Radio Stations/Local News Studios: Downtown?

**DetroitTitan** · February-04-10, 11:54 PM

I always thinks it weird I'm listening to these stations in the city and they are always like Royal Oak! Detroit. Or Mt. Clemens! detroit. Or even a city that's just not exactly a hipster colony [[e.g. Dearborn, no offense I love Dearborn, Cedar's on Warren is my favorite restaurant outside of the city). Why are the local news studios no longer in the city? What can be done to bring them back to the city and preferably in the New Center-Midtown-Downtown stretch.

**Gsgeorge** · February-05-10, 12:13 AM

101.9 WDET's studios are located in University Tower at Cass and Forest in Midtown, and WJR & 96.3 FM both broadcast from the Fisher Building in New Center.

**Gistok** · February-05-10, 02:17 AM

Ummmm maybe you need to CLICKONDETROIT.COM to find out that Channel 4 WDIV is still located downtown...

**chico** · February-05-10, 10:45 AM

Channel 4 is still downtown, and there are many radio stations in the city, too. The rest moved out of the city years ago for cheap property and plenty of land to build on. There was big brouhaha a few years ago when Channel 56 moved out to Wixom because they couldn't find any "suitable" space in Detroit. Besides, I doubt any of their high priced executives and talent would want to come back now and have to pay city income tax.

**szla** · February-05-10, 03:57 PM

Several years ago there was a movement by some urban planner to get get "institutions" into the city proper. Institutional stakeholders would have kept the city more habitable. It would have made a larger population site and mass transit more attractive. I was so offended when Channel 56 opted to move to Wixom. They were looking for a high profile site on lower Woodward. If they couldn't find it they were going to consider the north suburban Woodward corridor. Someone offered them a building. They chose Wixom. This however was not the first or last institutional choice gone awry as far as the city was concerned. MSU stole the Detroit College of Law. Indiana university' dental school is in Indianapolis. The Northwestern law school is in Chicago, I think. It could have become part of MSU and stayed in Detroit. Did BC/BS move all the high priced help to Eleven Mile in Southfield so their commute would not have been so far. I may be wrong on the 56 story and there was way more what I stated here ,but if there is anyone on the site who knows the whole story and feels like writing a bit please go ahead.

**Gsgeorge** · February-05-10, 05:34 PM

I too was disappointed when DTV moved to Wixom.

**East Detroit** · February-05-10, 05:47 PM

WGAF.

The stations should broadcast from the center of the population.

WABX used to pretend they werent in Oak Park and state their mailing address city as Detroit and their Zip Code as the Oak Park location. Worried about street cred? Lame.

**DetroitTitan** · February-05-10, 07:30 PM

I know there are a handful in the city still. But a considerable amount are located in the burbs [[102.7 Mt Clemens, 98.7 Mt Clemens, 95.5 Farmington Hills, 105.1, and several I can't remember in Dearborn). Fox 4 is still in the city, but it is the only one: Southfield is home to all WXYZ 7, WXYZ, WJBK, and WWJ-TV. FSN Detroit is on Eleven and Greenfield.

Bearinabox · February-05-10, 07:53 PM

Originally Posted by DetroitTitan

I know there are a handful in the city still. But a considerable amount are located in the burbs [[102.7 Mt Clemens, 98.7 Mt Clemens, 95.5 Farmington Hills, 105.1, and several I can't remember in Dearborn). Fox 4 is still in the city, but it is the only one: Southfield is home to all WXYZ 7, WXYZ, WJBK, and WWJ-TV. FSN Detroit is on Eleven and Greenfield.

105.1 is in Royal Oak Township.

**Vic_doucette** · February-05-10, 09:30 PM

Originally Posted by DetroitTitan

I know there are a handful in the city still. But a considerable amount are located in the burbs [[102.7 Mt Clemens, 98.7 Mt Clemens, 95.5 Farmington Hills, 105.1, and several I can't remember in Dearborn). Fox 4 is still in the city, but it is the only one: Southfield is home to all WXYZ 7, WXYZ, WJBK, and WWJ-TV. FSN Detroit is on Eleven and Greenfield.

I think 98.7 is in Farmington Hills. FSN is a little south of I-696 on Evergreen, across from the Southfield Municipal Complex. WDIV-Channel 4 [[NBC, not Fox) has its studios in Detroit and its transmitter on Greenfield near I-696.

IIRC, Channel 56 moved to Wixom to take over a video production center that had gone belly-up. Again, IIRC, the place was already wired for HDTV and didn't need a whole lot of work to prepare it for use by public TV. To build something new in the city or to renovate existing space would likely have been prohibitively expensive.

Many of the stations went to the suburbs in the early '60s because of the abundance of cheap land then available. It takes a big piece of ground to properly erect an antenna system. A series of copper radials buried in the ground extend from the base of the tower in all directions, like spokes from a wheel, as long as the tower is tall. So, for example, if you have a tower that is 1,000 feet high, you need to put it on a plot of land where you have at least 1,000 feet in all directions to allow space for the radials. Besides that, in the unlikely event of an antenna collapsing, you'd probably want it to fall on your property and not on someone else's land.

In addition to that, demographic studies from that time correctly predicted that the population center of the Detroit metro area would move to the north and west. In the early days of the new facilities, lots of the signal covered areas then populated by cows, but over time the population grew exactly as the demographers predicted; now the anyennas sit right in the middle of the population the stations wish to serve.

**Vic_doucette** · February-06-10, 09:58 AM

Originally Posted by DetroitTitan

I always thinks it weird I'm listening to these stations in the city and they are always like Royal Oak! Detroit. Or Mt. Clemens! detroit. Or even a city that's just not exactly a hipster colony.

The FCC assigns each broadcast station a unique set of call letters [[sometimes called a call sign) and a city of license -- the city the station's programming is supposed to serve.

Once an hour, a station is legally required to identify itself by mentioning its call letters and city of license, adjacent to each other, like so: "WXXX, Detroit," or "Detroit, WXXX."

Once you've done that, any other cities or locations you wish to name is fair game.

WNIC-FM is licensed to serve Dearborn. "WNIC-FM, Dearborn," is a legal ID for purposes of keeping the FCC happy. "WNIC-FM, Dearborn/Detroit" is a way to remain legal while you make it sound like you're serving Detroit.

In fact, they could say, "WNIC-FM, Dearborn/Honolulu/Anchorage," and they'd still be legal.

**RO_Resident** · February-06-10, 10:28 AM

WJBL and WMXD moved out of the Penobscot Building last fall to go to the Clear Channel location in Farmington Hills.

**polaar** · February-06-10, 10:36 AM

WRCJ 90.9 FM [[Classical/Jazz) - Their studio is in the Detroit School of Arts near Mack & Woodward. They have one transmitter in Detroit near Brady Elementary school and a tiny 10 watt one in Warren.

**Detroitej72** · February-06-10, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by RO_Resident

WJBL and WMXD moved out of the Penobscot Building last fall to go to the Clear Channel location in Farmington Hills.

Clear Channel seems to have moved all their stations to the Farmington Hills compound.

1130 WDFN started out off Jefferson, along with 106.7 WWWW. Then they moved to 9 Mile in Southfield, across from Fox 2 and then out to the big compound in FH.

Back in the day, I always thought it hypocritical when Channel 7 used to run the "Stand up and tell them your from Detroit" campaign, and tell people the lights haven't gone out in Detroit all from the comforts of Southfield studios!