WXYZ-TV

WXYZ-TV

Detroit, Michigan United States
Branding	Channel 7 (general) 7 Action News (newscasts) Live Well Detroit (on DT2) Bounce TV (on DT3)
Slogan	Taking Action for You
Channels	Digital: 41 (UHF) Virtual: 7 (PSIP)
Subchannels	7.1 ABC 7.2 Live Well Network 7.3 Bounce TV
Affiliations	ABC Live Well Network (DT2) Bounce TV (DT3)
Owner	E. W. Scripps Company (Scripps Media, Inc.)
First air date	October 9, 1948 (1948-10-09)
Call letters' meaning	Derived from former sister station WXYZ radio (now WXYT), can also be easy to remember as being at the opposite end of the alphabet as ABC, the station's network affiliation and founding owner; also from former slogan, "The LAST name in Broadcasting!"
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 7 (VHF, 1948–2009)
Former affiliations	DT2: RTV (2008–2011)
Transmitter power	1,000 kW (increased from 770 kW)[1]
Height	286 m
Facility ID	10267
Transmitter coordinates	42°28′14.7″N 83°14′59.4″W / 42.470750°N 83.249833°W / 42.470750; -83.249833
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.wxyz.com

WXYZ-TV, virtual channel 7 (UHF digital channel 41), is an ABC-affiliated television station located in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The station is owned by the E.W. Scripps Company. WXYZ-TV maintains studio and transmitter facilities located on West 10 Mile Road in Southfield.

History

As an ABC-owned station

WXYZ-TV Action News remote van.

The station first signed on the air on October 9, 1948 as the second television station in both the Detroit market and the state of 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's WJZ-TV (now WABC-TV) and Chicago's WBKB-TV (now WLS-TV) and before San Francisco's KGO-TV and Los Angeles's KECA-TV (now KABC-TV). 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 downtown 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 in color in 1964.

By 1978, WXYZ-TV was the second most-dominant television station in the United States in terms of local viewership, no doubt attributable to ABC's prime-time ratings dominance and the continued success of Channel 7 Action News with lead news anchor Bill Bonds. In 1979, ABC named Jeanne Findlater as WXYZ’s general manager. She was the first woman to hold that title at a major market television station. WXYZ-TV was carried by the Cancom system from 1983 as the ABC station for Canadian cable television providers too distant to receive a border station's signal over-the-air, though later, Seattle station KOMO-TV was added to Cancom's offerings as a Pacific Time Zone alternative.

Sale to E.W. Scripps Company

WXYZ-TV's logo from 2007 to 2013.

In May 1985, Capital Cities Communications, which owned Detroit radio stations WJR and WHYT (now WDVD), announced its acquisition of ABC.^[2] In order to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ownership limits of the time, the new Capital Cities/ABC would have to sell either WXYZ-TV or each of three radio stations – WJR, WHYT, or ABC-owned WRIF (the former WXYZ-FM, which was sold as part of the merger).^[3] ABC had sold WXYZ (AM) a year earlier in 1984 to the radio station's general manager, Chuck Fritz, who changed its call sign to WXYT.^[4]

Upon gaining FCC approval of the merger in February 1986, the new company sold WXYZ-TV (and Capital Cities' WFTS-TV in Tampa) to the E. W. Scripps Company.^[5] Capital Cities/ABC intended to keep channel 7 together with WJR and WHYT through a waiver of the FCC's cross-ownership rules, as a contingency in case a similar request involving ABC's New York City television flagship and Capital Cities' Philadelphia outlet was denied.^[6][7][8] At the time, another prospective bidder for the station was Bill Cosby's Cozzin Communications.^[9] ABC did retain some of the assets at WXYZ, including the satellite uplink for its satellite news-gathering service ABC News One. Under Scripps ownership, WXYZ-TV retained the ABC network affiliation and continued to use ABC's (originally) proprietary Circle 7 logo.

