WWJ broadcasts full-time with 50,000 watts, using a five-tower directional antenna system during daytime hours, and its entire six-tower array at night.

WWJ is licensed by the Federal Communications Commission to broadcast in the HD Radio format, and is simulcast on the HD-2 sub-channel of sister station WXYT-FM.

On the air for over a century, WWJ began daily broadcasts as the "Detroit News Radiophone" on August 20, 1920, while it operated under an amateur radio license with the call sign "8MK".

WWJ programming was live 24 hours a day until July 2015, when, to cut costs, it began airing pre-recorded reports overnight.

This was the day that the Detroit News inaugurated daily broadcasts from a studio established in the newspaper's headquarters building, located at the corner of Lafayette and 2nd Avenues.

[12] The person most responsible for establishing the Detroit News Radiophone service was the newspaper's vice-president and managing director, William E. Scripps.

[15] However, Clark was ultimately unable to compete with the predatory practices of the United Wireless Telegraph Company, and around 1910 ceased the Great Lakes installations.

In April 1917, due to the entrance of the United States into World War One, it became illegal for private citizens to own radio receivers.

However, William E. Scripps later stated that it was his son's brief reception of an audio transmission that led to his initial investigation whether the News could set up its own broadcasting station.

Sometime during 1919 Scripps and Clark prepared an expansive proposal that was brought before the newspaper's board of directors, requesting financing for the building of a powerful radio station capable of providing service throughout the Great Lakes region.

Beginning in 1907,[22] inventor Lee de Forest had been the leading proponent in the United States trying to introduce organized radio broadcasting, especially by newspapers.

In late 1916 the DeForest Radio Telephone & Telegraph Company began broadcasting a nightly "wireless newspaper" entertainment and news program from its experimental station, 2XG, located in the Highbridge section of New York City.

[31] After Lyons did some initial installation work a financial dispute broke out between him and the newspaper's management, so the News hired Frank Edwards to take over engineering responsibilities.

[33] However, the work was done with very limited publicity, and there are reports that some at the newspaper worried that a radio station might adversely affect paper sales, thus measures were taken to hide the direct involvement of the Scripps family, including originally licensing 8MK in Michael DeLisle Lyons' name.

[34] Scripps' original proposal had envisioned operating on an uncongested frequency somewhere within the 600 to 1600 meter (500 to 187.5 kHz) band normally reserved for government stations.

That evening's debut program featured regularly updated returns for a primary election held that day, plus vocal performances by Lois Johnson.

[37] The front page of the next day's News contained enthusiastic reports attesting to the success of the election night broadcast, which had begun "promptly at 8:10 p. m.", with the newspaper declaring: "The sending of the election returns by The Detroit News Radiophone Tuesday night was fraught with romance and must go down in the history of man's conquest of the elements as a gigantic step in his progress."

Although the initial programs consisted mostly of phonograph records interspersed with news announcements, programming also included fight results from the heavyweight championship bout between Jack Dempsey and Billy Miske on September 6,[40] and, in October, play-by-play accounts as the Cleveland Indians bested the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1920 World Series baseball championship.

[53] The new WBL call sign was randomly assigned, and the News found that listeners had trouble hearing it correctly,[54] so the newspaper asked the regional Radio Inspector, S. W. Edwards, to have it changed to something more phonetically distinct, requesting WKL or WWW.

[57] In late September 1922 a second entertainment wavelength, 400 meters (750 kHz), was made available for "Class B" stations, which had higher powers and better quality equipment and programming.

On March 29, 1941, as part of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA) frequency reassignments, the station moved to 950 kHz, where it remains to this day.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was interested in increasing the number of broadcasting outlets, and began licensing "Apex" stations, operating on higher transmitting frequencies than the original AM band.

On January 29, 1936, the Detroit News activated its own Apex station, W8XWJ, initially broadcasting at 31.6 MHz and relaying WWJ's programs.

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.

The move was not without its disadvantages, as the new site's distance from commercially important Oakland County meant the signal, though adequate for home and outdoor listening, was difficult to receive inside office buildings.

This was on public display after the September 3, 1945, issue of Time magazine included a short note that the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) had recently endorsed WWJ's "claim to being the world's first commercial radio station," by concluding that KDKA "was ten and a half weeks younger.

In addition, numerous qualifiers have been proposed, leading to competing views about the relative importance of factors such as "regular," "continuous," "scheduled", "publicized," "commercial," and "real" — all in a challenging effort to develop a consensus about fast-moving events that were not always well documented.

An example of the existence of competing standards occurred in 1923, when the Department of Commerce stated that "The first broadcasting license was issued in September, 1921",[74] a reference to the September 15, 1921, Limited Commercial license issued to WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts, which appears to be the first to have stated that the station would be used exclusively for broadcasting, while transmitting on 360 meters, which would become the standard "entertainment" wavelength designated by the December 1, 1921, regulations.

"[52] Publicity issued by WWJ regularly listed August 1920 as its founding date, but varied greatly when describing the station's historical significance.

KCBS traced its history to a pre-World War One station operated by Charles "Doc" Herrold in San Jose, California.