WJLB-FM, along with it’s sister station WJLB-AM; were owned by Booth American Company from when John Lord Booth had purchased the AM station in 1939 as WMBC-AM (the call letters had stood for Michigan Broadcast Company) and had changed the call letters to WJLB-AM to stand for Mr. Booth’s initials; and the FM station, which can be traced back to the year 1940 when Mr. Booth had applied for a license to operate a station on the newly allocated FM band
WJLB-AM was best-known for being the home of Martha Jean “The Queen” Steinberg, who had arrived at the AM station after having spent the past 3 years at WCHB-AM after having in turn, arrived there in 1963 from having worked many years prior at WDIA-AM in Memphis, Tennessee (since 1954, to be exact). At the time Ms. Steinberg had arrived at WCHB-AM in 1963, she had just divorced her husband Luther Steinberg and she had taken her 3 daughters to Detroit with her.
In 1941, John Lord Booth had put on the air experimental station W49D; the second FM station in the entire state of Michigan after crosstown rival The Detroit News had put APEX radio station W8XWJ (which later became W45D, WENA-FM; and by 1948-WWJ-FM). W49D was later granted commercial service in 1945, assigned to operate on 94.5 KHz and was also assigned call letters WLOU-FM, was assigned to operate on 97.9 KHz with the call letters WJLB-FM for the first time around, was assigned the call letters WBRI-FM sometime in the 1950’s, was assigned the WMZK-FM call letters sometime in the early 1960’s with an Ethnic format, and last; had swapped call letters and formats with WJLB-AM in 1980.
When Booth Broadcasting had swapped the formats of both their AM and FM stations in 1980, they had dropped Martha Jean Steinberg’s radio show in the process; leaving Ms. Steinberg without a radio home for 2 years until she would eventually purchase WMZK-AM outright from Booth Broadcasting in 1982, and change the call letters to WQBH-AM/
The call letters WQBH stand for two things: The Queen Broadcasts Here and Welcome Queen Back Home, in reference to “The Queen” being Martha Jean Steinberg’s nickname.
Booth Broadcasting would merge with another company called Broadcast Alchemy to form a newly merged company called Secret Communications, which would be very short lived as just a few months following the merger, the Booth family would sell their only station by this time-WJLB-FM to Chancellor Media in 1994. Chancellor would eventually be folded into Clear Channel Communications.
The Booth family had also owned a number of newspapers throughout the United States-being the Grand Rapids Press, Flint Journal, Muskegon Chronicle, Kalamazoo Gazette, Saginaw News, Bay City Times Jackson Citizen- Patriot; and the Ann Arbor News.
Last, as previously mentioned; the Booth family had also owned a number of other radio stations throughout the country-being WBBC-AM in Flint, Michigan; WSGW-AM in Saginaw, Michigan; WIBM-AM in Jackson, Michigan; and WJMO-AM/WXEN-FM in Cleveland.
Below are news articles about Martha Jean Steinberg, and when WJLB-AM chiefly became an R&B/Soul-formatted radio station in the late 1960’s:
The commercial below from 1988, with all of the bodybuilding and fitness gurus in this commercial; is concurrent with how much modern NASCAR drivers Jimmie Johnson, Elliott Sadler, Kevin Harvick, Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears, Johnny Sauter; and Regan Smith, Indy Car driver James Hinchcliffe; and Formula 1 drivers Nick Heidfeld and Jenson Button all are.
The commercial below drives home the point that the NASCAR, Indy Car, and Formula 1 drivers mentioned above need to be transformed from being fit and muscular to being fat and overweight.
As the music that WJLB-FM has played ever since it had swapped formats with WJLB-AM/WMZK-AM in 1980 is the music that Elliott Sadler, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin, Casey Mears, Johnny Sauter, James Hinchcliffe, Nick Heidfeld; and Johnny Sauter all listen to, this commercial also drives home the point that ALL of the NASCAR, Indy Car, and Formula 1 drivers mentioned above need to be forced to listen to Adult Contemporary, Jazz, and Easy Listenng music.
Matthew Parij 