The Big "D"

[nuffsaid]

Does anybody remember the country station in Detroit known as The Big D? Seems to me there was some pretty good talent on that station before it was sold to Gannet (I think). Somebody told me that both Deano Day and Dave Dial, both were on the morning show, had passed away. What has happened to the other members of that great country station. Think the station was years ahead of it's time.

 

[sfhuskybear]

There was a WDEE at 1500 back in the day. It was country. I was never a big fan so I never listened to it.

 

[pwayne1]

WDEE was formerly WJBK , which was mostly a Top-40 format in the 60's. Somewhere I read that they tried country in the late 60's.

When I moved to the Detroit area (Ypsilanti) in 1977, WDEE was one of the coolest country stations I had ever heard. It was like a personality-oriented Top 40 station, only played country music. The Big Dee seemed unusually "hip" (if I can use that for country) because they mixed in a few pop and crossover tunes.

One of the Big Dee's problems was it's 50,000 watt signal. Storer Broadcasting wanted a 50,000 watt signal in Detroit, and to accomplish that, their transmitter site was extremely directional. From their huge 12-tower array near Lincoln Park (just N of I-75 and Southfield Road), 95% of that 50,000 watts went straight north,
right up Telegraph Road. Out in Ypsilanti, their signal was completely unlistenable and way down into the noise.
It was commonly said "You can hear them in Finland, but not in Farmington".

A good friend was an engineer at WDEE, and after it became religious WLQV, all of the WDEE carts were sent to their transmitter building for storage. When they threw out all the carts, my friend gave the boxes to me, about 1200 carts. Music, spots, jingles, and a lot of Deano Day's recorded phone calls with listeners. I also understand they filled a dumpster with old logger tapes that went back into the 50's.

Besides Deano, a lot of Detroits most popular deejays worked there. I remember Tom Dean and Dave Carr.
Dave Carr went on to put 1500 WDEE on the air in Reed City. 1500 in Reed City is not on the air, as they were eventually replaced by an FM in Reed City.

Had WDEE's signal been able to cover the suburban areas of Detroit, they would definitely hold their place as one of the greatest broadcasters in Detroit and the industry.

 

[sbe1]

The big D was a great station. And as said in an earlier post used top 40 format with country music. Tom Dean was another great DJ. Live up in Traverse City now. Can be heard doing voice tracking and other work for a few Traverse City Stations now. Here is his website: http://www.tomdean.com Click on Radio. Still has that great voice. I used to love him doing the Fem Forum. Was great radio.

 

[ruger22com]

Here is the first hand poop (as I worked there).WDEE-AM had a TERRIBLE directional signal (I think we had a total of 8 towers to make this work) Deano Day and others worked there during the country years (WDEE actually stood for We've Done Everything Else....yep...every format in the book...from the studio near northland)
I worked a few miles away for combined communications at WCZY-FM (cozy-fm) part of John Bayliss's old chain of major market stations. Combined Communications bought WDEE cheap after the country format had been losing money for a long while (even though deano day was a radio god to many country folk in motown)...and combined then fired the entire staff and move us all in (I "Bob Martin" came from easy listening WCZY-FM doing the 6-10pm shift ALONG WITH THE PD BOB GASKINS)..the calls were then changed to WCZY-AM and we started doing a upbeat beautiful music (very close to a/c) format as "cozy-am" with myself doing PM drive. After about 9 months, it was evident that NOTHING was ever going to work there (remember at that time WCZY-FM Was #1 in 35+ and #3 in 25-54) as the AM signal was just so bad.
Combined Communications had just built a brand new facility (that was freakin amazing) at 10mile and greenfield, so WCZY-am was switched to religious ("garner ted always paid his bills!) and the calls were changed to WLQV-AM or "Love Am" and the staff was moved over to the new oak park facility. I went back to work doing evenings again at WCZY-FM.....and after several more months passed, the entire combined communications chain was sold to Gannet (who never owned a broadcast facility before) and totally screwed everything up...myself and Ray Schillings, the production director being the last to go.
so.....WDEE became WCZY then WLQV
THATS THE REAL STORY!
-BOB

 

[sbe1]

1500 had 12 towers at one time. They got together with Washington DC WTOP at the time and Minneapolis and bought themselves a looser pattern. They all agreed to a higher level of interference than would have normally been allowed. They then removed the 3 towers closest to the highway and to this day uses 9 towers. There is now a KMart where the first row of towers used to be.

