WTKA

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WTKA

City of license	Ann Arbor, Michigan
Broadcast area	[1] (Daytime) [2] (Nighttime)
Branding	Sports Talk 1050 WTKA
Slogan	The Leaders and Best
First air date	1945
Frequency	1050 (kHz)
Format	Sports
Power	10,000 watts (Daytime) 500 watts (Nighttime)
Class	B
Callsign meaning	W The Ticket A
Former callsigns	WPZA (12/87-2/93) WPAG (1945-12/87)
Owner	Clear Channel, being obtained by Cumulus Broadcasting
Website	http://www.wtka.com/

WTKA is radio station located in Ann Arbor, Michigan that broadcasts on 1050 AM. Day power is 10 kw, night power is 5 kw. The station covers most of southeast Michigan.

First on-air as WPAG in 1945, the station was the first licensed to Washtenaw County, with studios on the third floor of the Hutzel Building, at the corner of Main at Liberty Streets in Ann Arbor. (Currently, a digital service called A3 Radio netcasts from the old WPAG studios.) Owned by brothers Paul and Art Greene, the call letters WPAG were selected to reflect their names. (For many years there was a ladies lingerie and apparel store down on the Hutzel Building's first floor, which caused long-time University of Michigan football broadcaster Bob Ufer to joke that WPAG really stood for "Women's Panties And Girdles".) WPAG also briefly operated a television outlet, WPAG-TV on channel 20 in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, the radio station went through a series of formats. WPAG played Top 40 music for much of the 1960s, then transitioned to a full-service format featuring MOR music in 1968. By the early 1980s, WPAG was a country station.

In December 1987, WTKA was purchased by Tom Monaghan and had its calls changed to WPZA -- a nod to Monaghan's thriving Domino's Pizza business. In late 1992, Monaghan (who now owns Ave Maria Radio, including Ypsilanti's WDEO), sold WPZA to the MW Blue Partnership; eventually, it went to Cumulus Broadcasting and then to Clear Channel Communications, who flipped the station to all-sports WTKA ("The Ticket").

WTKA is now owned by Cumulus Broadcasting due in part to a multi-station swap between Cumulus and Clear Channel that involved stations in Michgan And Ohio.

Today, WTKA bills itself as the "The Ticket: The Leaders And Best", home of University of Michigan sports. The Ticket carries U of M football, basketball and hockey as well as Detroit Tigers baseball games (a holdover from the WPZA era, as Monaghan also owned the Tigers at that time) plus some Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons games.

WTKA's current station manager is Micheal Wickett; station staff includes former University of Michigan players and coaches, including David Shand, a former U of M assistant hockey coach.