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WCHB (1340 Hertz) is a commercial radio AM broadcasting radio station licensed to Royal Oak, Michigan, and serving the Detroit metropolitan area. It broadcasts an urban gospel radio format and is owned by Crawford Broadcasting. The station is a reporter to Billboard's Nielsen/BDS Gospel airplay panel. The and offices are shared with co-owned WMUZ, WMUZ-FM (which simulcasts WCHB on its second digital subchannel) and WRDT, on Radio Plaza in Ferndale, Michigan.
WCHB broadcasts in the HD format. It is powered at 1,000 , using a directional antenna in the daytime. The transmitter is on West Woodward Heights Boulevard in Ferndale, near Interstate 75. Programming is also heard on 99-watt FM translator W244DL at 96.7 Hertz in Detroit.
The original owners of WAGM were a father and son, Alexander G. Miller (a former mayor of Royal Oak), and his oldest son Robert. The two also operated the A.G. Miller Furniture and Radio Shop."A.G. Miller Dies at Age 65." Royal Oak (MI) Daily Tribune, February 26, 1943, pp. 1,8. The WAGM call sign were requested. They stood for the initials of Alexander G. Miller. In its first several years, the station had 50 watts and broadcast three nights a week."Radiophone Broadcasting Stations." Radio Digest, January 15, 1927, p. 11.
It was at WEXL in 1962 that 16-year-old staff engineer Ed Wolfrum incorporated his newly created passive direct interface box – later known at the "Wolfbox" when he went to "Motown" – as an interface from the high-impedance output of church PA systems to the microphone input of broadcast audio mixers. This "DI unit" later influenced what became known at "The Motown Sound" as a more transparent alternative to recording instrument amplifiers.
In the early 1960s, it tried a Top 40 format with limited success. So WEXL expanded its country music programming to a full-time format in 1963, the first station in metro Detroit to do so. The station was successful for a number of years. A 1966 Billboard magazine poll showed WEXL as the most influential country station in the southeastern Michigan area by far. However, the station got competition in late 1969 when WJBK 1500 (now WLQV) flipped from Top 40 to a Modern Country sound as WDEE.
In 2016, WEXL added an FM translator, fed by sister station WMUZ-FM's HD Radio digital subchannel. It began WEXL programming on 96.7 MHz at 99 watts. The signal is highly directional to the north, to protect the more powerful CHYR-FM in Leamington, Ontario, and WNUC-LP to the east, both of which are also on 96.7 MHz.
On October 1, 2017, WEXL's call sign was changed to WCHB, as Crawford Broadcasting moved the call letters from its newly acquired AM 1200 WMUZ. Ironically, the WCHB calls were first used in 1956 at 1440 on the AM dial, which is now WCHB's competitor station, WMKM.
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