FCC Data Cards on WJBK-AM/WDEE-AM describing when Storer Broadcasting (then known as the Fort Minor Broadcasting Company) had acquired WJBK-AM from a conglomerate consisting of Richard and Henrietta Connell and James F. Hopkins in 1946, the application to move the transmitter site and the tower from the site on Woodrow Wilson Avenue in Detroit city proper to a site on Woodruff Road in Brownstown Township, Michigan in 1947, the station relocating it’s transmitter and tower again two years later in 1949 to the site where a decade later-would erect its 12-tower array in Lincoln Park, Michigan, located off of U.S Route 25/Dix Highway between New York and Riverbank Avenues; and in 1959 came a permit to install and put to use a Gates BC 1-T one kilowatt transmitter mainly for nighttime use and also to serve as an auxiliary transmitter. Then in 1961 came a permit by the FCC for George B. Storer to relinquish 263,000 shares of common stock to the general public in order to become a publically traded company, and would gain the ticker symbol “SBK” (which would later become the inspiration for the callsign of the television station in Boston the Storer family would purchase later in the 1960’s); in 1959 and 1960 would come applications filed by Storer Broadcasting that would eventually be granted on April 24, 1963; the application to allow the FCC for this AM/Mediumwave station to move out of the studios within Detroit city proper and into the studio that Storer had built at 16550 West Nine Mile Road in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan for this AM station and Channel 2 WJBK-TV to both move into; the sale of this AM/Mediumwave station by Storer to the Harlem Globetrotters’ Globe Broadcasting Corporation in 1976 as Storer was divesting itself of all of its radio properties at this time while retaining its terrestrial television stations and building its cable television infrastructure; the permit for this AM station to move out of Storer’s building at 16550 West Nine Mile Road and into a studio within an office building located at 21700 Northwestern Highway; the sale of this AM station to Combined Communications-where it would be aligned with 95.5 WLDM-FM, both this AM station and the FM station would become WCZY-AM-FM; Gannett would purchase Combined Communications and this AM and FM station and would install Dick Purtan to help ravage the Adult Contemporary format and mend the station’s new Top 40 format; and Ganett selling this AM station to former Gannett president Joe Dorton in 1986, Dorton selling this AM station to Satellite Radio Network a year later in 1987; and Jon Yinger’s Midwest Broadcasting Corporation purchasing this AM station in 1993.
Jon Yinger is a former Gannett GSM and General Manager of the Satellite Radio Network.
After Storer had acquired the station, in 1949; they had relocated the studio from 6559 Hamilton Avenue in Detroit city proper to the Masonic Temple in Detroit city proper. In 1956, WJBK-AM-FM-TV had moved out of their studios within the Masonic Temple and over to a building that Storer had built in Detroit’s New Center area that would later be occupied by WTVS-TV after Storer had moved the WJBK stations to the building on West Nine Mile Road in Southfield, Michigan in 1970. And so in 1970, Storer had moved the WJBK stations to the building on West Nine Mile Road, and like the WJW-AM-TV/WJKW-TV studios on South Marginal Road in Cleveland, Ohio and the WAGA-TV studio in the Atlanta area; Storer had hired an architect to design the WJBK studios in the Plantation style architecture.
http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getimportletter_exh.cgi?import_letter_id=62812
See this earlier post regarding the impact that Dick Purtan has had on WCZY-FM/WKQI-FM:
An Awful Birthday Party/Social Event That My Parents Had Dragged Me ToAn Awful Birthday Party/Social Event That My Parents Had Dragged Me To