WDZH - History - WBFG/WLLZ-Detroit's Wheels

WBFG/WLLZ-Detroit's Wheels

The station signed on the air in 1961 as WBFG ("We Broadcast For God"). The station broadcast religious programming for nearly two decades. On July 16, 1980, WBFG was sold and soon changed its calls to WLLZ.

On August 11, 1980, at 5:07 p.m., WLLZ debuted a new album oriented rock format; the first song played on the new "Detroit's Wheels" was "Let It Rock" by Bob Seger. (The WLLZ calls were also rumored to stand for "We Love Led Zeppelin" or "Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin". Or, more appropriately for the automotive capital of America,"wheels". Get it?) The new WLLZ became an instant hit. "Wheels" had one of the most successful debuts in Detroit radio history; it debuted at #2 (behind only WJR) in total persons 12+ in the Fall 1980 Arbitron radio listening ratings, and posted #1 ratings in the teen, 18-34 and 18-49 listener demographics. Detroit's other rockers were hit hard, particularly WWWW (W4), which, having been a top 10-rated station just a year earlier (and had ranked as high as #2 in the spring 1979 ratings), had tumbled completely out of the top 20 by the fall of 1980. In December 1980, just days after the fall Arbiton ratings were released, W4 changed formats from rock to country, and terminated morning man Howard Stern, whose show had been crushed by his WLLZ competition of Jon Larson and Jeff Young. W4 would do much better as a country station, climbing back into the top 10 by the spring of 1981.

WABX 99.5 would change to a CHR-oriented format in 1982, leaving WLLZ and 101 WRIF to go head-to-head in the AOR format for the rest of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, with WLLZ occasionally beating heritage rocker WRIF in the 12+ ratings. In an Ann Arbor News article in 1987, Michael Solon, the station's general manager at the time of the rock format's launch, credited WLLZ's success to the perception that the station featured less chatter and took a more mass-appeal, hit-oriented approach to its music than competing stations: "It was a wonderful time, making such a splash with an all-new station. I was no genius. It just figured that if the other stations were awfully chatty and going four songs deep on albums, we would do well by playing album-music hits."

In 1988, WLLZ also introduced the nation's first weekly sports talk show on an FM rock and roll station, "The Sunday Sports Albom" hosted by Mitch Albom.