WDZH

WDZH
City of license Detroit, Michigan
Broadcast area Metro Detroit and Windsor, ON
Branding 98-7 Amp Radio
Slogan "All The Hits"
Frequency

98.7 MHz (also on HD Radio)


98.7 HD-2: V98.7 (Smooth Jazz)
First air date 1961
Format Top 40 (CHR)
ERP 50,000 watts
HAAT 141 meters
Class B
Facility ID 25448
Callsign meaning W Detroit'Z Hits
Former callsigns WVMV (1996-2010)
WLLZ (1980-1996)
WBFG (1961-1980)
Owner CBS Radio
Sister stations WOMC, WWJ, WXYT, WXYT-FM, WYCD
part of CBS Corp. cluster w/ TV stations WWJ-TV & WKBD-TV
Webcast Listen Live
Website 98-7 Amp Radio

WDZH (98.7 FM, "98-7 Amp Radio") is a radio station serving the Metropolitan Detroit area in Southeastern Michigan. WDZH broadcasts a CHR format at 98.7 MHz. The station's transmitter is located near Livernois and West Davison in the City of Detroit. WDZH broadcasts with an Effective Radiated Power of 50,000 watts from an antenna 463 feet in height.

Contents

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History

WBFG/WLLZ-Detroit's Wheels

The station signed on the air in 1961 as WBFG ("We Broadcast For God"). The station broadcast religious programming for nearly two decades. On July 16, 1980, WBFG was sold and soon changed its calls to WLLZ.

On August 11, 1980, at 5:07 p.m., WLLZ debuted a new album oriented rock format; the first song played on the new "Detroit's Wheels" was "Let It Rock" by Bob Seger. (The WLLZ calls were also rumored to stand for "We Love Led Zeppelin" or "Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin".) The new WLLZ became an instant hit. Competing AOR station WWWW had already switched to country music, and WABX 99.5 would change to a CHR-oriented format in 1982, leaving WLLZ and 101 WRIF to go head-to-head in the AOR format for the rest of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, with WLLZ occasionally beating heritage rocker WRIF in the 12+ ratings. In an Ann Arbor News article in 1987, Michael Solon, the station's general manager at the time of the rock format's launch, credited WLLZ's success to the perception that the station featured less chatter and took a more mass-appeal, hit-oriented approach to its music than competing stations: "It was a wonderful time, making such a splash with an all-new station. I was no genius. It just figured that if the other stations were awfully chatty and going four songs deep on albums, we would do well by playing album-music hits."

In 1988, WLLZ also introduced the nation's first weekly sports talk show on an FM rock and roll station, "The Sunday Sports Albom" hosted by Mitch Albom.

WVMV-Smooth Jazz V98.7

WLLZ saw its fortunes slip in the early 1990s with the emergence of "alternative" rock groups like Nirvana and Pearl Jam who drove many of the 1980s "hair bands" off the charts. A format tweak from AOR to modern rock in the mid-1990s (which put the station in competition with 89x and The Planet 96.3 for the alternative audience) failed to reverse the station's dropping ratings, and on December 20, 1995, WLLZ became a smooth jazz station, with the first song being "Smooth Operator" by Sade. The WVMV calls were adopted in February 1996.

For a while, WVMV and WJZZ were competitors in the Smooth Jazz format. When 105.9 was flipped to an urban format in August 1996, the WJZZ callsign was also discontinued, and eventually used for a Smooth Jazz station in Atlanta, Georgia — which, like WVMV, is the second (if one discounts Detroit's previous new age-format stations, WVAE 92.3 and WXCD 102.7) such formatted station to serve its city (WJZF was the first). The WJZZ call sign was assigned to the Atlanta station (now WAMJ) from 2001 to 2009.

WDZH-98.7 Amp Radio

At 5 pm on October 2, 2009, after almost fourteen years as a smooth jazz station, V98.7 ended with the song "Smooth Operator" by Sade, after which the station played an audio montage of jingles and airchecks of WLLZ (98.7's previous format from 1980–1995) followed by "Welcome To The Jungle" by Guns N' Roses. This turned out to be a stunt, however. 98.7 then played audio of Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift during the VMA's, followed by Beyoncé's "Sweet Dreams", and became a Top 40 station. During the first weekend, the station was commercial free and was calling itself "98-7 Takeover" and asking people to register online and guess what the name of the new station was going to be. The winner of the contest would be awarded $1,000. On October 5, 2009 at 8am, the station became "98-7 Amp Radio", modeled like its sister station 97-1 Amp Radio in Los Angeles, and 92-3 Now in New York City. It is also the second Amp Radio station owned by the company, and the only Amp Radio station in the eastern United States. Unlike 92-3 Now in New York City, and 97.1 Amp Radio in Los Angeles, 98-7 AMP Radio did not start with 10,000 songs commercial free. It now offers commercial-free Mondays. The station adopted the WDZH call sign on May 3, 2010. As of April 11, 2011, Amp Radio discontinued commercial-free Mondays.

The new AMP Radio format features a very tight rotation of mainly current hits, similar to Mike Joseph's Hot Hits formatted stations of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The Smooth Jazz format is available on the station's HD2 subcarrier, and online, with one live airshift hosted by Madisun Leigh on weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm. Alexander Zonjic hosts Alexander Zonjic from A to Z on Fridays and Sundays from 7 pm to 8 pm.

Also, this is CBS Radio's second station flipping from smooth jazz to top 40 (KKHH in Houston, Texas is the other). Due to this latest flip, CBS Radio has one remaining Smooth Jazz station, KTWV "94.7 The Wave" in Los Angeles, but it now leans more toward Smooth AC.

On October 24, 2011, WDZH took advantage of WHTD's recent format move from 102.7 to WGPR's 107.5 frequency by registering a domain for www.praise1027.com (due to WHTD flipping to Gospel Music). When the site opens, the message reads "God Wants You To Amp," but it was a decoy to lure listeners to WDZH.

WDZH currently ranked at #19 (6+) in the Detroit market according to the Holiday 2010 PPM Ratings release.[1]

References

  1. ^ Detroit PPM ratings from Radio-Info

External links