WXYZ

About WXYZ

WXYZ-TV is the ABC affiliate for Detroit, Michigan, broadcasting on virtual channel 7. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside independent station WMYD, channel 20, WXYZ signed on October 9, 1948, as the second television station in Michigan and one of ABC's original owned-and-operated stations. Its call letters were taken from WXYZ radio, the Detroit station that produced The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet. Now branded 7 News Detroit, the station's newscasts have long been known as Action News, and its studios and transmitter are at Broadcast House in Southfield. Its official website is wxyz.com.

Detroit's second station

WXYZ-TV first signed on the air on October 9, 1948, with ten and a half hours of programming, as the second television station in both Detroit and Michigan — more than a year behind WWJ-TV, channel 4, and fifteen 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 WJZ-TV in New York and WENR-TV in Chicago, and before KGO-TV in San Francisco and KECA-TV in Los Angeles. The station was created out of ABC-owned radio station WXYZ (1270 AM), whose legendary programs The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet had made the call letters famous nationwide. WXYZ radio personality Dick Osgood hosted the television station's inaugural broadcast. The station originally broadcast from studios in the Maccabees Building on Woodward Avenue in midtown Detroit, across from the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The Lone Ranger legacy

The WXYZ call letters carried a heritage few American stations could match. WXYZ radio had been the originating station of The Lone Ranger, which premiered in 1933, and The Green Hornet, which followed in 1936 — programs that became fixtures of American popular culture. The television station inherited that identity, and in its early years it drew heavily on the radio station's personalities and creative energy. In the 1950s, WXYZ-TV produced a series of popular and innovative programs featuring WXYZ radio talent, and the station's success generated revenues large enough to help financially sustain the then-struggling ABC network and its ventures, including ABC-Paramount Records. The radio-television connection defined channel 7's first decade on the air.

Soupy Sales and local programming

In the 1950s, WXYZ-TV created a string of widely popular locally produced children's programs. The most famous, Lunch with Soupy, launched the career of comedian Soupy Sales; it debuted in 1953 and was such a success that ABC moved production to Los Angeles in 1960 and aired the show nationally. Sales also hosted a late-night adult comedy show, Soupy's On, during the same period. Other children's favorites included Wyxie's Wonderland with Detroit comic Marv Welch, Ricky the Clown with professional clown and magician Irv Romig, The Johnny Ginger Show, The Auntie Dee Show talent program, and Sheriff Bob's western movie showcases. In 1974, the station launched the nationally syndicated children's show Hot Fudge. Morning programming included The Morning Show from 1966 and, most successfully, Kelly & Company, the talk show hosted by former news staffers John Kelly and Marilyn Turner that ran from 1978 to 1995. In 1965, the Sunday public affairs show Spotlight on the News debuted; it continues to air today as Detroit's longest-running current events program.

Broadcast House in Southfield

In 1959, all of WXYZ's radio and television operations moved into new broadcast facilities at Broadcast House, 20777 West Ten Mile Road in Southfield, where the television station's 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. The Southfield campus has been the station's home for more than six decades, and the transmitter remains co-located with the studios. In 2014, the station added a studio in downtown Detroit, in the Chase Tower at Campus Martius Park, giving 7 Action News a front-row seat to the city's rebirth while keeping its main operations in Southfield.

Action News and Bill Bonds

WXYZ's newscasts have long been branded Action News, a title the station adopted in the 1970s when it built up its news department with elements of the Eyewitness News format, including the Cool Hand Luke music theme used by ABC's other owned stations. The station's news department started as a small operation with twice-nightly updates, but it gained credibility with its coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots. Longtime lead anchor Bill Bonds became the face of Channel 7 Action News, and by 1978, WXYZ-TV was the second most-dominant television station in the United States in local viewership, powered by ABC's prime-time ratings dominance and Bonds' popularity. In 1979, ABC named Jeanne Findlater as the station's general manager — the first woman to hold that title at a major-market television station. The station now broadcasts more than 42 hours of locally produced newscasts each week, with seven hours each weekday, plus sports programs including the weekly 7 Sports Cave.

