WXYZ-TV

WXYZ-TV, channel 7, is an ABC-affiliated television station located in Detroit, Michigan, USA. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, WXYZ-TV is a sister station to MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYD (channel 20). WXYZ-TV maintains studio and transmitter facilities located at Broadcast House, in Southfield, Michigan.

History

As an ABC-owned station

The station first signed on the air on October 9, 1948 as the second television station in Michigan, after WWJ-TV (channel 4, now WDIV-TV). 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 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 1956 and started broadcasting local programs and newscasts in color around 1964.