Sports
WKBD produced and broadcast Detroit Red Wings hockey telecasts from 1965 to 2003, with a 2-year hiatus in the '80s when they were on another station. Detroit Tigers baseball games were broadcast on the station from 1994 to 2005, while Detroit Pistons basketball games were broadcast from 1972 to May 2004. Detroit Lions preseason football was broadcast 1992 to 1996 and again from 2004 to 2008. The station also produced occasional Pre- and Post-game shows for all four professional teams. WKBD aired special coverage of the Red Wings' Stanley Cup Celebration and parade ceremonies in 1997 and 1998, as well as carrying the final Tigers game played at Tiger Stadium on September 27, 1999. WMYD held the rights to the Pistons from 2004–2008, and WJBK occasionally aired Tigers games from 2004-2007. All three teams are now exclusively on Fox Sports Detroit. WKBD was Detroit's first FOX affiliate, from 1986-1994 (for much of the 1994 NFL season, WKBD was the primary station for the Lions; the team's last game on WKBD was the December 10 game at the New York Jets, with the games moving back to WJBK the next week).
On occasion (and regularly during preseason games), WKBD produced broadcasts of Detroit Lions football games, as well as Detroit Pistons basketball games, until the late 1980s when the Pistons decided to produce and distribute the games itself, with WKBD responsible for advertising. Both were simulcasted to other stations across Michigan, on a select list of affiliate stations.
On April 16, 2008, it was announced that its sister station, CBS O&O WWJ TV, will be the new home of Detroit Lions exhibition games. The departure of long time sports producer Toby Cunningham (a part of CBS' budget cuts at all its O&Os) closes the book on the storied history of sports coverage by WKBD. WWJ-TV broadcasted preseason Lions games until 2010, when WXYZ-TV was signed as their new flagship station.
Read more about this topic: WKBD-TV
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behaviour, attire, grace, learning and all their words aimeth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)