WKBD-TV (channel 50), branded as CW Detroit 50, is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside WWJ-TV (channel 62), a CBS owned-and-operated station. The two stations share studios on Eleven Mile Road in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, where WKBD-TV's transmitter is also located.
WKBD began broadcasting on January 10, 1965. It was the first UHF station built by Kaiser Broadcasting as part of what eventually became a chain of seven stations in major U.S. markets. Channel 50 started as an all-sports station with telecasts of the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons as features, but it soon grew into an active independent station producing an array of local programs alongside sports and syndicated reruns. Between 1966 and 1977, Lou Gordon hosted a nationally syndicated program based in Detroit and syndicated to the other Kaiser stations; Gordon's 1967 interview with George W. Romney, in which he decried "brainwashing" on a trip to Vietnam, made national news and was credited with dashing his presidential aspirations and ending his political career. In addition, Gordon raised the station's profile among Detroit-area viewers. Among its local programming efforts, WKBD produced a local newscast from 1968 to 1970. Kaiser sold its entire broadcasting operation to Field Communications in 1977.
As part of the dissolution of Field Communications, Cox Enterprises acquired WKBD in 1984. The Red Wings moved their games that year to WXON (channel 20), while channel 50 kept the Pistons. Under Cox, WKBD started a 10 p.m. local newscast in 1985, affiliated with Fox in 1986, and moved into its present studio building in 1988. During this time, WKBD was one of the nation's strongest independents and grew further as the Fox network matured in the early 1990s. In 1993, Cox sold WKBD to Paramount Stations Group; when Fox moved its affiliation to WJBK-TV, previously the CBS affiliate, Paramount withheld channel 50 from picking up CBS so that it could join its own network, UPN, at launch in January 1995. The effect of the switch was to put WJBK in competition for the 10 p.m. news audience with WKBD, a fight channel 50 lost.
Paramount's parent company, Viacom, merged with CBS in 2000, bringing WKBD-TV and CBS-owned WWJ-TV under one roof. WKBD's news operation was briefly extended to serve the previously newsless WWJ-TV, but this failed to attract viewers, and it was shut down in 2002. After having the Red Wings, Pistons, and Detroit Tigers rights at the same time, all three professional teams abandoned WKBD between 2003 and 2005. When UPN and The WB merged to form The CW in 2006, WKBD-TV and twelve other CBS-owned UPN stations were among its first affiliates. CBS sold its stake in The CW in 2022 and withdrew its eight remaining affiliates from the network the next year, only to have WKBD return to the network in September 2024. The station airs local newscasts as part of CBS News Detroit, the news operation and streaming service for WWJ-TV established in 2023.
Channel 50 prior to WKBD-TV Channel 50 was first assigned to Detroit in April 1952, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted a three-and-a-half-year freeze on new TV station grants and opened up the ultra high frequency (UHF) band for TV use. Within weeks, Goodwill Stations, owner of WJR radio in Detroit, announced the intent of applying for four station licenses which would operate as a regional network—UHF channel 50 in Detroit, VHF channel 11 in Toledo, Ohio, VHF channel 12 in Flint and VHF channel 5 in Bay City. Goodwill hoped to affiliate the Detroit channel 50 station with CBS. The Flint application was the only one to make it to the air as WJRT-TV in 1958.
Woodward Broadcasting, which applied later, withdrew its bid when it purchased the channel 62 construction permit belonging to the United Auto Workers. That cleared the way for the other applicant, Booth Radio and Television Stations (owner of WJLB and WBRI radio), to be granted the permit. By this time, however, it was becoming clear that UHF telecasting was experiencing economic issues stemming from inequalities with VHF stations. Booth returned the permit at the end of 1954 and also surrendered a permit for another UHF station in Saginaw. Woodward then filed for and received permission to move its proposed station, WBID-TV, to channel 50. It sought to remedy the VHF-UHF issue by asking the FCC to make a channel exchange between Detroit and Toledo, where it owned a construction permit for WTOH-TV on channel 79, so that Detroit would be all-VHF (with WBID-TV on channel 11 instead of 50) and Toledo all-UHF. WBID-TV remained on the books despite a lack of action on the petition. In November 1956, it and 82 other UHF stations not in operation received letters from the FCC asking for additional information in support of their request for more time to build. The permit survived, but in February 1960, the FCC circulated another round of such letters to WBID-TV and 53 other unbuilt stations. That November, the WBID-TV permit and 25 others in similar situations were deleted by the commission.
History Kaiser and Field ownership (1965–1983) Signing on with sports On August 31, 1962, Kaiser Industries, the conglomerate owned by California industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, applied to the FCC for three new UHF TV stations: channel 38 in Chicago; channel 41 in Burlington, New Jersey (to serve Philadelphia); and channel 50 in Detroit. This was the second application by Kaiser Broadcasting for TV stations on the U.S. mainland: it already owned stations in Hawaii and had requested UHF channels in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Richard C. Block, the president of Kaiser Broadcasting, told Broadcasting magazine that the company had "an abiding faith that there is right now a need for additional TV service ... and UHF obviously provided the opportunity". The applications called for a general-appeal program lineup, local and live talent, and local news. The FCC granted the construction permit for the Detroit station on January 3, 1963; it was the third permit granted, after the two California stations.
