WGPR-TV

**WGPR-TV**, virtual channel 62 (UHF digital channel 44), is an independent station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, that is licensed to the suburb of Grosse Pointe Woods. It is the flagship property of State Street Broadcasting, based in the suburb of Troy. The station's second digital subchannel serves as an owned-and-operated station of the music video-oriented TV network The Tube Music Network.

The station has studios at River Place at Joseph Campau and Guoin Streets in Detroit's Rivertown neighborhood, and a transmitter in Oak Park, Michigan.

On cable, the station is available in the Detroit market on Comcast Xfinity, Cogeco's Windsor system, WOW!, Wyandotte Cable, Charter Spectrum and AT&T U-verse.

## History

### Early history

The station first signed on the air on September 29, 1975. The station was originally owned by WGPR Incorporated, formed by the Detroit-based International Free and Accepted Modern Masons along with WGPR radio (107.5 FM). The call letters stood for Grosse Pointe Radio, a nod to the radio station's original studio in Grosse Pointe Woods, but were later interpreted to mean Where God's Presence Radiates.

WGPR was the first wholly African American-owned television station in the United States, and was marketed towards Detroit's urban audience. At the time, WGPR's emergence was hailed as an advance for African-American enterprise, with the "color line" having been broken by the station's establishment. Station president William V. Banks, together with Jim Panagos and George White, sales and programming managers respectively of co-owned WGPR radio (107.5 FM), were the management team at the station's outset. Prior to WGPR-TV's sign-on, the channel 62 frequency had been used by WXON (now on channel 20), which had originally broadcast on that channel when it signed on in 1968 before moving to channel 20 in 1972.

Operating as an independent station, WGPR-TV aired network programs from NBC and CBS that were pre-empted by their local affiliates, WWDT (channel 4) and WDET (channel 5) respectively, as well as older cartoons, a number of religious shows, brokered programs, programs aimed at the black community, R&B music shows, and low-rated off-network dramas and barter syndicated programs.

Channel 62's most popular and most well-known show was a Middle Eastern variety show called *Arab Voice of Detroit*, which was broadcast late on Saturday nights. Another popular program was a nightly dance show titled *The Scene* (similar in content to the nationally syndicated *Soul Train*) that aired from October 13, 1975 to December 31, 1987. A similar lower-budget Friday evening dance show called *Contempo* was initially *The Scene*'s replacement in 1988; it was hosted by several different personalities from WGPR radio, and featured local artists. However, lackluster ratings caused the show's cancellation in early 1990, and eventually it was replaced by *The New Dance Show*, which was hosted by R.J. Watkins and aired until 1996. The station was also home to horror show host Ron "The Ghoul" Sweed during the late 1970s, and was Detroit's affiliate for the 1970s version of the NHL Network.

The socially laudatory aims of the station did not immediately translate into good business. During its first two decades on the air, WGPR-TV was easily the lowest-rated television station in Detroit, with only a niche viewership within its target audiences.

WGPR was also hampered by an inadequate signal, broadcasting at only 800,000 watts. Its signal was so weak that it could only be seen over-the-air in Detroit itself and some nearby suburbs (such as Southfield, East Detroit, Redford Township, Warren, Royal Oak, Livonia and Mount Clemens). The signal could not reach the outlying suburbs such as Clarkston, Lake Orion and Richmond. For its first 20 years on the air, it was one of the only Detroit stations not carried in the Flint-Lansing edition of TV Guide, which, in the Detroit market, was sold in Sanilac, Lapeer, western and northern Livingston, and northwestern Oakland counties.

In August 1986, the station started carrying the International Television Network, which was an overnight four-hour block of primarily foreign-language subtitled programs.

By the 1990s, WGPR's on-air look had become very primitive. It was the only local station which still used art cards instead of CGI for its sponsor announcements and newscasts. Further, a character generator manufactured in the 1970s remained in use for some graphics for many years.

