Media in Detroit

The Fisher Building, a National Historic site in the City's New Center area, is home to the Fisher Theatre, with an antenna that transmits WJR’s signal to its transmitter, along with the studios for WJR, WDVD and WDRQ.

As the world's traditional automotive center, Detroit, Michigan, is an important source for business news. The Detroit media are active in the community through such efforts as the Detroit Free Press high school journalism program and the Old Newsboys' Goodfellow Fund of Detroit. Wayne State University offers a widely respected journalism program.

Newspapers and magazines[]

The daily newspapers serving Detroit are the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, both broadsheet publications that are published together under a joint operating agreement. The Detroit Free Press is owned by the Gannett Company. The Detroit News is owned by MediaNews Group. Other publications include weekly, monthly, and quarterly alternative media publications.

Daily[]

• Detroit Free Press
• The Detroit News

Weekly[]

• Between the Lines
• Crain's Detroit Business
• The Detroit Jewish News
• Latino Detroit
• Metro Times
• Michigan Chronicle
• The Michigan Citizen
• Model D Media
• Detour Detroit
• Downtown (Detroit) Monitor

Monthly[]

• DBusiness
• Detroit Home
• Hour Detroit
• Metro Detroit Bride
• Outlier Media

TBD Magazine The HUB Detroit

Bi-Monthly[]

• Ambassador

Quarterly[]

• INSPIREbride

Periodical[]

• Fifth Estate
• The Furnace

Defunct publications[]

• Clear
• Detroit Journal
• Detroit Mirror
• Detroit Sunday Journal
• Detroit Times
• Detroit Tribune
• Orbit Magazine
• StyleLine
• Suznanie
• Real Detroit Weekly

Television[]

WJBK studios in Southfield, Michigan

WPXD-TV offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Wintergarden was turned into a makeshift studio for ESPN during their Super Bowl XL coverage.

The Detroit television market is the 12th largest in the United States,^[1] and it has additional viewers in Ontario, Canada (Windsor and its surrounding area on broadcast and cable). Detroit is home to owned-and-operated stations of CBS, Fox, The CW, Azteca América, and Daystar and two station duopolies owned by ViacomCBS and E.W. Scripps Company.

See also Media in Windsor, Ontario for Canadian stations that are received in Detroit.

Local television stations[]

Network owned-and-operated stations are highlighted in bold.

Canadian viewership[]

Most of Metro Detroit receives stations from Windsor, most notably, CBC Television owned-and-operated station CBET-DT. As a result of the many Canadian viewers within broadcast range of the Detroit television signals, the stations within Detroit consider them as part of their primary audience (such as WMYD and WTVS). News-wise, WDIV-TV and WJBK include the Canadian communities in Essex, Chatham-Kent, and Lambton Counties within their weather portions, with WJBK even granting the Ontario viewers equal prominence to the other Michigan communities in their county-by-county forecasts. In the past few years, the Detroit stations have also been stepping up their coverage of border-related and Windsor-related news as well.

Out-of-market stations[]

Monroe County, southern Washtenaw County, and most Downriver communities in Wayne County also receive television stations from the Toledo market (WTOL, WTVG, WNWO-TV, WGTE-TV and WUPW). WGTE recognizes Metro Detroit as part of its primary viewing area and prior to the magazine's discontinuation of local listings in 2005, the Detroit editions of TV Guide; along with TV inserts in the Sunday editions of The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press; listed the aforementioned Toledo stations as well. WGTE, however, is the only station from that market that is carried on cable systems in Wayne County. In the past, WTOL, WTVG and WNWO were carried on United Cable Television's systems in the Downriver communities of Gibraltar, Lincoln Park, Riverview, Trenton and Woodhaven, though WTOL and WTVG were dropped in the late 1980s, while successor company Tele-Communications Inc. continued to carry WNWO in these communities until 1997 when it was dropped due to requests from WDIV.

Eastern Monroe County and Downriver communities located closer to the Detroit River and Lake Erie may receive some stations from Cleveland (mainly former analog VHF stations WKYC, WEWS-TV and WJW) over-the-air during tropospheric propagation events as Cleveland stations (both analog and digital) otherwise only reach as far away as parts of Essex County, let alone Downriver, largely due to adjacent channel interference from Detroit and Windsor stations, while Toledo stations only provided city-grade analog signals as far north as Wyandotte and "Grade B" coverage up to the northern reaches of the city of Detroit.

