WWJ (AM)


WWJ is a commercial AM radio station licensed to serve Detroit, Michigan, featuring an all-news radio format known as WWJ Newsradio 950. Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station services Metro Detroit, is the market affiliate for CBS News Radio, and the flagship station for the Michigan Sports Network. Operating on a regional broadcast frequency, its studios are in the Panasonic Building in Southfield.
The station's transmitter site is near Newport. WWJ broadcasts full-time with 50,000 watts, using a five-tower directional antenna system during daytime hours, and its entire six-tower array at night. WWJ has the highest field strength – 7,980 mV/m at a distance of 1 km – in a single direction of any U.S. AM station. With this powerful signal primarily sent to the north, the station can be heard in parts of northern Michigan during nighttime hours, including the Upper Peninsula and Mackinac areas, and much of southern Lower Michigan during the day.
WWJ is licensed by the Federal Communications Commission to broadcast in the HD Radio format, and is simulcast on the HD-2 sub-channel of sister station WXYT-FM.
On the air for over a century, WWJ began daily broadcasts as the "Detroit News Radiophone" on August 20, 1920, while it operated under an amateur radio license with the call sign "8MK". Over the years the station has claimed the titles of "America's Pioneer Broadcasting Station" and where "commercial radio broadcasting began."

Programming

WWJ is Michigan's only all-news radio station and features "traffic and weather together" every 10 minutes "on the eights" around the clock. The exception is during live sporting events and infomercials, which it often includes during its programming. In cases where there are schedule conflicts, it also carries sports events normally broadcast by its sister stations. In these cases the regular news programming can still be heard online.
In March 2005, WWJ began streaming its programming over the Internet. In August 2005, the station began offering podcasts of newsmakers, interviews, and some of the station's feature programming. In August 2006, it began broadcasting in the HD Radio format. WWJ programming was live 24 hours a day until July 2015, when, to cut costs, it began airing pre-recorded reports overnight. By 2016, the station returned to live news around the clock.
WWJ is the flagship station of the Michigan News Network, a network of over 50 affiliate radio stations across the state of Michigan that air news and sports reports produced by WWJ's news team.

Current on-air staff

  • Chris Fillar
  • Jackie Paige
  • Tracey McCaskill
  • Tony Ortiz
  • Kyle Kimball
  • Jay Dennis
  • Luke Sloan
  • Chris Keyzer
  • Greg Bowman

    History

In her 1960 review of the station's history, Cynthia Boyes Young cautioned that: "The actual beginnings of the Detroit News radio station, later to be known as WWJ, were not recorded at the time, and the story can only be partially pieced together from the reminiscences of radio pioneers." Three years later, Robert Preston Rimes found that "...fragmentary, incomplete, and sometimes, inaccurate histories existed".

Preparations

WWJ has traditionally recognized August 20, 1920, as its founding date. This was the day that the Detroit News inaugurated daily broadcasts from a studio established in the newspaper's headquarters building, located at the corner of Lafayette and 2nd Avenues. These initial broadcasts, by what was then called the "Detroit News Radiophone", were sent under an amateur station license operating with the call sign "8MK".

