Детройттың 97.1 "The Ticket" спорт радиосы

Sports radio station in Detroit

the AM radio station

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. to 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).

Along with sister stations WWJ 950 AM and WXYT 1270 AM, 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 men's basketball (NCAA) teams. Overnight and weekends, 97.1 The Ticket carries programming from CBS Sports Radio.

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. Tony Ortiz provides hourly sports news updates.

By the end of the 1960s WWJ FM had separated programming and begun airing a beautiful music format with programming coming from Schulke Radio Productions (SRP), with which it enjoyed high ratings despite a glut of easy listening competition in the market from stations such as WLDM, WJR FM, WNIC and WOMC. In addition, during the 1970s WWJ (AM) simulcast WWJ FM's programming during overnight hours. In November 1981, WWJ FM changed its call letters to WJOI, which helped it distinguish itself more from its AM all news sister station. WJOI's format remained beautiful music, although the station changed syndicators from the "FM 100 Plan" (distributed by Chicago's successful beautiful music station WLOO) to the Bonneville and later Schulke packages. WJR FM's change to "Hot Hits" WHYT in September 1982 left WJOI (nicknamed "Joy 97") as Detroit's only beautiful music station. As a result, WJOI enjoyed consistent top ten or top five showings in the Arbitron ratings through most of the rest of the 1980s, and even reached #1 12+ in the Arbitron results in the spring 1984 book (1), topping WJR, at a time when the beautiful music format had nearly disappeared in other markets. Listenership eroded slightly in the late 1980s with the success of former top 40 giant CKLW's "Music of Your Life" format, but Joy 97 remained a consistent top performer in the ratings. CBS Radio bought WJOI and WWJ from Federal Broadcasting in 1989.

Most of WJOI's listeners were older than the demographics usually courted by advertisers. Thus, in early 1991, the station made some adjustments to its format, dropping the syndication and going to a staff of live announcers and at the same time adding more soft pop and mellow rock vocals to the mix while replacing many of the traditional orchestra based instrumentals with new age and smooth jazz cuts. The "freshening up" of the format, however, did not reverse the station's fortunes, and ratings steadily declined. By early 1994, the station was essentially a mostly vocal soft adult contemporary format. The WJOI call sign is now in use at an AM Christian talk/music station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

With the soft AC approach failing to make the station a contender against WNIC and WLTI, WJOI became WYST ("Star 97") on September 2, 1994, and featured a 1970s oldies/classic hits format. WYST positioned itself as "The Greatest Hits of the '70s", although the station did branch its playlist out somewhat into the late 1960s and early 1980s. WYST was also Detroit's outlet for syndicated morning show host Don Imus.

On February 3, 1997, Imus in the Morning moved to AM sister WXYT, making room for The Howard Stern Show. WYST switched its format to active rock, as "97ROCK" (later taking the call letters WKRK FM and the on air identifier "97 1 K Rock" in June of that year). Competing with WRIF (Detroit's other active rock station), "K Rock" caught the ears of fans of harder rock and metal. However, K Rock's penchant for making fun of WRIF, mostly for long stretches between songs, turned off many a listener just as quickly. Ratings continued to be less than impressive.

On August 31, 1998, WKRK repositioned itself as "Extreme Radio" with its format evolving toward hot talk. By March 1999, the majority of the station's music programming on weekdays was gone and the station soon took on the name "97 1: Detroit's FM Talk Station". This was later changed to simply "97.1 FM Talk". During this period it carried syndicated talk shows such as Loveline, The Tom Leykis Show, and Mancow's Morning Madhouse, as well as local shows. WKRK relaunched as "Live 97.1" in May 2003. In August 2004, WKRK became the flagship radio station for the Detroit Lions. In October 2005, WKRK added the "Free FM" identifier being used by CBS Radio on many of its hot talk properties across the country. Once Howard Stern left for Sirius Satellite Radio on January 3, 2006, WKRK began airing Rover's Morning Glory in morning drive. Rover continued as the morning show until September 2006, when low ratings led to a switch to the syndicated Opie and Anthony.

On October 1, 2007, at 3 p. m., WKRK ended its eight year run as a hot talk station and flipped to an all sports format, simulcasting with 1270 WXYT and changing its call letters to WXYT FM with the simulcast named "97 1 FM & 1270 AM: Detroit's Sports Powerhouse". Of its "Free FM" lineup, Deminski & Doyle were moved to mornings and Bill McAllister remained. A month later, the simulcast was renamed to "97 1 FM The Ticket" on November 6, 2007, with the 1270 AM frequency only being mentioned at the top of the hour. Additionally, the midday show "The Big Show" and afternoon show "The Sports Inferno" had their names dropped and were renamed to "Karsch & Anderson" and "Valenti & Foster" respectively. "Deminski & Doyle" left for WCSX after their contract expired on December 31, 2007, so the previously cancelled "Motor City Middays" from WKRK returned as "Motor City Mornings" with Bill McAllister and Jay Towers reprising their roles. "Motor City Mornings" was shortly renamed to "Jay Towers & Bill McAllister Mornings" before it was standardized to "Jay & Bill". The name changes were done to "promote the personalities". On February 5, 2009, WXYT acquired the rights to become the Detroit Pistons flagship station starting in the 2009–2010 season. WWJ 950 AM covered Pistons games when they conflicted with The Ticket's coverage of Lions, Tigers, or Red Wings games. 1270 AM also provided, and continues to provide, coverage of Tigers or Red Wings game in case of conflicting schedules. Jay Towers left WXYT in December 2009, and the show was renamed "The Morning Show" with Bill, Sara, and former WDFN personality Mike "Stoney" Stone, filling in. The show was then renamed to "Stoney & Bill" by November 2010. More former WDFN personalities, Jamie Samuelsen and Bob "Wojo" Wojnowski, were added to the station in January 2013 to fill the early evening shift with "Jamie & Wojo". On November 20, 2015, it was announced that the Detroit Lions would move to WJR beginning in the 2016 NFL season, ending the team's 20 year relationship with CBS Radio. Officials stated that CBS had dropped the Lions over demands that it censor on air content that was critical of the team. In particular, the Lions specifically demanded that the station fire popular on air personality Mike Valenti as a condition of any extension to its broadcast rights, which the station refused to do; Valenti has had a history of making remarks critical of the Lions and their poor performance. Bill McAllister left the morning show in September 2016 and was replaced by Jamie Samuelsen. Kyle "Bogey" Bogenschutz would replace Samuelsen for the evening show alongside Wojo. In April 2017, Terry Foster retired from afternoon drive co hosting duties with Mike Valenti after a brief return. After three seasons on WMGC FM, Detroit Pistons basketball returned to WXYT FM, beginning with the 2017–18 season. On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on November 17. During the COVID 19 pandemic, Entercom laid off numerous personalities at the station such as Dennis Fithian, Ryan Wooley, and Kyle Bogenschutz. Bogenschutz would be replaced with Jeff Riger as Wojo's evening co host for "Wojo & Riger". On August 1, 2020, Jamie Samuelsen unexpectedly died of colon cancer. A few days later, Rico Beard joined afternoons for what is now known as "The Valenti Show with Rico". With Samuelsen's unexpected death, the station's studio was renamed to "The Jamie Samuelsen Studios" and former offensive tackle Jon Jansen would later fill the vacancy, renaming the show to "Stoney & Jansen". On December 18, 2020, it was announced that Detroit Lions football would return to the station for the 2021 NFL season.