Scripps used the station's popularity as leverage for Detroit's cable providers to carry the Scripps-owned HGTV cable network. Scripps used the FCC's retransmission consent rule to force local cable systems to carry HGTV. Under this rule, a television station that is carried on a cable system under must carry rules can request cable systems to compensate the station for carrying it. The station was selected as the site of the first Town Meeting with President Bill Clinton in February 1993, which was hosted by Bill Bonds. President Clinton would address questions from audience members at WXYZ's studios as well as audiences at other television stations via satellite.

A shift in affiliation in 1994 at Detroit's CBS affiliate, WJBK-TV (channel 2), to the Fox network^[10] prompted CBS to attempt to lure WXYZ to drop its ABC affiliation in favor of CBS.^[11] As a contingency, ABC approached SJL Broadcast Management (later known as Montecito Broadcast Group, now SJL Broadcasting once again controlled by the principals of Lilly Broadcasting) about buying Toledo, Ohio's WTVG (channel 13) and Flint's WJRT-TV (channel 12) to cover the Detroit area, in the event that WXYZ became a CBS station. Both stations' city-grade signals reached portions of the Detroit area (WTVG to the south, and WJRT-TV to the north).

Eventually, Scripps signed a ten-year long-term deal with ABC that would keep WXYZ as an affiliate of the network (it remains an ABC affiliate to this day). As a condition of that agreement, television stations in other cities including Tampa-St. Petersburg, Cincinnati, Phoenix and Baltimore would lose their ABC affiliation to competing Scripps-owned stations in those cities. CBS would purchase UHF independent station WGPR-TV (channel 62, now WWJ-TV), after it failed to reach deals to affiliate with WDIV, WKBD-TV (channel 50, which lost its Fox affiliation to WJBK as a result of its then-owner New World Communications's affiliation deal with the network) or the market's other independent stations.

In 2002, WXYZ-TV reached an agreement with Viacom, then-owner of WWJ-TV and UPN affiliate WKBD-TV, in which WKBD canceled the newscast it produced for WWJ-TV, shut down its news department, and contracted with WXYZ to produce WKBD's 10 p.m. newscast. A handful of Viacom's Detroit employees would be transferred to WXYZ. Viacom would also transfer the operations of its CBS News satellite news-gathering service CBS Newspath to offices at WXYZ’s Broadcast House studios, since WXYZ would also be allowed to use the resources of CBS News. The newscast was canceled in late 2004 due to poor viewership (today, neither WKBD nor WWJ-TV airs a local newscast).

On September 29, 1998, WXYZ became the first television station in Detroit to transmit an over-the-air digital signal, broadcasting on UHF channel 41,^[12] which remains its digital allocation to this day. On October 4, 2006, WXYZ became the first television station in Michigan and the first Scripps-owned station to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.

Digital television

Digital channels

WXYZ-TV's third digital subchannel originally carried a video feed of the station's tower camera at Broadcast House. Most recently, it formerly carried Doppler7Weather, a local weather channel looping weather radar, temperatures and live local radar – along with an L-Bar (similar to that used by The Local AccuWeather Channel and the defunct NBC Weather Plus, though it was operated independently from either network) that showed current conditions and five-day local forecasts. On May 21, 2010, this channel was removed to prepare and utilize its channel bandwith exclusively for mobile television, labelled as WXYZ-MH 7.3 and simulcasting 7.2/Live Well Network at 1.83 MBps. WXYZ, along with WDIV-TV, became the first Detroit stations to offer Mobile DTV feeds on August 6, 2010.^[14][15][16]

On July 12, 2012, the E. W. Scripps Company signed an affiliation agreement with Bounce TV to make WXYZ-TV the Detroit area affiliate of the network, becoming the first Scripps-owned station to affiliate with Bounce TV.^[17] Bounce TV itself launched on September 25, 2012, after a week of audio-only testing.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WXYZ-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 7, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 41.^[18][19] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 7. WJBK began using the channel 7 allocation for its digital signal after the transition.

