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WJW, also known on-air as "FOX8", is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, broadcasting on VHF channel 8. Its transmitter is located in Parma, Ohio. WJW is currently the only network O&O among the "Big 6" networks in the Cleveland area.
History
The station launched in 1949 on channel 9 under the call sign WXEL, as a DuMont Television Network affiliate owned by Empire Coil. The station also carried ABC programs. It moved to channel 8 in 1953 in order to increase its power without interfering with WSTV-TV (now WTOV) in Steubenville. The channel switch took place on December 10, 1953; two weeks before WSTV-TV went on the air.
In 1954 WXEL was sold to Storer Broadcasting, which changed its call sign to WJW-TV (to match WJW-AM 850, which the company also bought). Storer had a seat on CBS' board of directors, and used his influence to wrest the CBS affiliation from WEWS-TV in 1955. The WXEL call letters are now used by a PBS station in West Palm Beach, Florida.
In its early years, the station lagged behind its competitors in producing local programming, perhaps because its studio was located at the transmitter in Parma, while the other stations had studios downtown. A young Alan Freed worked for the station starting in 1949, hosting an afternoon movie and doing live commercials, several years before he became the father of rock and roll. Soupy Sales, then known as Soupy Hines, had a weekday variety program called Soup's On where he started his pie-in-the-face routines.
The station could boast a popular and unique 11:00 p.m. newscast, the Sohio Reporter, featuring a Western Reserve University speech professor named Warren Guthrie who delivered the entire newscast from memory, speaking directly into the camera long before the days of the Teleprompter.
In 1964 WJW-TV was one of the first stations to use a two-man news anchor team, Joel Daly and Doug Adair, in the studio together. The newscast was called City Camera News, and reporters were equipped with Polaroid cameras to photograph news events, so that pictures could be quickly broadcast when they returned to the studio. Station programming also featured Adventure Road hosted by Jim Doney, which presented filmed travelogues narrated by the filmmakers.
One of the most memorable programs produced by WJW was the Friday late night horror movie hosted by "Ghoulardi", a character created by Ernie Anderson. Wearing a bad fright wig and phony beard and a pair or sunglasses with only one lens, he interacted with the movies and created an on-going patter and rehearsed skits during the movie breaks. The program began in February 1963 and created a generation of fans who could recite catch phrases such as "Turn Blue," "Stay Sick," "Camera Four" and "Over Dere." Before Ghoulardi, Anderson had a weekday morning program on WJW-TV starting in 1961 called Ernie's Place with sidekick Tim Conway that included skits reminiscent of Bob and Ray.
When Ernie Anderson left for Hollywood for lucrative voice-over work in September 1966, Friday night movie hosting was inherited by "Houlihan and Big Chuck," "Houlihan" being Bob Wells who did the station weather forecasts as "Houlihan the Weatherman," and "Big Chuck" being Chuck Schodowski a station engineer who had risen to director and had appeared in some of Ghoulardi's skits. After Bob Wells departed for Florida in September 1979, his position was filled by local jeweler and little person John Rinaldi who had also previously performed in skits on the show. Today, the Big Chuck and Lil' John Show is the only locally produced television show in the Cleveland that is primarily entertainment, that is, not news or informational.
Storer sold WJW-AM in 1976, and WJW-TV became WJKW-TV. However, on September 16, 1985, it reverted to the WJW calls after the radio station changed its call letters to WRMR. Soon after the change to WJKW, the station beefed up its news operation, calling itself "Cleveland's Own NewsCenter 8." Within a year, channel 8 had overtaken longtime leader WEWS as the highest-rated news station in Cleveland--a lead it kept for almost 20 years.
After Storer Broadcasting was bought out by KRR in 1984, the station underwent a series of ownership changes, as KRR sold the stations to Gillett Communications in 1987, and SCI TV purchased the stations from Gillett's bankruptcy. New World Communications purchased WJW and the other former Storer television stations in 1993.
WJW pre-empted portions of the CBS schedule, usually the late morning daytime shows. In the 1990s, WJW and its fellow New World stations prepared to launch their own morning newscasts, and as a result, WJW began to pre-empt CBS This Morning as well. Despite the preemptions, CBS was generally satisfied with WJW, which was one of the network's strongest affiliates.
In November 1994, as part of a deal between New World and News Corporation, WJW dropped CBS and became a Fox affiliate. (Fox Kids programming would move to WBNX, while CBS went to former Fox affiliate WOIO.) Despite becoming a Fox station, WJW at first remained a popular choice for TV news in Cleveland and WJW kept its longtime NewsCenter 8 identification. The station expanded its news production to over 40 hours a week. It initially filled local non-news time with such programming as low budget syndicated first-run talk/reality shows and off-network sitcoms.
