WXYZ-TV, virtual channel 7 (UHF digital channel 41), is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Detroit, Michigan, United States. The station is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, as part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYD (channel 20). The two stations share studios at Broadcast House on 10 Mile Road in Southfield, where WXYZ-TV's transmitter is also located.
On cable, the station is available on channel 17 on Comcast Xfinity's Detroit city system (due to co-channel interference in the analog era which had Comcast map their local channels outside the VHF band), channel 10 on Xfinity's South Oakland County system, channel 7 in other suburbs and outlying areas and on AT&T U-verse, and channel 8 on Cogeco's Windsor system.
History[]
As an ABC-owned station[]
The station first signed on the air on October 9, 1948 as the second television station in Michigan, over a year behind WWJ-TV (channel 4, now WDIV-TV) and 15 days ahead of WJBK-TV (channel 2). Channel 7 was also the third of ABC's five original owned-and-operated television stations to sign on, after New York City and Chicago and before San Francisco and Los Angeles. WXYZ-TV was created out of ABC-owned radio station WXYZ (1270 AM), which produced the popular radio programs The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet. WXYZ radio personality Dick Osgood was host of WXYZ-TV's inaugural broadcast.
The television station originally broadcast from studios located in the Maccabees Building on Woodward Avenue in midtown Detroit, across from the Detroit Institute of Arts. In the 1950s, WXYZ-TV began producing a series of popular and innovative programs that featured many personalities from WXYZ radio. The station's success generated revenues large enough that it became instrumental in financially helping the then-struggling ABC network and other ABC ventures during the 1950s, including ABC-Paramount Records. In 1959, all of WXYZ's radio and television operations moved into new broadcast facilities at Broadcast House, at 20777 West Ten Mile Road in Southfield, where WXYZ's television operations remain. The facility was built on the site of a former farm and included three television production studios and its own free-standing broadcast tower with a single-person maintenance elevator. WXYZ began broadcasting network programs in color in 1962 and started broadcasting local programs and newscasts in color around 1964.
By 1978, WXYZ-TV was the second most-dominant television station in the United States in terms of local viewership, no doubt attributable to ABC's prime-time ratings dominance and the continued success of Channel 7 Action News with lead news anchor Bill Bonds. In 1979, ABC named Jeanne Findlater as WXYZ's general manager. She was the first woman to hold that title at a major market television station. WXYZ-TV was carried by the Cancom system from 1983 as the ABC station for Canadian cable television providers too distant to receive a border station's signal over-the-air, though later, Seattle station KOMO-TV was added to Cancom's offerings as a Pacific Time Zone alternative.
E. W. Scripps Company station[]
In May 1985, Capital Cities Communications, which owned Detroit radio stations WJR (760 AM) and WHYT (96.3 FM, originally WJR-FM, now WDVD), announced its acquisition of ABC. In order to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ownership limits of the time, the new Capital Cities/ABC would have to sell either WXYZ-TV or each of three radio stations that the two companies had owned – WJR, WHYT, or ABC-owned WRIF (101.1 FM; the former WXYZ-FM, which was sold as part of the merger). ABC had sold WXYZ (AM) a year earlier in 1984 to the radio station's general manager, Chuck Fritz, who changed its call sign to WXYT.
Upon gaining FCC approval of the merger in February 1986, the new company sold WXYZ-TV as well as Capital Cities' Tampa station WFTS-TV to the E. W. Scripps Company. Capital Cities/ABC intended to keep channel 7 together with WJR and WHYT through a waiver of the FCC's cross-ownership rules, as a contingency in case a similar request involving ABC's New York City television flagship and Capital Cities' Philadelphia outlet was denied. At the time, Cozzin Communications (a broadcast group owned by stand-up comedian/actor Bill Cosby) emerged as another prospective bidder for the station. ABC retained some of WXYZ's assets, including the satellite uplink for its satellite news-gathering service ABC NewsOne. Under Scripps ownership, WXYZ-TV retained the ABC network affiliation and continued to use ABC's (originally) proprietary Circle 7 logo.
Scripps used the station's popularity as leverage for Detroit's cable providers to carry the Scripps-owned HGTV cable network, using the FCC's retransmission consent rule to force local cable systems to carry HGTV. Under this rule, a television station that is carried on a cable system under must carry rules can request cable systems to compensate the station for carrying it. The station was selected as the site of the first Town Meeting with President Bill Clinton in February 1993, which was hosted by Bill Bonds. President Clinton would address questions from audience members at WXYZ's studios as well as audiences at other television stations via satellite.
A shift in affiliation at Detroit's CBS affiliate, WJBK-TV (channel 2), to the Fox network in 1994 prompted CBS to attempt to lure WXYZ to drop its ABC affiliation in favor of switching to CBS. As a contingency plan, ABC approached SJL Broadcast Management (later known as Montecito Broadcast Group, now SJL Broadcasting and once again controlled by the principals of Lilly Broadcasting) about buying Toledo, Ohio's WTVG (channel 13) and Flint's WJRT-TV (channel 12) to cover the Detroit area, in the event that WXYZ became a CBS station. Both stations' city-grade signals reached portions of the Detroit area (WTVG to the south, and WJRT-TV to the north).
Eventually, Scripps signed a ten-year long-term deal with ABC that would keep WXYZ as an affiliate of the network (it remains an ABC affiliate to this day). As a condition of that agreement, television stations in other cities, including Tampa-St. Petersburg, Phoenix and Baltimore, would lose their ABC affiliations to competing Scripps-owned stations in those cities. CBS would purchase UHF independent station WGPR-TV (channel 62, now WWJ-TV), after it failed to reach deals to affiliate with WDIV, WKBD-TV (channel 50, which lost its Fox affiliation to WJBK as a result of its then-owner New World Communications's affiliation deal with the network) or the market's other independent stations, WXON (channel 20, now WMYD) and WADL-TV (channel 38).
WXYZ-TV has been active in several community service projects. The station received the National Community Service Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding community service in 1989. WXYZ is a partner in several charitable endeavors including the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, Operation Can-Do and Detroit's annual children's immunization fair. On October 4, 2006, WXYZ became the first television station in Michigan and the first Scripps-owned station to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.
Gallery[]
| TV stations in Michigan |
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| WXYZ, Detroit WGTU, Traverse City |
| TV stations in Southeast Michigan, including Detroit |
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| WJBK 2 (Fox) WDIV 4 (NBC) WXYZ 7 (ABC) WHNE-LD 14 (LIGHT) WDWO-CD 18 (AZA) WUDL-LD 19 (Info) WMYD 20 (Ind) WUDT-LD 23 (Daystar) WPXD 31 (Ion) WHPS-CD 33 (Ind) WADL 38 (MNTV) WLPC-CD 40 (Impact) WKBD 50 (CW) WTVS 56 (PBS) WWJ 62 (CBS) |