Even though it was largely never listed in most Detroit TV Guide editions but was for a time in the News and Free Press inserts, much of Oakland County, Livingston County, Macomb County and St. Clair County were all within reception range of Flint station WCMZ-TV (as a result of that station's transmitter's location in far southern Genesee County) prior to its April 23, 2018 shutdown. The northernmost areas of Oakland and Livingston Counties along with Lapeer County and Sanilac County are also within range of another Flint station, WJRT-TV, which was in the News and Free Press inserts for a time as well. Lapeer and Sanilac Counties are also served by WSMH, also from Flint; Saginaw station WEYI-TV; and Bay City-licensed WNEM-TV.

Western Washtenaw County and western Livingston County are also within reception range of stations from the Lansing market, notably WLNS-TV, WILX-TV and WKAR-TV, and they were also once carried for a time in the News and Free Press inserts. East of those locations as far east as the Downriver communities in Wayne County, these stations can also be seen during favorable weather conditions, albeit with weaker signals (both analog and digital).

Local cable channels[]

• Bally Sports Detroit
• Michigan Channel (PBS, University of Michigan)
• Michigan Government Television (MGTV), based in Lansing

Radio[]

Detroit has the 11th-largest radio market in the United States;^[2] this ranking does not take into account Canadian audiences.

AM[]

Canadian stations[]

FM[]

Canadian stations[]

Weather[]

Note: When counties are marked with an asterisk, it means that the station can be received in that county, but is not part of the primary service area.

Internet[]

Metro Detroit has multiple locally focused and locally owned websites and properties in a variety of digital media formats.

Traffic reporting[]

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (September 2015)

Traffic reporting has been a primary focus in the Metro Detroit area since CKLW, the 50,000-watt powerhouse radio station located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada but broadcasting to the Detroit, Michigan market (and 28 states and 6 Canadian provinces) helped with producing the concept of traffic reporting They launched their helicopter news and traffic reporting service in the late '70s with Jo-Jo Shutty on board. She became the first female helicopter news and traffic reporter in North America and later married well-known Canadian/American news anchor Byron MacGregor, the voice of hit recording, "The Americans". These traffic reporting services are now primarily handled by a small variety of broadcasting companies and distributed through various media: radio, television, the Internet, and more recently through cell phones, in-vehicle navigations devices, and satellite radio (Sirius XM). The larger companies having a direct presence in the Detroit market include Westwood One, Traffic.com, and iHeartMedia. They have established affiliate relations with most of the radio and television stations in the Detroit market to produce daily on-air traffic reports.

Westwood One owns and operates three different traffic reporting companies: Metro Networks, Shadow Broadcast Services, and SmartRoute Systems.

Traffic.com focuses primarily on the technology aspect of traffic reporting by producing traffic information for the Internet, radio, and television.

iHeartMedia is the largest owner of radio stations in the United States and produces on-air traffic reports for its own radio stations, and traffic information for in-vehicle navigational devices. They produce their traffic reports under the trademark ‘Total Traffic.’

Most of these broadcasting companies also have working relationships with the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT), local and state police, and government agencies to gather and distribute traffic information through the various media listed above.

AM stations[]

• Current AM radio stations in the Detroit market that air traffic reports to the public include:

FM stations[]

• FM radio stations airing traffic reports to the public include:

TV stations[]

• There are also television stations that broadcast traffic reports to the public including:

Media corporations[]

• Adell Broadcasting Corporation
• Detroit Media Partnership
• The Word Network
• Graham Media Group

See also[]

• List of people from Detroit
• List of films set in Detroit
• Media in Windsor, Ontario

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Silas Farmer (1890). "(Newspapers)". History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan: a Chronological Cyclopedia (3rd ed.). Detroit – via HathiTrust.

External links[]

• City of Detroit Culture
• Knight Wallace Fellows at Michigan
• No Kiddie Without a Christmas — WBGU-TV documentary about the Goodfellows and Old Newsboys Goodfellow Fund