With the permit granted, Kaiser sent John Serrao, manager of its KHVH-TV in Honolulu, to Detroit to ascertain plans for WKBD ("Kaiser Broadcasting, Detroit"). Serrao had previously been an advertising sales representative for WWJ-TV (channel 4) in the 1950s. The station's programming plan was unveiled in September: a six-hour-a-day lineup consisting almost entirely of local and other sports. The idea originated from Honolulu, where KHVH-TV aired a nine-hour-long sports cavalcade, Kaiser Sports Central, on weekends. The proposed programming was a decided break with convention. In Variety, the proposed WKBD lineup was called "one of the first—if not the first aside from ethnic—attempts at truly specialized programming". Channel 50 would launch with games of the Detroit Red Wings pro hockey team and Detroit Pistons pro basketball plus sporting events from the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and University of Detroit. In October, officials in Southfield approved construction of the station's facilities, including a candelabra tower designed to eventually support other TV stations. The forthcoming station led to forecasts of a surge in interest in converting VHF-only sets to tune the UHF band and a shortage of television servicemen to install a projected 200,000 UHF converters. The station would also have three remote units for telecasting events beyond its studios.
WKBD first signed on the air on January 10, 1965. WKBD began broadcasting at 5 p.m. on that date, with its first programs being two college basketball games (taped the day before): Michigan State University vs. the University of Iowa and the University of Detroit against the University of Dayton, followed by a live NHL game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks. Sports was, Serrao admitted, a strategy to cement WKBD in Detroit homes before broadening the station's mix of programming. He also believed that sports would be an important way for independent stations to establish themselves in their markets. Despite that, channel 50 remained sports-heavy in its first fall television season, with heavy doses of college and professional sports as well as some reruns including The Joey Bishop Show and My Friend Flicka, and a daily syndicated show hosted by former WXYZ-TV personality Soupy Sales.
Local shows and Lou Gordon
On February 6, 1966, WKBD began a talk show featuring journalist Lou Gordon. The Lou Gordon Show formed part of a surge in local programming at channel 50. By July 1966, WKBD was live and local for 30 hours a week, with such programs as The Shirley Eder Show, featuring entertainment interviews; The Paul Winters Show, a call-in program; a country and western music hour; and Sports Dial, a sports interview program hosted by Joe Falls and George Puscas of the Detroit Free Press. An afternoon children's show, Captain Detroit, debuted in the fall of 1965 and hosted by Dick Zappe; the program was also hosted by comedian Johnny Ginger and Tom Ryan under the "Sgt. Sacto" persona. Bill Kennedy joined WKBD in 1969 from CKLW-TV in Windsor, Ontario, to host a daily afternoon movie. He helmed another popular feature, Sunday Afternoon Movies, which often outdrew the network affiliates in the ratings. In addition, Kennedy conducted interviews syndicated to the other Kaiser stations. By 1969, WKBD-TV was the first UHF station to overtake a VHF outlet in the ratings; it had surpassed CKLW-TV, originally owned by RKO General which as a Canadian station was hindered by its commitments to Canadian content and ultimately a forced sale to Canadian interests.
Gordon went national in 1967, under the title Lou Gordon's Hot Seat, and began to be distributed to the other Kaiser stations. The first program featured a 35-minute interview with George W. Romney, the governor of Michigan, in which he mentioned being "brainwashed" by military officials on a trip to Vietnam and stated that he did not want to be a vice presidential candidate in 1968. Romney's claim of brainwashing—which made the front page of The New York Times in addition to national media coverage—was later attributed to presidential historian Theodore H. White with ending his hopes of running for president and his political career. In 1973, Romney, then the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, appeared on Gordon's show again, only to walk off the set when Gordon replayed his comments from six years earlier.
Gordon's program regularly generated scoops. A 1971 front-page story in the Free Press was generated based on an advance interview conducted by Gordon which revealed an attempt by Pentagon press officials to encourage the introduction of favorable resolutions at the Disabled American Veterans convention in Detroit. In 1974, his interview with Henry Ford II led to Ford announcing Lee Iacocca as the next president of the Ford Motor Company; a federal judge pronounced himself in favor of the impeachment of Richard Nixon; and another appearance led to an investigation of fraud in television repair. These stories made their way into local and national newspapers. His talk show had higher ratings in Detroit than the national programs of Mike Douglas or Johnny Carson, or local travel host George Pierrot. In 1975, when he signed a new deal with Kaiser, it was airing on six of the company's stations plus three others. The program continued until Gordon died in his sleep on May 25, 1977. WKBD attempted to replace Gordon with a show hosted by Barry Farber in his former timeslot, running from November 1977 to June 1978.
Network aspirations, local news and financial issues