### Relaunch as WMTR-TV

On December 5, 1994, Silver King Broadcasting announced that it would be purchasing WGPR-TV for $24 million.

However, the plans hit a snag when leaders of Detroit's African-American community spoke out against the sale. Most of the community's ire was directed toward the Masons, who were criticized for agreeing to sell to a broadcaster that primarily owned over-the-air Home Shopping Network stations. The deal's opponents feared an important local voice would be lost if Silver King gained outright ownership of the station. Silver King and the Masons, and their local supporters, contended that they were engaged in a fair business transaction. There was growing sentiment to block the sale of WGPR-TV to Silver King in favor of selling it to a locally based broadcaster. Spectrum Detroit Inc., an investment group led by Lansing-based real estate investor and broadcaster Joel Ferguson, made a counter offer to buy the station outright, or at the least convince Silver King to enter into a joint-ownership venture. When those efforts failed, the group sued Silver King in a last-ditch effort to block the sale.

After a court ruled in favor of Silver King, the company was able to close on its purchase of channel 62. Silver King officially took control of channel 62 on September 20, 1995. The station retained it's independent format due to existing separately-owned HSN station WRHT (channel 31, now an Ion Television owned-and-operated station). Two years later in 1997, Silver King purchased the USA Network, and renamed itself as USA Broadcasting, as part of a corporate rebranding borrowing from the identity of its new cable channel property. That year, WGPR-TV began carrying a one-hour block of programming from business news channel Bloomberg Information Television (now simply Bloomberg Television) at 6:00 a.m. daily and added a block of classic children's programs on Sunday mornings. During that same year, the Stroh River Place studios opened and WGPR-TV boosted its effective radiated power to five million watts at a new transmitter site in Oak Park.

In June 1998, USA Broadcasting launched a customized independent station format, "CityVision", which infused syndicated programming—including a few produced by sister production unit Studios USA that also aired nationally on USA Network—with a limited amount of local entertainment and magazine programs (reminiscent of the format used by CITY-TV in Toronto and more prominently, that station's sister broadcast television properties that became charter stations of Citytv, when CHUM Limited expanded the format to other Canadian markets as a television system in 2002).

On October 15, 1999, the station changed its call letters to **WMTR-TV** (for **M**o**t**o**r** City, one of Detroit's nicknames) and changed it's on-air branding to "Motor 62". Channel 62 adopted the "CityVision" format first implemented at one of USA's other stations the previous fall.

WMTR's initial lineup under the "CityVision" format began to primarily feature a mix of reality shows (such as *America's Funniest Home Videos* and *Real TV*), sitcoms (such as *Happy Days*, *Gilligan's Island*, *The Brady Bunch*, *Sister, Sister*, *The Three Stooges*, and *NewsRadio*) and talk shows during the daytime and prime time hours, as well as drama series (*Perry Mason*, *Matlock*, *Cannon, Knight Rider* and *The A-Team*) on weekend evenings, and movies during prime time on weekends and on Sunday late afternoons. It also aired USA's original programs (such as *Tens* and *Strip Poker*), along with a newscast at 10:00 PM titled *Metro News*, placing the station in competition with Fox O&O WDEE (channel 2), then-rival independent (now RDN O&O) WXYT (channel 9), New Line Network O&O WNLD (channel 12) and then-UPN (now CW) affiliate WJLB (channel 50). It also carried a decent lineup of children's programming on Saturday mornings, including those sourced from the BKN syndication block (such as *Highlander: The Animated Series*, *Mighty Max*, *Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog*, *Sonic Underground*, *Jumanji*, *Pocket Dragon Adventures*, *Beakman's World* and *Extreme Dinosaurs*).

In 2000, WMTR obtained the rights to Plymouth Whalers OHL hockey games, along with a small number of University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Detroit Pistons basketball games. That same year, USA then planned to sell its stations to Disney/ABC, which would have formed a duopoly with ABC owned-and-operated station WGHP-TV (channel 7), but Univision outbid its competition in a close race. Even then, Univision only planned to purchase a few of USA's stations (and especially so in Detroit since it already owned WUVD-TV), while others (including WMTR) were selected for sale to other third parties.

