WWJ established the first FM radio station in Michigan in 1941.
Five years later, The News gave Detroiters their first chance to watch television. Ownership of WWJ-TV was traded to the Washington Post in exchange for its television station after the FCC ruled newspapers could not own a TV station in the same market. Media experts said in 1985 that the Washington television station was the jewel Gannett sought when it acquired the Evening News Association in 1985.
-Ted Gladwell / The Detroit News
Picture:
622 Lafayette Boulevard, Detroit. circa mid 1960’s. An interesting picture. On the left side is the Art Deco radio and executive side of the building, and on the left, the modernist-like TV studio addition of channel 4 before they moved next door.550.
Today I think its the HQ for the union local of the Detroit Newspaper Guild.
Correction: Left side the the Modernist side, RIGHT side is Art Deco
The original WWJ-TV is now WDIV like it has been since 1978. WWJ-TV is the call sign to the former WGPR-TV on Channel 62.
I’ve even seen a YouTube clip of Nerissa Williams, formerly of KIRO-TV in Seattle when she was at WDIV. She also worked at what is now KIRO’s Cox-owned sister-station WSOC-TV in Charlotte, N.C.
If anyone has seen the YouTube clip of the audio from WWJ-TV’s final sign-off from 1978 in which it would become WDIV-TV the next day, there is a religious-themed PSA that comes on at 7:42(Audio Only). Does anybody know who sponsored it & if someone could please post-it on YT?
If anyone has seen the YouTube clip of the audio from WWJ-TV’s final sign-off from 1978 in which it would become WDIV-TV the next day, there is a religious-themed PSA that comes on at 7:42(Audio Only). Does anybody know who sponsored it & if someone could please post-it on YT?