Smooth Jazz WVMV-FM Faded Into Detroit Radio History, This Week, Five Years Ago
October 02, 2009 2:48 PM
Smooth Jazz Radio Station WVMV 98.7 Announcing Format Switch
By Bill Shea | Crain’s Detroit Business
DETROIT — Detroit’s self-billed smooth jazz radio station WVMV 98.7 is expected to announce a format switch today. (MCRFB: Play audio bar below).
The smooth jazz format is apparently moving to an HD2 channel, but it’s not yet clear what the terrestrial broadcast format will be.
Station executives would lease only limited information, and said an on-air announcement is coming at 4 p.m. today.
Deb Kenyon, CBS Radio’s senior vice president and market manager for its Detroit stations, issued a statement: “98.7 Smooth Jazz is moving to a new home. New media and new technologies have given us the chance to still keep this programming on the air. We know that Smooth Jazz is a favorite station for many people and we’re glad to say we aren’t going away, we’re just moving,” she wrote.
The station was ranked 11th in the Detroit market in listenership by Washington D.C.-based audience measurement service Arbitron. The ratings, the most recent available, are for Monday through Sunday, 6 a.m. to midnight, for June, July and August.
CBS Radio also owns WWJ 950 AM (news talk), WXYT 97.1 FM/1270 AM (news talk), WOMC 104.3 FM (oldies) and WYCD 99.5 FM (country) locally.
WVMV station went on the air in 1961 as WBFG broadcasting religious programs. In 1980, it became WLLZ, a rock station under the name “Detroit Wheels.”
Westinghouse bought the station in 1989, and it became a CBS property when the network bought Westinghouse in 1995. That year it became a modern rock station.
Later that year, it switched to smooth jazz-new adult contemporary and switched to the WVMV call letters in early 1996. END
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Source: Crain’s Detroit Business October 2, 2009
WVMV SIGN OFF * Steve Stryker Asst. PD * OCTOBER 2, 2009 [5:00 P.M.]
Little did the Motor Town knows that 98.7 will become the now legendary AMP Radio and the new call letters WDZH!