 

[amfmxm]

Big D was a perfectly good performer in the early-to-mid seventies, consistently scoring 4-to-5 shares at a time when only WJR was in double digits. WDEE was part of the 5-share bunch that included WWJ, WXYZ and (as '70 faded further and further into the rear-view mirror), The Big 8. Big D always crushed the AC debacle at WCAR, despite 1130's far-better signal, and generally hung tough with the early FM guns of the market, WRIF, WHNE, WWJ-FM & WJLB.

And WDEE always sounded good. We take the "Top 40 approach" to Country as a given today, but Big D was an early model. Storer ran very good radio stations, and Big D was always well-programmed and promoted. It was Detroit's Country station, and in a big blue-collar market, that's called "great positioning."

No, you couldn't hear the SOB in Ann Arbor, but it burned up Detroit--at a time when twice as many people lived within the city limits--and it burned up the northern 'burbs at a time when they were booming.

By today's standards, 1500's odd-ball DA is an ananchronism.

But 40 years ago, it worked well enough to allow Big D to be one of Detroit's top radio stations.

 

[thebeach33445]

Hey Guys:

In see that it was WDEE Country first then
1. WCZY in Aug 1979

2.then WLQV Religous: Would anybody know the date of the first WLQV?

3.then back to WCZY on June 17, 1985 simulcating the FM

4.then back to WLQV on Aug 3, 1987.

T.J.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

The only factual correction I would make to the discussion is that the WJBK/WDEE/WLQV pattern maximum is actually at about 15 degrees true. It's fallen off quite a bit at 0 degrees true. That concentrates the signal right over Detroit and serves Macomb County better, which now has more people than the City of Detroit. WWJ, WFDF, WDTW, and WDFN all have maxima within 10 degrees of true north, and all have problems the further east or west you go in the Metro. All of the narrow patterns have fading problems on the edges of the major lobes. Some are better on one side of the Metro than on the other.

 

[ChrisInMI]

PWayne - I'm not aware of the 1500 frequency ever doing country music under the WJBK calls. From what I've read, the first (and more successful) version of the Top 40 format lasted from 1956 to 1964, when Storer Broadcasting switched the station to "Just Beautiful Music" due to the one-two punch of Keener 13 WKNR's newfound dominance of the market and (I think) a lightning strike earlier in '64 that took the station off the air for a while (and then when they finally got back on the air, they were reduced in power to 250 watts, making their already poor signal even harder to pick up). According to a Billboard article, they next tried an early version of the Adult Contemporary format in 1966, with a mix of MOR hits and softer rock and roll Top 40 from the likes of Simon & Garfunkel, B.J. Thomas, The Mamas & Papas and The Association. Then there was a return to Top 40 early in 1969 and there is an aircheck of this era on Reelradio.com, but in all honesty, judging from that aircheck, it sucked - plus CKLW was too strong and Keener was still in the Top 40 game at that point.

One of the other reasons I've heard about WDEE being revolutionary was for having one of the earliest examples of a "Loveline"-type sex talk show, in Day's "Fem Forum." For the early '70s, it was pretty hot stuff though it probably wouldn't raise many eyebrows today.

Bob - was the WDEE-AM format change to WCZY-AM before or after WCAR-AM switched to being WCXI? Didn't Deano Day work at 'CXI too? (Being a child of the '80s, I remember WCZY-AM Version 2.0 as the simulcast of CHR Z95.5 from 1985-87.) How well did WCXI do compared to WDEE in the ratings? I know they started having a rough time after W4 flipped from rock to country. My parents listened to WCXI in the early '80s and I remember their jingle: "Country, Pure and Simple."

Also, how many people remember when WCAR-FM briefly did the Drake-Chenault "Great American Country" format in 1977-78? Did that have any impact?

 

[ruger22com]

"Bob - was the WDEE-AM format change to WCZY-AM before or after WCAR-AM switched to being WCXI? Didn't Deano Day work at 'CXI too? (Being a child of the '80s, I remember WCZY-AM Version 2.0 as the simulcast of CHR Z95.5 from 1985-87.) How well did WCXI do compared to WDEE in the ratings? I know they started having a rough time after W4 flipped from rock to country. My parents listened to WCXI in the early '80s and I remember their jingle: "Country, Pure and Simple."

Also, how many people remember when WCAR-FM briefly did the Drake-Chenault "Great American Country" format in 1977-78? Did that have any impact?"