Coverage

In addition to carriage across Southeast Michigan, WXYZ is carried on most cable providers in Southwestern Ontario and Northwestern Ohio. Coverage on cable systems outside the Detroit/Windsor market may be subject to syndication exclusivity rules and network blackouts in the United States and simsubbing in Canada. The station can be received from as far away as Flint, Michigan with a good-quality antenna. It is also carried on cable in Grand Marais, Michigan.^{[citation needed]}

The station also serves several other parts of Canada as an ABC affiliate on satellite provider Shaw Direct as well as on cable providers in several Canadian markets, including Windsor, London, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury and Thunder Bay, Ontario; Saint John, New Brunswick; all of Manitoba (except for areas served by Shaw's Steinbach or Winnipeg system); and the National Capital Region.

WXYZ-TV was previously offered as the ABC affiliate on cable through Cable Atlantic (now Rogers Cable) in Newfoundland and Labrador, including in St. John's from 1985 to 1997 (which has since been replaced by Boston ABC affiliate WCVB-TV). As of 2010 however, some Rogers Cable customers in Newfoundland and Labrador began receiving WXYZ again, along with WDIV and WWJ.

Until April 2011, Comcast subscribers in Holly, which is located within the Detroit market in northwestern Oakland County, were unable to see much of WXYZ's programming, as it was often blacked out at the request of Flint's WJRT-TV; the blackout was due to the Comcast system being tied to the Flint headend, instead of one in Oakland County or elsewhere in Detroit. That month, following complaints from Detroit stations and area viewers of being blacked out or unavailable in an area that they were supposed to serve, Comcast discontinued blackouts of the Detroit stations it already carried, added additional stations from that market and dropped many Flint/Tri-Cities area stations from that system. WJRT-TV was one of two stations retained (along with WCMZ-TV), as it was considered to have significant viewership in the Holly area.

Programming

Syndicated programs carried on WXYZ-TV include Katie, The Dr. Oz Show, Entertainment Tonight, Right This Minute, Castle and The Doctors. Although it occasionally preempts shows for special events (such as the Woodward Dream Cruise), WXYZ-TV is one of the few major market ABC affiliates that runs the network's entire schedule.

Programming history

In the 1950s, WXYZ-TV created a series of widely popular locally produced children’s programs. The most famous program, Lunch with Soupy, launched the career of comedian Soupy Sales. The program debuted in 1953 and was such a success that ABC moved production to Los Angeles in 1960, and aired the show nationally. Soupy also hosted a very popular late night adult comedy show during that same period in the 1950s called Soupy's On. Other successful children's shows to follow would include Wyxie's Wonderland hosted by Detroit comic Marv Welch. In 1954, Bob Brickwedde (using the stage name Bob Henry) hosted the Nash Theater Hour on Thursday nights, and hosted western movies, featuring Deadeye and Black Bart on Saturdays as "Sheriff Bob". Ricky the Clown was hosted by professional clown and magician Irv Romig, and The Johnny Ginger Show was hosted by local comic Johnny Ginger. The Auntie Dee Show hosted by Dee Parker was a popular children's talent show. In 1974, WXYZ-TV launched and produced another successful children's show, the nationally syndicated Hot Fudge.

Former WXYZ-TV general manager John Pival is credited for launching several other popular innovative programs in the 1950s and 1960s, including the World Adventure Series with host George Pierrot, an author on world travel and a speaker at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The program showed films about exotic locations around the world. The Lady of Charm and later House O' Charm with host Edythe Fern Melrose was a predecessor to today's Martha Stewart home-making programs. Prize Movie with popular host Rita Bell introduced feature films and held a viewer call-in contest (with cash prizes that started at $7) to name the title of a song she played on the air. Several music programs also aired including Club Polka and Club 1270. WXYZ disc jockey Ed McKenzie also brought his talents to television with The Ed McKenzie Saturday Party, which featured live musical performances from such artists as Chuck Berry and Louis Armstrong.

