WWJ radio's longtime association with the NBC Radio Network. The station changed its call letters to WDIV-TV in 1978, and was Michigan's first TV station. Adoption of news and talk format With the increasing popularity of FM radio and stereo broadcasting, 950 WWJ phased out its daytime middle of the road music programming in May 1971 and became a strictly news and talk station during the daytime hours (although for the first several years of the all-news format, the station simulcast the beautiful music format of WWJ-FM 97.1, during the overnight hours). The all-news format on WWJ has remained since then, enabling it to rank consistently among the Detroit area's most popular stations with adult listeners, occasionally finishing in first place in recent surveys. In 1987, the Federal Broadcasting Corporation, run by David Herriman, purchased WWJ and its FM counterpart, WJOI, from the new owner of The Detroit News, the Gannett Company which was required to sell the stations immediately by the Federal Communications Commission because of cross-ownership rules in effect at that time. On March 9, 1989, CBS bought the stations, with its ownership being transferred to Infinity Broadcasting after CBS's 1996 acquisition of that group. (Infinity later returned to using the CBS Radio name.) Along with "97.1 The Ticket," WWJ was the flagship station for Detroit Pistons basketball from 2009-2014. In 2013, all CBS-owned radio stations in Detroit moved their operations to the former Panasonic Building in Southfield. On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on the 17th. The company became Audacy, Inc. in 2021. WWJ (AM) transmitter relocation and signal upgrade When CBS acquired WGPR-TV in 1995, it changed its call letters to WWJ-TV (unrelated to the above-mentioned former WWJ-TV now known as WDIV), and needed a site for a new transmission tower in order to improve the UHF TV station's coverage, and the WWJ radio transmitter site in Oak Park was partially dismantled (the taller north tower was razed) to make room for the television tower. The AM transmitter facility was subsequently relocated in late 1998, to a new six-tower array located in Monroe County, near Newport. The new site allowed WWJ to upgrade from 5,000 to 50,000 watts, greatly improving its nighttime signal in the Downriver communities, where it previously had a weak signal, due to the use of