WJBK
WJBK, virtual channel 2 (VHF digital channel 7), is a Fox owned-and-operated television station located in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The station is owned by the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of 21st Century Fox. WJBK maintains studio and transmitter facilities located on West 9 Mile Road in the Detroit suburb of Southfield.
WJBK's over-the-air signal covers the entire Metro Detroit area, along with the southwestern portion of the Canadian province of Ontario, surrounding the city of Windsor. The station is carried on most cable television systems in southeast Michigan, southwestern Ontario and northwest Ohio. It is also carried on certain Canadian cable television providers.
History
As a CBS affiliate
The station first signed on the air on October 24, 1948 as WJBK-TV (the "TV" suffix was removed from the call letters in 1998); it was the third television station to sign-on in Detroit (after WWJ-TV, channel 4, now WDIV-TV; and WXYZ-TV, channel 7). The first program broadcast by WJBK was a presentation of Lucky Pup at 6:15 p.m. that evening. The station was originally an affiliate of both CBS and the DuMont Television Network. It was originally owned by George B. Storer's Storer Broadcasting, along with WJBK radio (AM 1500, now WLQV, and FM 93.1, now WDRQ). The station originally operated from Detroit's Masonic Temple until 1956, when its operations were moved to a purpose-built studio facility on Second Avenue in Detroit's New Center section. WJBK-TV would eventually become an exclusive CBS affiliate by 1955, when Windsor, Ontario-based CKLW-TV (channel 9, now CBET-DT) became a DuMont affiliate. WJBK first broadcast in color around 1956. In 1970, the station moved to its current broadcast facilities at 16550 West 9 Mile Road in Southfield. Like most studio facilities built by Storer during that time, it resembles an antebellum mansion.