WXYZ-TV also had a series of popular morning shows, starting with the Pat and Johnny Show, hosted by WXYZ radio announcers Pat Tobin and Johnny Slagle. Later in 1966, The Morning Show debuted as a morning variety program with host Bob Hynes. The station also helped to launch the career of Dennis Wholey, who started his AM Detroit talk show at WXYZ before going on to WTVS (channel 56) to host PBS Late Night. The most popular and successful WXYZ morning talk show was Kelly & Company, which ran from 1978 to 1995 and was hosted by a married couple who were both former members of WXYZ's news staff, John Kelly (who served as news anchor) and Marilyn Turner (who served as a weathercaster). It was primarily a talk show with featured guests and a studio audience. In 1984, Turner and Kelly would also host the short-lived afternoon program, Good Afternoon Detroit. The program was a pilot for other ABC-owned stations including those in New York and Chicago to launch their own Good Afternoon... shows.

In 1965, the Sunday morning public affairs show Spotlight on the News debuted with WXYZ's news director Bill Fyffe as its first host. The show was later hosted by political reporter Jim Herrington and continues to air today with WXYZ editorial and public affairs director Chuck Stokes as its host, writer and producer. Spotlight is now Detroit's longest running current events television program. It has featured local and national public officials including U.S. Presidents, and won numerous awards. Another public affairs show that aired Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. from 1967 to 1981 was Haney’s People with host Don Haney.

WXYZ-TV has also been involved in several Detroit traditions over the years, having aired special coverage of Detroit's Thanksgiving Day Parade, The North American International Auto Show Charity Preview, the annual Woodward Dream Cruise and the City of Detroit's celebrations of its 250th anniversary in 1951 and 300th anniversary in 2001. WXYZ's special coverage has also included the victory parades of the city's professional sports teams, most recently the Detroit Red Wings' Stanley Cup victory in 2008 and the Detroit Pistons' NBA championship in 2004. WXYZ is also the official broadcaster of the Christmas parade in Rochester, Michigan. In 1987, the station created and produced a weekly educational literacy program aimed at children called Learn To Read, which was based on the "Michigan Method" of literacy education, and was co-produced by Kentucky Educational Television. One of the hosts of this series was then-WXYZ news anchor Doris Biscoe.

During Game 2 of the 2004 NBA Finals in Detroit, Jimmy Kimmel appeared on ABC's halftime show to make an on-air plug for that night's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He suggested that if the Detroit Pistons defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, "they're gonna burn the city of Detroit down ... and it's not worth it." Channel 7 officials immediately announced that night's show would not air on the station. Hours later, ABC officials pulled that night's show from the entire network. Kimmel later apologized.^[20]

In 2011, WXYZ-TV replaced WWJ-TV as the new flagship of the Detroit Lions Television Network,^[21] assuming broadcast rights to the team's over-the-air preseason game telecasts. In addition, it airs Ford Lions Report Live, a Lions wrap-up and highlight show airing on Sunday nights during the NFL season. Sports director Tom Leyden also presents Lions-related features on the station's 7:00 p.m. newscast during the NFL season, including a head coach's segment and alternating features with Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford and tackle Ndamukong Suh.

In popular culture

• WXYZ-TV was featured on the ABC show Detroit 1-8-7 (which was filmed on location in Detroit), as the only actual local news station being portrayed on the show (the others were fictional).
• The ABC sitcom Home Improvement, which was set in Detroit, had Tim Allen's character, Tim Taylor, wear a WXYZ-branded sweatshirt in the second-season episode, "Love is A Many-Splintered Thing".

News operation

WXYZ Action News set.

WXYZ-TV presently broadcasts 37½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours on weekdays, four hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays); in addition, the station produces two half-hour sports programs that air on Sunday evenings, the weekly sports highlight program Sunday Sports Update and the Detroit Lions highlight program Ford Lions Report Live, the latter of which only airs during the NFL season.

