WDZH


WDZH is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Detroit and serving the Metropolitan Detroit radio market in Southeastern Michigan. It is owned by Entercom and airs a soft adult contemporary radio format.
The station's offices and studios are located on American Drive in Southfield. The transmitter is located near Lyndon Street at Cloverdale Street in the City of Detroit. WDZH broadcasts with an effective radiated power of 50,000 watts from an antenna at 463 feet in height above average terrain.

History

WBFG (1961–1980)

The station signed on the air in 1961 as WBFG. The station broadcast religious programming for nearly two decades and was owned by the Trinity Broadcasting Corporation.
Studios were located on Lyndon Avenue. The station sold segments of time to local and national religious leaders, who presented religious instruction and also sought donations on the air to support their ministry.

WLLZ, Detroit's Wheels (1980–1995)

On July 16, 1980, WBFG was sold to Doubleday, which owned a number of radio stations around the U.S. in addition to its large publishing business. Doubleday soon changed the call sign to WLLZ. The call letters stood for "Detroit's WheeLLZ," since Detroit is the home of the American auto industry. On August 11, 1980, at 5:07 p.m., WLLZ debuted a new AOR/CHR format. The first song played on the new "Detroit's Wheels" was "Let It Rock" by Bob Seger.
The new WLLZ became an instant hit. "Wheels" had one of the most successful premieres in Detroit radio history. It debuted at #2 in total persons 12+ in the Fall 1980 Arbitron ratings for Detroit radio. It also posted #1 ratings in the teen, 18-34 and 18-49 listener demographics. Detroit's other rockers were hit hard, particularly 106.7 WWWW, which, having been a top 10-rated station just a year earlier, had tumbled completely out of the top 20 by the fall of 1980. In January 1981, just days after the fall Arbiton ratings were released, W4 changed formats from rock to country music, and terminated morning man Howard Stern, whose show had been crushed by his WLLZ competition of John Larson and Jeff Young.
The rock format on WABX also was switched for a Top 40/CHR format in 1982, leaving WLLZ and 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 the heritage rocker 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 rock music than competing stations: "It was a wonderful time, making such a splash with an all-new station. I was no genius. I 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 April 1986, Legacy Broadcasting bought WLLZ.
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. In December 1989, Westinghouse Broadcasting bought the station.
WLLZ saw its fortunes slip in the early 1990s with the emergence of "alternative rock" groups like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, which drove many of the 1980s "hair bands" off the charts. A format tweak from AOR to modern rock in June 1995 failed to reverse the station's dropping ratings.

Smooth Jazz V98.7 (1995–2009)

On December 20, 1995, at 10 a.m., after playing Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven", WLLZ flipped to Smooth Jazz as "V98.7". The format was introduced by musician Kenny G, followed by the first song: "Smooth Operator" by Sade. The WVMV call letters were adopted on February 16, 1996.
The flip put the station in competition with the similarly formatted WJZZ, until the latter flipped to urban in August 1996.
In December 2005, WVMV's parent company, Infinity Broadcasting, was renamed CBS Radio.

98-7 AMP Radio (2009–2018)

At 5 p.m. on October 2, 2009, after almost fifteen years as a smooth jazz station, "V98.7" signed off with the first song the station played in December 1995, "Smooth Operator" by Sade. The station then briefly stunted by playing a montage of jingles and airchecks of WLLZ, claiming that "Detroit's Wheelz" was back on the air, following up by playing "Welcome To The Jungle" by Guns N' Roses. Halfway through the song, it was interrupted by the audio of Kanye West's famous "Imma let you finish" scene from the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, followed by Beyoncé's "Sweet Dreams", and officially flipped to Top 40. Instead of revealing the name of the new format, WVMV was branded for that weekend as "98-7 Takeover," inviting listeners 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, and the real name would be revealed at 8 a.m. the following Monday, October 5th. At that time, the station officially launched as "98-7 AMP Radio", modeled after sister stations KAMP-FM in Los Angeles, and WBMP in New York City. Unlike those two stations, WVMV did not start with 10,000 songs commercial free, instead offering commercial-free Mondays, which were discontinued in April 2011. The station adopted the WDZH call sign on May 3, 2010.
The "AMP Radio" format featured a tight rotation of mainly current hits, similar to Mike Joseph's Hot Hits formatted stations of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which had been heard locally on WHYT.
On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on the 17th.

98.7 The Breeze (2018–present)

Shortly after 5:00 p.m. on November 9, 2018, WDZH began stunting with Christmas music as The Rudolph Network at 98.7. However, at 5:00 p.m. on November 12, the station flipped to a soft adult contemporary format as 98.7 The Breeze, launching with a commercial-free marathon of 10,000 songs. The station competes primarily with iHeartMedia's mainstream AC WNIC.
Beginning in 2019, WDZH has carried Christmas music for the holiday season, replacing sister station WOMC as Entercom's home for the programming within its Detroit cluster. As with its main format, the Christmas programming competes primarily with WNIC, which has historically been known for the format in Detroit.

HD radio

On January 20, 2006, the station launched its HD2 sub-channel with a Traditional Jazz format. After the change to Top 40 on FM on October 2, 2009, the station moved its Smooth Jazz format to the HD2 sub-channel as "Smooth Jazz V98.7", with one live host from 9am-5pm, Madison Leigh, who had done mornings on WVMV in the early 2000s. Former WVMV morning host Alexander Zonjic also hosts Alexander Zonjic from A to Z on Fridays and Sundays from 7 pm to 8 pm.
On March 28, 2014, the station activated its HD3 sub-channel, and began airing a modern rock format, branded as "Area 9-8-7, The Real Alternative". In April 2016, WDZH-HD3 flipped to Rhythmic Adult Contemporary as "Party 98-7." In August 2019, WDZH-HD3 flipped to "Channel Q," Entercom's Talk/EDM service for the LGBTQ community.