The Scripps purchase

In May 1985, Capital Cities Communications announced its acquisition of ABC. To comply with FCC ownership limits, the new Capital Cities/ABC had to divest stations, and upon receiving FCC approval in February 1986, it sold WXYZ-TV — along with its Tampa station WFTS-TV — to the E. W. Scripps Company. Stand-up comedian and actor Bill Cosby's Cozzin Communications emerged as another prospective bidder for the Detroit station. ABC had sold WXYZ radio two years earlier, and the AM station's call sign became WXYT. Under Scripps ownership, WXYZ retained its ABC affiliation and continued to use the Circle 7 logo, originally ABC's proprietary mark. Scripps later used the station's popularity as leverage to get Detroit cable systems to carry its HGTV cable network under the FCC's retransmission consent rules. The station was the site of the first Town Meeting with President Bill Clinton in February 1993, hosted by Bill Bonds.

Surviving the 1994 realignment

WXYZ's ABC affiliation faced its greatest threat in 1994, when New World Communications' deal with Fox set off a nationwide affiliation scramble. New World's owner of then-CBS affiliate WJBK in Detroit signed with Fox, prompting CBS to try to lure WXYZ — and Scripps sister station WEWS in Cleveland — away from ABC. On June 16, 1994, Scripps instead signed a long-term deal with ABC that kept WXYZ and WEWS as ABC affiliates, a relationship that continues to this day. As a condition of the agreement, Scripps-owned stations in Tampa, Phoenix, and Baltimore gained ABC affiliations at the expense of competing stations. CBS ultimately affiliated with — and later purchased — UHF independent WGPR-TV, channel 62. WXYZ emerged from the realignment with its network relationship secured for the long term.

Community service and Detroit traditions

WXYZ has been deeply involved in Detroit civic life. The station received the National Community Service Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1989, and partners in charitable endeavors including the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and Operation Can Do, along with Detroit's annual children's immunization fair. Its cameras have covered the city's signature events for decades: the Thanksgiving Day Parade, the North American International Auto Show Charity Preview, the Woodward Dream Cruise, and the city's 250th anniversary in 1951 and 300th in 2001. The station aired the victory parades of the Red Wings' Stanley Cup championships and the Pistons' 2004 NBA title, carried the Red Wings' 2002 Stanley Cup Finals win, and provided local coverage of Super Bowl XL at Ford Field. In 2011, WXYZ became the flagship of the Detroit Lions Television Network, carrying the team's preseason games until 2015.

Digital era and Bounce TV

WXYZ's digital signal broadcasts on UHF channel 25, mapped to virtual channel 7, with 765 kilowatts of power from the Southfield tower. On July 12, 2012, Scripps signed an affiliation agreement with Bounce TV making WXYZ the Detroit affiliate of the African American-oriented multicast network — the first Scripps-owned station to affiliate with Bounce, a network Scripps would eventually acquire outright. The station's subchannel lineup reflects Scripps's portfolio of multicast networks. In 2006, WXYZ became one of the first stations in the country to broadcast its local newscasts in high definition. In 2017, the station rebranded its news as ABC 7 before settling on the current 7 News Detroit identity, while the Circle 7 logo remains a constant.

Sister station WMYD

WXYZ is operated alongside WMYD, channel 20, an independent station that Scripps acquired to form a Detroit duopoly. The two stations share the Broadcast House studios in Southfield, giving Scripps two full-power outlets in the nation's media market centered on the Motor City. The duopoly allows the company to program complementary schedules across the two channels and to share news and production resources. Together, WXYZ and WMYD give Scripps one of the strongest broadcast footprints in Detroit.

Seventy-five years on channel 7

From its 1948 sign-on in the Maccabees Building to its long tenure at Broadcast House, WXYZ-TV has been Detroit's ABC station for more than 75 years — first as a network-owned outlet that helped keep ABC afloat in the 1950s, then as a Scripps-owned affiliate that survived the 1994 realignment intact. The Circle 7 logo, the Action News brand, and the Southfield studios are fixtures of Detroit broadcasting, and the station's history — from The Lone Ranger's radio home to Soupy Sales' lunch counter to Bill Bonds' anchor desk — is woven into the city's cultural memory.