History

WXYZ-TV's news programming had long been dominant in the Detroit market's news ratings partly due to the popularity of longtime lead news anchor Bill Bonds. The station’s news department started as a small operation but would gain credibility for its coverage of the 1967 Detroit race riots. In the 1970s, WXYZ began an aggressive build-up of its news department by adopting many elements of the Eyewitness News format, such as the Cool Hand Luke theme that was used by ABC's four other owned-and-operated television stations in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, it opted to title its newscasts Action News, since rival WJBK-TV was already using the Eyewitness News brand. Under the direction of general manager Jim Osborn and news director Phil Nye, the station would lure popular news personalities from rival stations, WJBK-TV and WDIV-TV (then known as WWJ-TV), to join its already well-known anchors Dave Diles and Bill Bonds. WXYZ assembled Detroit’s most popular news anchors and reporters such as John Kelly, Jac LeGoff, Al Ackerman, Marilyn Turner, Jack McCarthy, Jerry Hodak, Don Lark and Doris Biscoe.

Former Action News Anchor Bill Bonds prepares to interview students at Harrison High School in Farmington Hills, Michigan. 1985 photo.

By 1973, WXYZ's newscasts became the highest-rated in Detroit for the first time ever, and the station has held the lead ever since. Its success was linked to the serious, controversial, opinionated hard delivery of lead anchor Bill Bonds. ABC tried to apply Bonds' success in Detroit at KABC-TV in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, and again in 1975 at New York City's WABC-TV; in both cases, he was unsuccessful and soon returned to WXYZ. During the 1980s and 1990s, Bonds hosted the interview segment, Up Front, on WXYZ's 5 p.m. newscast. During the interviews, Bonds confronted the Detroit area's public officials and newsmakers with hard-hitting and sometimes controversial questions. Bonds' hard-edge style was widely known in Detroit for both captivating viewers while repulsing others, leading Bonds to become the station's icon and its main star. In Ron Powers' book, The Newscasters, Powers called Bonds "one of the six most influential news anchors in the country." However, Bonds had public battles with alcoholism which are credited with his dismissal from the station in 1995. Bonds anchored newscasts and a late night talk-show at WJBK-TV and later hosted a radio show at WXYT. Bonds returned to WXYZ-TV in 1999 to present editorials during the newscasts, but left the station after only a few months.

WXYZ’s ratings dominance was challenged by WDIV-TV in the 1980s, due in part to a change of ownership and culture at WDIV, and viewers looking for an alternative to Bonds' hard-hitting style of news presentation. The two stations continue a head to head battle for ratings to this day. In recent years, the station's news coverage received several journalism honors including two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University awards,^[22] and the George Foster Peabody Award. WXYZ’s Action News was named the best television newscast in the U.S. by United Press International in 1989.^[23] The station also received the National Community Service Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding community service. WXYZ is a partner in several charitable endeavors including the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul,^[22] Operation Can-Do and Detroit's annual children's immunization fair.

In the 1990s, WXYZ continued to expand its morning newscast, Action News This Morning to the eventual start time of 5 a.m. This newscast started as short news updates during Good Morning America. One of its longtime co-anchors was Erik Smith, who worked at Channel 7 off-and-on for over 40 years. During most of that time, Smith also reported on human-interest and entertainment stories. Smith also won acclaim for his award winning series From the Heart, which began in the late 1990s as a collection of heartwarming, historical and inspirational stories from around the Detroit area. Smith left the station in May 2010, due to a dispute with management, five days before his contract was set to expire.

In 2001, WXYZ debuted a 7 p.m. newscast, a move that occurred after the September 11 attacks when the station moved ABC's World News Tonight ahead by 30 minutes to 6:30 p.m. The 7 p.m. newscast became a forum for interviewing guests and newsmakers on daily issues and became a ratings success in key demographics. The station also expanded its noon newscast to one hour. Action News continued its success with longtime anchors Diana Lewis, Robbie Timmons, meteorologist Jerry Hodak, sportscaster Don Shane and up until October 9, 2006, anchor Frank Turner who became a successful replacement to Bill Bonds. Another recent addition is anchor Stephen Clark, a former anchor at WCBS-TV in New York and CBS News correspondent. Chief meteorologist Jerry Hodak was the station's primary weathercaster for at least 26 of his more than 40 years in Detroit television. On July 28, 2010, Hodak announced his retirement from WXYZ-TV, with his last broadcast occurring two months later on September 23. In 2006, WXYZ also boasted the most veteran general assignment reporters in Detroit television with Cheryl Chodun, Bill Proctor, Mary Conway and Val Clark, each of whom worked at least 20 years at the station.