The person most responsible for establishing the Detroit News Radiophone service was the newspaper's vice-president and managing director, William E. Scripps. The Scripps family had a long history of interest in radio developments. In 1902, Thomas E. Clark founded the Thomas E. Clark Wireless Telephone-Telegraph Company, to supply vessels in the Great Lakes region with radio communication equipment. James E. Scripps, father of William E. Scripps and then-publisher of the Detroit News, took his son to witness a demonstration, and was also an early investor in Clark's company. On April 4, 1906, the News publicized the receipt of an order, via radiotelegraphy, by the advertising department from the Clark-equipped steamer City of Detroit. However, Clark was ultimately unable to compete with the predatory practices of the United Wireless Telegraph Company, and around 1910 ceased the Great Lakes installations. He subsequently opened an electrical shop in Detroit, and remained in contact with the Scripps family.
In April 1917, due to the entrance of the United States into World War One, it became illegal for private citizens to own radio receivers. This wartime ban was lifted effective April 15, 1919, and William E. Scripps' son, William J. Scripps, became interested in radio as a hobby, spending hours listening for distant stations. Most radio transmissions at this time were still being sent with the dots-and-dashes of Morse code. However, William E. Scripps later stated that it was his son's brief reception of an audio transmission that led to his initial investigation whether the News could set up its own broadcasting station. Drawing on advice from Thomas E. Clark, Scripps soon determined that the idea was in fact practical, primarily due to recent advances in radio transmitter technology, especially the development of vacuum-tube transmitters.
Sometime during 1919, Scripps and Clark prepared an expansive proposal that was brought before the newspaper's board of directors, requesting financing for the building of a powerful radio station capable of providing service throughout the Great Lakes region. Although initially resistant, the board eventually approved the request. However, significant modifications had to be made to the original plan. The proposal specified a 3,000 watt transmitter that would be constructed locally by Clark's Tecla Company, based on the design of General Electric's CG 4000 transmitter. Clark was subsequently sent by Scripps to General Electric's headquarters at Schenectady, New York to make further arrangements, but he was unsuccessful in reaching an agreement. After this Clark largely withdrew from participation, to the degree that his first visit to the station did not take place until 1937.
At this point, a new group of individuals became involved. Beginning in 1907, inventor Lee de Forest had been the leading proponent in the United States trying to introduce organized radio broadcasting, especially by newspapers. However, due to technical and financial issues, he had made little progress in making converts to the idea. In late 1916, the DeForest Radio Telephone & Telegraph Company began broadcasting a nightly "wireless newspaper" entertainment and news program from its experimental station, 2XG, located in the Highbridge section of New York City. This station had to suspend operations during World War One, but was revived shortly after the October 1, 1919, lifting of the wartime ban on civilian stations.
In early 1920, Clarence "C. S." Thompson, a New York City associate of Lee de Forest, and John F. Hubbard formed Radio News & Music, Inc., which in March 1920 took up the promotion of newspaper-run broadcasting stations, offering local franchises and asking in national advertisements "Is Your Paper to be One of the Pioneers Distributing News and Music by Wireless?" The Detroit News would become Radio News & Music's first – and ultimately only – newspaper customer.
In a letter dated May 28, 1920, the News made arrangements to lease a DeForest OT-10 radio transmitter through Radio News & Music, to develop a broadcasting service. An initial equipment shipment was made the same day, and Radio News & Music hired a local teenaged amateur radio operator, Michael DeLisle Lyons, to install the transmitter in a second floor room of the News headquarters building, connected to an antenna constructed on the roof. The May 28 shipment never arrived, so a replacement was sent from New York on July 15. After Lyons did some initial installation work a financial dispute broke out between him and the newspaper's management, so the News hired Frank Edwards to take over engineering responsibilities. Elton M. Plant, an aspiring reporter who had a good speaking and singing voice, was drafted as an announcer.
De Forest had sold the commercial rights to his radio patents to the American Telephone & Telegraph Company in 1917. However, he retained the right to sell equipment for "amateur and experimental use", so the station operated under a standard amateur radio license, with the call sign 8MK. William E. Scripps was very enthusiastic about the project, and kept close track as the equipment was being tested. However, the work was done with very limited publicity, and there are reports that some at the newspaper worried that a radio station might adversely affect paper sales, thus measures were taken to hide the direct involvement of the Scripps family, including originally licensing 8MK in Michael DeLisle Lyons' name.
Scripps' original proposal had envisioned operating on an uncongested frequency somewhere within the 600 to 1600 meter band normally reserved for government stations. However, as an amateur station 8MK was required to transmit on the standard – thus interference-prone – amateur wavelength of 200 meters, although contemporary newspaper accounts stated that it sometimes operated on other, less congested, wavelengths. In addition, the OT-10 transmitter was only rated for 20 watts, far less than the 3,000 watts contemplated in Scripps' original proposal.

Debut

8MK began nightly trial broadcasts on August 20, 1920, to check if the equipment was ready for regular service. However, because the station was still unpublicized the original audience consisted only of a small number of interested local amateur radio enthusiasts. The test programs proved satisfactory, so, on August 31, 1920, the Detroit News announced on its front page that, starting that evening, nightly broadcasts would be transmitted by the "Detroit News Radiophone" service. That evening's debut program featured regularly updated returns for a primary election held that day, plus vocal performances by Lois Johnson. Malcolm Bingay, managing director of the Detroit News, was the broadcast's master of ceremonies.
The front page of the next day's News contained enthusiastic reports attesting to the success of the election night broadcast, which had begun "promptly at 8:10 p. m.", with the newspaper declaring: "The sending of the election returns by The Detroit News Radiophone Tuesday night was fraught with romance and must go down in the history of man's conquest of the elements as a gigantic step in his progress." The paper also reported receiving "numberless telephone calls to The News office asking for details of the apparatus".
Daily broadcasts, most commonly between 7 and 8 pm, continued through September. Although the initial programs consisted mostly of phonograph records interspersed with news announcements, programming also included fight results from the heavyweight championship bout between Jack Dempsey and Billy Miske on September 6, and, in October, play-by-play accounts as the Cleveland Indians bested the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1920 World Series baseball championship. Weekly vocal concerts were begun on September 23, with Mabel Norton Ayers as the first featured artist. By late October, the paper was boasting that "hundreds of Detroiters are now the possessors of wireless receiving sets by which they get the news bulletins, music and other features sent out by The News Radiophone", as the station prepared to broadcast returns for that year's presidential election on November 2.