Dr. William V. Banks, a freemason, established his own order in Detroit, calling it International Free and Accepted Modern Masons, and decided to use the airwaves to communicate with the large urban audience of the city. He bought a radio station in 1961 — WQTI 107.5FM — renamed WGPR and changed the format to R&B, soul and Gospel to make it more appealing to the city’s African Americans. A decade later he would do the same with television.

On this day, September 29, in 1975, WGPR-TV went on the air, Detroit’s Channel 62. Bank’s purchase made WGPR the first television station ever to be wholly owned by an African American.

Banks bought the television station to complement the radio one, and ran programs from CBS and NBC, and their own programming that appealed to the urban African American community. The call letters WGPR stood for “Where God’s Presence Radiates”, and the station did run some religious programs.