In the November 2006 ratings period, shortly after the switch to HD, all of WXYZ's newscasts placed first in their respective timeslots except at 11 p.m., which lagged behind WDIV.^[24] From the November 2007 ratings period until before the May 2009 ratings period, WXYZ's newscasts were #1 in each of its respective timeslots.^[25] It has remained one of ABC's strongest affiliates since the network sold the station to Scripps however, it finished behind rival WDIV, which took first place in the evening and late news timeslots in the May 2009 sweeps period due largely to lower ratings of shows leading into WXYZ's news programs. Both WXYZ and WDIV have been among the country's strongest affiliates of their respective networks over the years although WDIV has taken over first place in all newscast time slots since late 2009.^{[citation needed]} In very recent years, however, WXYZ and WJBK have been battling for second place in the 5 to 6:30 p.m. block behind WDIV.^{[citation needed]}

WXYZ-TV’s special projects department is home to the station’s investigative and consumer reporters and producers. It gained notoriety in 2002 with chief investigative reporter Steve Wilson and his stories of financial mismanagement at the Kmart Corporation,^[26] an undercover investigation that exposed high-pressure sales tactics used by a well-known financial firm, and confrontations with elected officials in Detroit, especially Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. On August 7, 2008, Kilpatrick appeared in front of a judge in Wayne County Circuit Court. The hearing was called to discuss a potential violation of his bond in one of the two felony cases against him. The hearing was called after Wilson uncovered and revealed photos of the mayor in nearby Windsor, Ontario, Canada. A stipulation of the mayor's bond was that he was not to leave the country, and that he give the court 72 hours' notice if he planned to leave the state of Michigan for any reason. Mayor Kilpatrick was then ordered to spend the night in the Wayne County jail.^[27]

On August 3, 2011, WXYZ unveiled a new studio during its noon newscast, a project which the station had been working on since June 2011. The new studio features new high definition cameras and monitors and a redesigned weather center under the new forecast branding "7 First Alert Weather".^[28] On October 3, 2012, Diana Lewis left WXYZ after working at the station for a total of 31 years (joining the station in 1977, before leaving in 1984, and returning to channel 7 four years later).

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• The Big News (1960–1964)^[29]
• Channel 7 News (1964–1968 and 1970)
• The 11th Hour News (ca. 1968)
• Channel 7 News / 7 News (1968–1969)
• NewsBeat 7 / Supernews (1969–1970)
• WXYZ-TV 7 News (1970–1971)
• Bill Bonds with The News (1971–1972)
• Channel 7 Action News (1972–2011)
• 7 Action News (2011–present)

Station slogans

• "We Got Who You Wanted" (news slogan; 1970s)^[30]
• "So Good to Turn To" (1981–1982)
• "Where Detroit Turns First" (1982)
• "Stand Up and Tell 'em You're From Detroit" (1985–1987; based on Frank Gari's "Turn To..." series)^[31]
• "Made in Detroit" (1987–1991; as a production endcap for station produced shows)
• "7 Stands For News/Stands By You" (1992–2003)
• "The Spirit of Detroit" (1996–2000; still used on occasion)
• "7 On Your Side" (2003–2011)
• "Taking Action for You" (2011–present; news slogan)

This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.

On-air staff

Current on-air staff

WXYZ-TV's primary news anchors are Stephen Clark (weeknights at 6, 7 and 11 p.m.); Carolyn Clifford (weeknights at 6, 7 and 11 p.m.); Vic Faust (weekday mornings from 4:30-7 a.m.); Dave LewAllen (weekends at 6 and 11 p.m.; also weekday field reporter); Glenda Lewis (weekdays at noon; also weekday field reporter); Malcolm Maddox (weekend mornings; also weekday morning reporter and fill-in anchor); Anu Prakash (weekend mornings; also weekday field reporter); JoAnne Purtan (weekdays at noon and weeknights at 5 p.m.; also "Don't Waste Your Money" consumer reporter); Alicia Smith (weekday mornings from 4:30-7 a.m.; also fill-in noon anchor, weekday field reporter); and Jeff Vaughn (weeknights at 5 p.m.).^[32]

