WJMY-TV
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| Allen Park, Michigan | |
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| Channels | Analog: 20 |
| Affiliations | Independent |
| Owner | Dr. Robert M. Parr (1962-64); Richard Eaton (1964-70) (Triangle Broadcasting (1962-64); United Broadcasting (1964-70)) |
| Founded | 1962 |
| First air date | 1962 |
| Last air date | 1963 |
| Sister station(s) | WOOK-TV, 1964-70 |
WJMY-TV is a defunct television station based in Allen Park, Michigan assigned to channel 20 for the Detroit market following the demise of Ann Arbor's WPAG-TV December 1957.
For many years, it was widely believed that WJMY never made it to the air at all except for a test signal consisting merely of a card displaying its calls and city-of-license in 1968. Additional research by Victor Edward Swanson and K. M. Richards in 2015, however, revealed this to be incorrect: WJMY was actually on the air for just over eight months in 1962-63.
Rev. Dr. Robert M. Parr, founder of the Gilead Baptist Church, filed for the channel 62 allocation in Allen Park on September 20, 1960 (as well as an FM station at 98.3). Both were to carry his initials in their call letters as WRMP-FM/TV, except that one month after the FM permit was issued he made a deal to acquire the construction permit for a higher-powered station in Detroit proper on 98.7 and moved his initials there (the Detroit station went to air in 1961 as WBFG). Since FCC rules at the time disallowed common use of call letters between stations with different cities of license, channel 62 was renamed WJMY. Parr then filed to move channel 20 from Ann Arbor to Allen Park, modifying his permit to operate on that channel.
On October 7, 1962, WJMY began operation and the Detroit Free Press began including its listings. Station manager Henry Vanden Bosch stated channel 20 was only operating two hours nightly (7:00 to 9:00pm) with "travel and information films", augmented by a weekly broadcast of the 1953 series The Air Force Story. On Sundays, WJMY aired a block of "gospel films" from noon to 2:00pm. They also aired such one-off specials as Trial For Tara, a production of the Catholic Church about St. Patrick's victory over paganism in Ireland, and the US Navy-produced The John Glenn Story to commemorate the first anniversary of his spaceflight. (Also, Dr. Parr's son-in-law, Theron Spurr, offered five-minute sermons right before sign-off each night.) Ratings were minuscule, though, and on June 10, 1963, WJMY went dark.
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