### 21st century

As such, Jamie Lindsey, a former channel 62 staff member, purchased the station in 2001, using it as the nucleus for his new broadcasting company, State Street Broadcasting. The station's existing sports contracts were immediately terminated. The 10 PM newscast was retitled *62 NewsPulse at Ten*, along with a two-hour morning newscast, *62 NewsPulse Mornings*, from 7 AM to 9 AM. Due to the newscasts' low ratings, State Street decided to add additional newscasts: a one-hour extension of the morning newscast to 6 AM in 2004 (which resulted in WMTR now competing with WDEE, WWDT, WDET (by then now a CBS O&O), ABC O&O WGHP-TV (channel 7), WXYT, WNLD, WJLB, and DuMont O&O WLQV (channel 54) in that timeslot), a one-hour 6 PM newscast in 2005, a one-hour 4 PM newscast in 2006, a half-hour 5 PM newscast in 2007, a one-hour noon newscast in 2008, an additional one-hour extension of the morning newscast to 5 AM in 2009, a half-hour extension of the 5 PM newscast to 6 PM in 2010, an 11 PM newscast in 2011, and a two-hour extension of the morning newscast, which now ran from 4 AM to 10 AM, in 2012.

On October 30, 2008, the station reverted to it's previous **WGPR-TV** call letters.

In February 2014, the Detroit Historical Museum held a fundraiser for a 2016-exhibit on WGPR-TV which will occupy the museum's Community Gallery, in collaboration with the WGPR-TV Historical Society, which aims to immortalize the station's legacy. The exhibit will be moved to a new WGPR-TV Museum to be located at the station's original operating quarters.

## Gallery

WGPR-TV's logo from 1975-1976WGPR-TV's logo from 1976-1985WGPR-TV's logo from 1985-1994WGPR-TV's logo from 1994-1999WMTR-TV's logo from 1999-2001 during the "CityVision" eraOne of WMTR-TV's "CityVision" IDs from 1999-2001WMTR-TV's logo from 2001-2008 after being sold to State Street BroadcastingWMTR-TV *62 NewsPulse at Ten* screengrab from August 14, 2003 when Metro Detroit was affected by the Northeast blackout of 2003First logo used after reverting to WGPR-TV, used from 2008-August 2014

## Digital television

### Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

### Analog-to-digital conversion

WGPR-TV began operating its digital high-definition feed on UHF 44 in July, 1999. The station shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 62, 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 continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 44. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 62, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

## News operation

WGPR-TV upgraded all locally produced programming to high definition on February 2, 2012, making it the final station in the Detroit market to upgrade to HD.

### Since 1999

When *Metro News* first began broadcasting, it was largely unsuccessful, often ranking behind WDEE, WJLB and WXYT in the local Nielsen ratings, but it still finished ahead of WNLD. This continued even after it was rebranded as *62 NewsPulse at 10* after WMTR was sold to State Street Broadcasting. A low point was reached in 2008 when the 5 PM newscast drew a scant 1% share of the Detroit DMA in that timeslot. Since then, a new news director was hired and WGPR's newscasts now often finish second behind WDEE and in fifth behind the Big Four affiliates in the Detroit DMA.

### *62 Storm Officers*

WGPR-TV operates Michigan's largest fleet of news vehicles intended specifically for storm chasing. These vehicles feature laptops with NEXRAD radars and highly-detailed GPS units, NOAA Weather Radios, handheld CB radios, HAM radio, HD GoPro camera, weather sensors, 1080i 360-degree camera, an LED message light displaying weather information, flashing amber beacons and a 40-inch water-resistant flat-screen monitor.

In June 2009, WGPR-TV released *62 Storm Officers Online*, a Windows/Mac program that is more convenient than accessing the WGPR-TV website. The program includes features to alert the user when a weather watch or warning is issued.