The 7 First Alert Weather team includes chief meteorologist Dave Rexroth (AMS Seal of Approval; weeknights at 5, 6, 7 and 11 p.m.); and meteorologists Chris Edwards (AMS Seal of Approval; weekend mornings; also weekday fill-in meteorologist), Keenan Smith (AMS Seal of Approval; weekday mornings from 4:30-7 a.m. and weekdays at noon) and Hally Vogel (AMS Seal of Approval; weekends at 6 and 11 p.m.; also weekday fill-in meteorologist).^[32]

The sports team includes sports director Tom Leyden (Mondays-Thursdays at 5, 6 and 11 p.m.; also host of Ford Lions Report Live and Detroit Lions preseason game sideline reporter), sports anchor David Solano (Fridays at 5 and Fridays-Sundays at 6 and 11 p.m.; also Monday-Thursday sports reporter and host of Sunday Sports Update and Ford Lions Report Live) and sports reporter Brad Galli (also fill-in sports anchor).^[32]

The station's reporting staff includes Julie Banovic (general assignment reporter); Andy Choi (multimedia journalist); Kimberly Craig (general assignment reporter); Ronnie Dahl (general assignment reporter); Tara Edwards (general assignment reporter); Smita Kalokhe (general assignment reporter); Jim Kiertzner (general assignment reporter); Erin Nicole (weekday morning traffic reporter, "7 First Alert Traffic"); Kim Russell (general assignment reporter); Nima Shaffe (general assignment reporter); Chuck Stokes (Spotlight On The News feature reporter; also (Primary) Election Day analyst; and Tom Wait (general assignment reporter; also fill-in anchor). Reporters for the station's investigative unit, The Investigators, are Heather Catallo and Ross Jones. Contributors are Tom Long (film critic; also seen in The Detroit News) and Gerry Gleeson (legal analyst).^[32]

Notable former on-air staff

• Dennis Archer - public affairs show host (1970s, later Michigan Supreme Court Justice and mayor of Detroit)
• Bill Bonds - longtime lead anchor of Action News (early 1960s-1968, 1971–1975 and 1976–1995)
• Dave Diles - sports director, also worked with ABC (deceased)
• Johnny Ginger - host of The Johnny Ginger Show
• Gordon Graham (later with CNN Headline News)
• Steve Handelsman - investigative reporter, fill-in anchor (1978–1984; now with WRC-TV/Washington, D.C. and NBC News)
• Chris Hansen (later with WDIV-TV and NBC News)^[33]
• Jerry Hodak - chief meteorologist (retired on September 23, 2010)
• Chris Lawrence (now with CNN's Los Angeles bureau)
• Diana Lewis - longtime co-anchor (1977–1984, 1988–2012; retired)
• Bill Proctor - longtime general assignment and investigative reporter (retired)
• Soupy Sales - host of Lunch with Soupy and Soupy's On (deceased)
• Steve Wilson - chief investigative reporter

See also

• Circle 7 logo
• Eyewitness News
• Action News
• Media in Detroit

References

• Equity Media Holdings Corporation - RTN to Launch in Detroit
• WXYZ: Station History (2005). WXYZ.com.
• Kiska, Tim (2005). From Soupy to Nuts!. ISBN 978-1-879094-70-3. 
• Osgood, Dick. W*Y*X*I*E* Wonderland: An Unauthorized 50-Year Diary of WXYZ Detroit. Bowling Green University Press. 
• Kelly, John (1986). Good morning Detroit: The Kelly & Co. story. Contemporary Books. ISBN 0-8092-5093-4. 
• Powers, Ron. The Newscasters: The News Business As Show Business. St. Martins Press. ISBN 0-312-57208-5. 

External links

• WXYZ.com - Official website
• - WXYZ-TV on Facebook
• Photos of WXYZ's news set
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WXYZ-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WXYZ-TV
• Program Information for WXYZ at TitanTV.com