WXYZ-TV - Action News - History

History

WXYZ-TV’s news department has a longtime dominance of TV news in Detroit partly due to the popularity of long-time lead news anchor Bill Bonds. The station’s news department started as a small operation but would gain credibility for its coverage of the 1967 Detroit Riot. In the 1970s, WXYZ began an aggressive build-up of its news department by adopting many elements of the Eyewitness News format, such as the Cool Hand Luke news music, that were used to strengthen news departments at ABC's four other O&O television stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, it opted to call its newscast Action News. Under the direction of general manager Jim Osborn and news director Phil Nye, the station would lure popular news personalities from rival stations, WJBK-TV and WDIV-TV (known then as WWJ-TV), to join its already well-known anchors Dave Diles and Bill Bonds. WXYZ assembled Detroit’s most popular news anchors and reporters such as John Kelly, Jac LeGoff, Al Ackerman, Marilyn Turner, Jack McCarthy, Jerry Hodak, Don Lark, and Doris Biscoe. The station launched a promotional campaign to introduce its new anchor team: “Bonds, Kelly, Ackerman, Turner... Channel 7's Action News Team. We got who you wanted!”

By 1973, Channel 7 Action News, for the first time ever, became the highest-rated newscast in Detroit and has held the lead ever since. Its success was linked to the serious, controversial, opinionated hard delivery of lead anchor Bill Bonds. ABC tried to apply Bonds’ success in Detroit at KABC-TV in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, and again in 1975 at WABC-TV in New York; in both cases, he was unsuccessful and soon returned to WXYZ. During the 1980s and 1990s, Bonds hosted the interview segment, Up Front, on WXYZ's 5 p.m. Action News. During the interviews, Bonds confronted the Detroit area’s public officials and newsmakers with hard-hitting and sometimes controversial questions. Bonds’ hard-edge style was widely known in Detroit for both captivating viewers while repulsing others, leading Bonds to become the station's icon and its main star.

In Ron Powers' book, The Newscasters, Powers called Bonds "one of the 6 most influential news anchors in the country." However, Bonds had public battles with alcoholism which are credited with his dismissal from the station in 1995. Bonds anchored newscasts and a late night talk-show at WJBK-TV and later hosted a radio show at WXYT-AM. Bonds returned to WXYZ-TV in 1999 to present editorials during the newscasts, but left the station after only a few months.

WXYZ’s ratings dominance was challenged by WDIV-TV in the 1980s. The two stations continue a head to head battle for ratings to this day. In recent years the station's news coverage received several journalism honors including the George Foster Peabody and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University awards. WXYZ’s Action News was named the best TV newscast in the U.S. by United Press International in 1989. The station also received the National Community Service Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding community service. WXYZ is a partner in several charitable endeavors including the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, Operation Can-Do and Detroit's annual children's immunization fair.

In the 1990s, WXYZ continued to expand its morning newscast, Action News This Morning to the present start time of 5 a.m. This newscast started as short news updates during Good Morning America. One of its long-time co-anchors was Erik Smith who worked at Channel 7, off-and-on, for over 40 years. During most of that time, Smith also served as a reporter of human-interest and Entertainment stories for Action News. Smith also won acclaim for his award winning series From the Heart, which began in the late 1990s as a collection of heartwarming, historical and inspirational stories from around the Detroit area. Smith left the station in May 2010, due to a dispute with management, five-days before the end of his contract. Because of his popularity with viewers, it is unclear whether WXYZ-TV's high morning news ratings will survive his departure.

In 2001, WXYZ's Action News expanded again and returned to airing a 7 p.m. newscast. The move was spurred after the September 11 attacks when the station moved ABC’s World News Tonight ahead 30-minutes to 6:30 p.m.. Action News at 7 PM became a forum for interviewing guests and newsmakers on daily issues and became a ratings success in key demographics. The station also expanded its Action News at Noon broadcast to one hour. Action News continued its success with long-time anchors Diana Lewis, Robbie Timmons, meteorologist Jerry Hodak, sportscaster Don Shane and up until October 9, 2006, anchor Frank Turner who became a successful replacement to Bill Bonds. Another recent addition is anchor Stephen Clark, a former anchor at WCBS-TV and CBS News correspondent. Chief Meteorologist Jerry Hodak was the station's primary weathercaster for at least 26 of his more than 40 years in Detroit television. On July 28, 2010, Hodak announced his retirement from WXYZ-TV which became effective September 23, 2010. In 2006, WXYZ also boasted the most veteran general-assignment reporters in Detroit TV with Cheryl Chodun, Bill Proctor, Mary Conway and Val Clark, each of whom worked at least 20 years at the station.

In the November 2006 ratings period, shortly after the switch to HD, all of WXYZ's newscasts placed first in their respective timeslots except at 11 p.m., which lagged behind WDIV. From the November 2007 ratings period until before the May 2009 ratings period, WXYZ's Action News was the number-one newscast in each of its respective timeslots. Coupled with a strong syndicated programming lineup and top-ranked ABC prime-time programming, WXYZ has been the number one-ranked station in Detroit, from sign-on to sign-off. It has remained one of ABC's strongest affiliates since the network sold the station to Scripps however, it finished behind rival WDIV, who took first place in the evening and late news timeslots in the May 2009 sweeps period due largely to lower ratings of shows leading into WXYZ's news programs. Both WXYZ and WDIV have been among the country's strongest affiliates of their respective networks over the years although WDIV has taken over first place in all newscast time slots since late 2009. In very recent years, however, WXYZ and WJBK have been battling for second place in the 5 to 6:30 pm block behind WDIV.

WXYZ-TV’s Special Projects department is home to the station’s investigative and consumer reporters and producers. It gained notoriety in 2002 with Chief Investigative Reporter Steve Wilson and his stories of financial mismanagement at the Kmart Corporation, an undercover investigation that exposed high-pressure sales tactics used by a well-known financial firm, and confrontations with elected officials in Detroit, especially Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

On August 7, 2008, Mayor Kilpatrick appeared in front of a judge in Wayne County Circuit Court. The hearing was called to discuss a potential violation of his bond in one of the two felony cases against him. The hearing was called after Steve Wilson uncovered and revealed photos of the mayor in nearby Windsor, Ontario, Canada. A stipulation of the mayor's bond was that he was not to leave the country, and that he give the court 72 hours' notice if he planned to leave the state of Michigan for any reason. Mayor Kilpatrick was then ordered to spend the night in the Wayne County jail.

On November 30, 2009, WXYZ introduced its new graphics package for its newscast. These graphics are identical to those being utilized by all Scripps-owned stations. Also, WXYZ is the only station in Detroit to produce and air all its promos, commercials and other recordings in high definition.

On August 3, 2011, WXYZ unveiled a new studio to its viewing audience during its noon news broadacst, a project which the organization had been working on since June 2011. The new studio features new high definition cameras and monitors and a redesigned weather center under a new name: "7 First Alert Weather."

On July 25, 2012 JoAnne Purtan Announces That Diana Lewis Retires On October 3, 2012, that will be her last day anchoring on WXYZ-TV.

On September 10, 2012, WXYZ-TV unveiled a brand new blue graphics package that's used for all its newscasts and show promotions, which debuted on the noon newscast. This is the same graphics package that's used at all Scripps television stations. The new graphics take advantage of the full 16:9 aspect ratio which could be a problem for the SD feed on some cable subscribers.