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WWJ (AM) |
| WWJ | |
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| City of license | Detroit, Michigan |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | [1] (Daytime) [2] (Nighttime) |
| Branding | Newsradio 950 |
| Slogan | "All News All the Time" |
| Frequency | 950 kHz (Also on HD Radio) |
| First air date | August 20, 1920 |
| Format | News |
| Power | 50,000 watts |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 9621 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Callsign meaning | none |
| Former callsigns | WBL (1921-1922) 8MK (1920-1921) |
| Affiliations | CBS Radio Network |
| Owner | CBS Radio |
| Sister stations | WOMC, WVMV, WXYT, WXYT-FM, WYCD |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | www.wwj.com |
WWJ (Newsradio 950) is Detroit, Michigan's only 24-hour all-news radio station. Broadcasting at 950 kHz on the AM dial, the station is owned and operated by CBS Corporation subsidiary CBS Radio. The station first went on the air on August 20, 1920 with the call sign 8MK. It is believed to be the first station to broadcast news reports regularly as well as the first regularly scheduled religious broadcast and play-by-play sports broadcast.citation needed
Although WWJ is the only commercial all news radio station in Michigan, co-owned WWJ-TV is the only CBS Owned-and-operated station without a local news presence.
Contents |
On August 20, 1920, The Detroit News started the station with the call sign 8MK, assigned to it by the United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Navigation, the government bureau responsible for radio regulation at the time. The 8 in the call sign means the station is located in the 8th Radio Inspection District, while the M in the call sign means the station operated under an amateur license.1 It is not clear why the Detroit News applied for an amateur license instead of an experimental license. As an amateur station, it broadcast at 200 meters (the equivalent of 1500 kHz).
On October 13, 1921 the station was granted a limited commercial license and was assigned the call letters WBL. With the new license, the station began broadcasting at 360 meters (833 kHz), with weather reports and other government reports broadcast at 485 meters (619 kHz).2
On March 3, 1922, for reasons that are not known, the call letters, WWJ, were assigned to the station. Some believe the new call letters are an abbreviation for stockholders William and John Scripps, but on page 82 of a book published by the Detroit News in 1922, WWJ-The Detroit News, the station writers write "WWJ is not the initials of any name. It is a symbol. It was issued to the Detroit News by the government in connection with the licensing of this broadcasting plant."3
In 1923, the Commerce Department realized that as more and more stations were applying for commercial licenses, it was not practical to have every station broadcast on the same two wavelengths. It was decided to set aside 81 frequencies, in 10 kHz steps, from 550 kHz to 1350 kHz, and each station would be assigned one frequency, no longer having to broadcast weather and government reports on a different frequency than entertainment. As a result, WWJ was moved to 517 meters (580 kHz). It was later re-assigned, during a re-alignment of stations by the new Federal Radio Commission in 1927-28, to fulltime operation on 920 kHz, and allowed to increase its power in stages, reaching 5,000 watts by the late 1930s.
On March 29, 1941 as part of the NARBA frequency reassignment, WWJ moved to 950 AM where it remains to this day. The programming throughout this time was focused on variety, with music making up a larger portion of its format as television programming eroded support for variety programming and the Golden Age of Radio ended in 1962. With the advent of FM radio and stereo broadcasting, WWJ dropped its middle-of-the-road music format in favor of all-news programming in 1973. The all-news format has served WWJ well over the past three and a half decades, enabling it to rank consistently among the Detroit market's most popular stations with adult listeners.
In 1987, Federal Broadcasting Corporation, run by David Herriman, purchased WWJ and WJOI (now WXYT-FM) from the new owner of The Detroit News, Gannett, now the owner of The Detroit Free Press, which was required to sell the stations immediately by the Federal Communications Commission because of crossownership rules in effect at that time. On March 9, 1989, CBS bought the station, with its ownership being transferred to Infinity Broadcasting after CBS's 1996 acquisition of that group...although further corporate reorganization has put the station directly under the CBS corporate brand name once again in recent years. On January 13, 2000, the station once again increased its broadcast power to 50,000 watts during the daytime, with nighttime wattage matching in August 30, 2000 after new facilities in Southfield, Michigan, allowed the station to operate with 50,000 watts around the clock. (The new facilities are located less than a mile from the WKBD/WWJ studios.) In March, 2005, WWJ began offering a 24-hour live webcast. In August 2005, the station began offering podcasts of newsmakers, interviews, and some of the station's feature programming. The station also recently began broadcasting an HD, or high-definition, signal, which gives an AM broadcast FM-like quality.
Summer 2008 Phase II Arbitron Ratings: #1 (6.4)
You can hear other news broadcasters on WWJ who are also from nearby television stations for example WJBK, WDIV, and WXYZ.
The following details the changes in frequency and power experienced by WWJ over the years. The data is from the Radio Service Bulletins that were issued periodically by the Commerce Department (the dates are the dates the particular bulletin was issued, not the date of the change)4:
The station's power increased to 5,000 watts in 1937, and its frequency was permanently set at 950 kHz on March 29, 1941.
It reached its current 50,000 watts in 2000.citation needed
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