WXYT-FM (97.1 MHz "97-1 The Ticket") is a commercial radio station in Detroit, Michigan, serving Metro Detroit and much of Southeast Michigan. It airs a sports radio format and is owned by Audacy, Inc. Its studios and offices are located in the nearby suburb of Southfield. It has an effective radiated power (ERP) of 15,000 watts. The transmitter site is off Greenfield Road near Interstate 696 (Walter P. Reuther Freeway) on Southfield's eastern side, co-located with the tower for WDIV-TV. In addition to its standard analog transmission, WXYT-FM broadcasts in the HD Radio hybrid format; with AM sister stations WWJ on the HD2 sub-channel, and WXYT on the HD3 sub-channel. It is also available online via Audacy, with live video feeds of its weekday shows available via Twitch from 9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET (although the Twitch feed instead plays public domain music during commercial breaks and excludes copyrighted material such as press conference clips). Programming 97.1 The Ticket is the flagship station of all four of Detroit's professional sports teams and two college teams: the Detroit Tigers baseball team, the Detroit Pistons basketball team, the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, the Detroit Lions football team, and the Michigan Wolverines football and Michigan Wolverines men's basketball (NCAA) teams. It also carries The NFL on Westwood One. When there are no games scheduled, local sports talk shows are aired during the day and evening, with hosts including Mike Valenti, Doug Karsch, Pat Caputo, Bob Wojnowski and Mike Stone. Overnight and weekends, it carries programming from CBS Sports Radio. History Early years (1941-196?) The station began regular operations on the FM dial on May 13, 1941. It originally had the call sign W45D, licensed to the Evening News Association, publishers of The Detroit News. However, the station can trace its origin to an earlier AM "ultra-high short-wave" station, W8XWJ, which operated as an experimental "Apex" broadcasting station beginning on January 29, 1936. W8XWJ was shut down in April 1940 in order to prepare for its replacement by the new FM facility, which inherited the earlier station's studios and offices in the Penobscot Building, as well as its transmitter site atop the building. On October 31, 1940, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) awarded the first fifteen commercial FM station construction permits, including an assignment on 44.5 MHz in Detroit to the Evening News Association, which was issued the call sign W45D. Although the newspaper