All I remember was deano WAS working the country format when Combined Communications took over, fired everyone and changed the format to an easy listening/beautiful music hybred and I moved from evenings at WCZY-FM to Afternoon Drive at the "new WCZY-AM". The reason for the format change was two-fold 1) WCZY-FM was pulling BIG 25-54 numbers (Number 2 behind WJR-AM and #1 in women) with the Beautiful music format (with WWJ-FM AND WJR-FM also doing beautiful music) so it made sense to give an even more pop oriented easylistening format a shot on the AM and Combo sell the AM&FM. and 2) WDEE-AM had not pulled anything better than a .2 share 18+ and a .4 share 25-54 in a long time. Not to say they had a bad format (deano was a class act) but the extremely directional signal was just so scattered and bad the station could not perform and compete.
After the format change we were able to bring the station up to a 1.2 share 25-54 (amazing with that signal) but after almost a year the Program Director (Bob Gaskins) decided to move me back to CZY-FM to PM drive (where we continued with great numbers and profits) , and then changed the format at the AM to religious (Because nobody cared about ratings on a religious station as good old garner ted always paid his bills....and the station then started making a good profit with a small lower paid staff and selling quarter hour blocks. I am not sure where deano went after combined took over, but I think he was still in the market (maybe that small signal station in royal oak????WEXL-AM??????-Bob Martin
PS...WCZY-FM was very profitable the whole time it was easy listening running 8 expensive spot units an hour, but when Gannett bought the chain (Gannett, newspaper chain that never ran a radio property before) they changed the format to chr, increased the spot load, hired dick purtain and dave prince for a small fortune and a piece of the station (Dave got me into the businness 10 years before) and they NEVER made a decent profit again for many years with such massive overhead ..the GM (Jim Melay???) was considered by most in the market as a real idiot for switching formats.

 

[nuffsaid]

The Big D was a radio station that was ahead of it's time in Detroit. The station put a major push on personality and spent a small fortune on jingles and promotion. Tom Collins and the guys from Globetrotter Communications in Chicao bought the station and the race was on. Who could forget Deano Day, Dave Diles Sports (from ABC Televison), Frank Gentry News (from KLIF) in the mornings, Tom Dean kicked butt with Fem Forun after Deano, and this set the tone for the rest of the day. Yep the slogan was The Big D and WDEE did stand for We Did Everything Else before they made the switch to Country. The station was originally in the Storer television station off Southfield and then moved to the Daton (I think) Towers, across the street from the Michigan Inn. The long and the short of this is simply The Big D was a major player in the shape of Detroit radio and those that were there were pioneers. The downfall of the station came in the sale to Gannett who had no broadcasting experience and set out on a mission to learn with a major market radio station. Format changes, lack of leadership, and other mistakes set the pace for failure.

 

[R.C.]

The Big "D" was certainly one of the great AM stations of the 70's and I had the privilage of working there as a weekend and fill-in jock. For a young fella in his mid 20's, this was a dream job, albeit a part-time position, nonetheless I felt like I had made the big time. It was Detroit and a station I really admired. After working in smaller market stations for 6 years from Toledo to Flint, I went to DEE in '74 from WSDS Ypsilanti. I'd been playing country since '69 so I was very familiar with it and enjoyed it as a country music listener. Ratings were still riding high for DEE when I got there and the line-up at that time included Deano "In The Morning", Tom Dean with the Fem Forum, Dave Williams afternoons, Randy Price evenings, Paul Allen late at night, and Ron Ferris all night. All 4 hour shifts weekdays. We were in the TV2 building on 9 Mile until the following year when we moved to new studios in Tower 14 across from the Michigan Inn at Northland Center. DEE changed from WJBK radio at midnight on Christmas night 1969. As time ran on, Bob Burchett came on board in the evening then switched to afternoon drive, Rosalee worked evenings as did Jimmy Bare and Dan Dixon overnights. Deano Day and Dave Dials unfortunately both passed away in '09. The jingle package was tremendous and they used it in varied forms into the mid 70's. The station was sold in April '78, many of the personalities were canned, including myself. Come January '79 WCAR was making the long time rumoured switch to country as WCXI. I was able to get my foot in the door after Uncle Deano let me know this was happening and to call the General Manager who was the GM at DEE before it was sold, so after a call to GM John Risher, he told me to contact the PD Bill Ford & I was in. Of course I think it helped that they were hiring several of the old DEE jocks, to start up and give the Big "D" a run for their money. With everything taken into consideration that CXI did, and with their much better signal, DEE was dead and gone by the fall of '79 and changed to WCZY-AM. By the way, Deano worked for a few months at CKLW-FM in late '78 before going over to CXI. WCXI was another success story in the early 80's which could be for another post, another time. Hope this answers some questions.

 

[Jim Mishler]

Ahead of its time for sure. I had the pleasure of anchoring mid-day news during Tommy Dean's show late 70's. I was more than thankful that Frank Gentry pulled me out of Kalamazoo to join the staff. Lots of memories.

 

[Jim Mishler]

Hey R.C. - long time.