV were both heavily wooed to become CBS affiliates, but the E. W. Scripps Company signed an affiliation deal with ABC in June 1994 that renewed the network's affiliations with both stations. WDIV was not an option as that station was in the middle of a long-term affiliation contract with NBC at the time. As a result, CBS was forced to deal with the market's lower-rated UHF outlets, none of which had the kind of signal penetration that WJBK had. As a contingency plan, CBS signed a long-term affiliation deal with WTOL in Toledo, Ohio; which provides city-grade coverage to most of Detroit's southern suburbs and grade B coverage of Detroit itself. It also persuaded Mid-Michigan's longtime NBC affiliate, WNEM-TV, to switch to CBS; WNEM provided stronger coverage of Detroit's outer northern suburbs than did the market's longtime CBS affiliate, WEYI-TV.
With just days to go before WJBK was due to switch to Fox, CBS faced the prospect of having to import WTOL, WNEM, and WLNS on area cable providers until it could find a replacement affiliate. CBS would end up purchasing low-rated UHF independent station WGPR-TV in September 1994. The last CBS network program to air on WJBK was a first-run episode of Walker, Texas Ranger at 10 p.m. Eastern Time on December 10, 1994; channel 2 officially became a Fox affiliate the next day, when the network's programming lineup moved to the station from WKBD; the first Fox network program to air on the station as a full-time affiliate was Fox NFL Sunday at noon that day, which led into that afternoon's NFL doubleheader: an early game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Los Angeles Rams and a mid-afternoon game between the San Francisco 49ers and the San Diego Chargers.
Until channel 62 built a new transmitter in 1999, WTOL served as the default CBS affiliate for most of the southern portion of the market, while WNEM served the northern portion and WLNS served the western portion.
As a result of the network switch, WJBK changed its branding from "TV 2" to "Fox 2" by the fall of 1995. Fox Television Stations bought New World's ten Fox-affiliated stations, including WJBK, in July 1996; the purchase was finalized on January 22, 1997, with channel 2 becoming a Fox owned-and-operated station as a result.
On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company, owner of WXYZ-TV's affiliated network ABC, announced its intent to buy WJBK's parent company, 21st Century Fox, for $66.1 billion; the sale, which closed on March 20, 2019, excluded WJBK as well as the Fox network, the MyNetworkTV programming service, Fox News, Fox Sports 1, the Big Ten Network and the Fox Television Stations unit, which were all transferred to the newly-formed Fox Corporation.
Programming
Local productions
Some of WJBK's early productions included popular children's shows. Milky's Movie Party starring Milky the Clown, played by magician Clarence R. Cummings Jr., was one of the station's first locally produced children's programs from 1950 to 1955. The program featured a mix of cartoons and westerns with Cummings performing magic tricks with other acts in front of a live audience. Cummings would eventually take the Milky character to WXYZ-TV and the former WWJ-TV.Other original WJBK children's programs included a cowboy-themed show with Sagebrush Shorty, played by ventriloquist Ted Lloyd, with his sidekick dummy Skinny Dugan that aired from 1956 to 1960, featuring a mix of children's activities and various other characters that interacted with Lloyd. That program was followed by another WJBK children's favorite, Jungle-La with wildlife expert "B'wana" Don Hunt, that aired from 1960 to 1963. Hunt with his sidekick chimpanzee Bongo Bailey hosted cartoons and taught viewers about various wildlife. Hunt moved to Africa in 1964 and managed a wildlife preserve in Kenya responsible for saving some species from extinction. After airing first on the former WWJ-TV and CKLW-TV, performer Art Cervi would obtain the Bozo the Clown franchise for Detroit and perform the character at WJBK beginning in 1975. During its run at the station, the program would be syndicated from WJBK to cities including New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Wichita, Kansas.
WJBK also produced one of Detroit's first morning talk shows, Ladies' Day with Chuck Bergeson, which aired from 1952 to 1959. The hour-long show included games, contests, and interviews with the biggest stars of the time including Lucille Ball and Red Skelton. Bergeson also hosted other WJBK shows in the 1950s including Your TV Golf Pro and The Name Game. From 1967 to 1983, Sir Graves Ghastly, played by actor Lawson J. Deming, hosted WJBK's assorted sci-fi and horror movies on Saturday afternoons; the humorous character became a popular figure in Detroit television. Deming had originally come to the station as a puppeteer and voice actor for the children's program Woodrow the Woodsman when that show moved from Cleveland's WKYC-TV to WJBK in 1966. In addition to playing the character in Cleveland, he also played Sir Graves on WTOP-TV in Washington, D.C. at the same time.
With This Ring was a nationally syndicated religious program produced at the studios of WJBK from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. The weekly 15-minute show hosted by Roman Catholic priest Raymond Schlinkert featured lectures and advice about marriage and family life. The program was syndicated to several other U.S. commercial stations, usually shown immediately following the station's sign-on or before sign-off on Sundays.
WJBK would also produce Sunday public affairs/interview shows over the years including Focus Detroit, hosted by reporters Woody Willis and Beverly Payne in 1973; Sunday in Detroit, hosted by news anchor Kathy O'Brien, would air around 1980 and WJBK business reporter and news anchor Murray Feldman also hosted a Sunday business and financial program in the mid-1990s called Moneywise. WJBK produced a local version of the syndicated program PM Magazine from 1978 to the mid-1980s. The show changed titles over the years eventually becoming known as PM Detroit – it also had various hosts included Ronnie Klemmer, Lorrie Kapp, Gary Cubberly and Mattie Majors. The station was also the Detroit home and active participant for comedian Jerry Lewis' annual MDA Labor Day Telethon for several years.
From 1983 to 1986, popular WJR morning radio host J. P. McCarthy hosted an evening interview show with newsmakers and people of interest called JP, as well as a similar program in the early 1990s entitled In Person with J.P. McCarthy. He also previously hosted sports interview show specials through the 1970s. In 1995, former WXYZ-TV news anchor Bill Bonds hosted the 11 p.m. talk/interview show, Bonds Tonight. Bonds eventually would end up anchoring and reporting on WJBK's newscasts.