However, both Cleveland viewers and WJW realized a major weakness with the new affiliation in April 1995 at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. When the news broke, all of the other stations in Cleveland were able to switch to national network coverage of the attacks. However, at the time Fox had no news division and therefore WJW could not offer coverage. Additionally, due to lack of feeds, WJW could offer only limited recap coverage of the events on their newscasts. The whole ordeal resulted in a major ratings decline for WJW and many viewers moved back to WEWS. This literally left WJW in a daze, and the news department was unsure where to go next. Later that year, WJW adopted a hard-hitting format dropping NewsCenter 8 and began using the phrase "ei8ht is News" for the title of their newscasts, using an "ei8ht" logo from the 1970s. However, in many people's minds the phrase was used on the station a little too often and even more people moved away from WJW's newscasts. One triumph for WJW was the morning newscast. Without a FOX national morning show, WJW could produce an all local 3.5 hour morning newscast. Many Cleveland viewers preferred the local show over the other stations' national broadcasts. This was especially true since WEWS' long-standing "Morning Exchange" was preempted until 9AM around the same time of the Fox/CBS switch. With the exception of a brief period from late 2004 through early 2005, "Fox 8 News in the Morning" has constantly been Cleveland's top rated morning newscast since the time of its debut.
In 1996, Fox bought the New World stations, making WJW a Fox O&O (owned-and-operated station). Fox added stronger syndicated shows as well as stronger off-network sitcoms to the programming mix. Since 1997, WJW has been known as "Fox 8", however on their website, and at the end of their newscast they still use the "New World Communications of Ohio, Inc" moniker.
The station retook the top position from WEWS in 2001. By mid-2002, all of WJW's newscasts placed first. This continued until January 2004, when viewers began turning away from WJW's hard-hitting style to the more traditional WKYC-TV. Even Fox 8 in the Morning lost its top stop to WKYC's morning newscast for about 2 months. As a result of the overall decline, WJW replaced long time 6PM and 10PM lead anchors Wilma Smith and Tim Taylor with Bill Martin and Stacy Bell at 10PM, hoping the two would attract a younger audience to the program. Fox 8 News at 10 is now the highest overall rated newscast in Cleveland and FOX 8 in the Morning also places first in its time slot. WJW falls behind both WEWS and WOIO at noon, places second at 5PM, and fiercely battles for second place at 6PM with WKYC behind WEWS. Its newscasts do however easily win in the important 18-49 demographic. FOX 8 News is also clearly the top choice for news among the majority young adults in high school and college, thus giving it a promising future.
WJW has long prided itself on its homegrown talent; many of its personalities have been with the station for 20 years or more. For instance, Dick Goddard has been chief weatherman since 1966, and Tim Taylor has been the main anchor since 1977. On November 22, 2005, Taylor announced during the 6PM newscast that he will be retiring after the December 23 broadcast. Taylor had been WJW's lead anchor for 28 years, the second longest amount of time of anyone in Cleveland behind only WEWS's Ted Henry. Taylor had previously worked at WEWS first as a consumer reporter and then as a weekend anchor. In 1977 he moved to WJW and played a vital role in starting NewsCenter 8.
Past slogans have included:
"You Sure Look Like a Winner!" (from the early 1980s; the slogan was used in a series of promos using Frank Gari's "The One 4/For All")
"Proud to be Your News" (from the mid-to-late 1980s)
"Cleveland's Own" (possibly used since the late 1980s)
"ei8ht is News" (from the mid-90s, not too long after the switch to Fox)
Newscasts
WJW is one of the few stations in the US that produces its newscasts in 720P high definition. Its newscasts (known as "Fox 8 News") are seen at the following times on weekdays:
- FOX8 News at 5AM - 5:00-5:30AM ET, with Wayne Dawson and Tracy McCool
- FOX8 News in the Morning - 5:30-8:00AM ET, with Wayne Dawson and Tracy McCool
- FOX8 News at 8AM - 8:00-9:00AM ET, with Wayne Dawson and Tracy McCool
- FOX8 News at Noon - 12:00-12:30PM ET, with Todd Meany
- FOX8 News at 5 - 5:00-6:00PM ET, with Bill Martin and Stacey Bell
- FOX8 News at 6 - 6:00-7:00PM ET, with ??? and Wilma Smith
- FOX8 News at 10 - 10:00-11:00PM ET, with Bill Martin and Stacey Bell
On weekends:
- FOX8 News at 8AM - 8:00-9:00AM ET on Sunday, with Kevin Freeman
- FOX8 News at 6 - 6:00-6:30PM ET, with Lou Maglio and Suzanne Stratford
- FOX8 News at 10 - 10:00-11:00PM ET, with Lou Maglio and Suzanne Stratford
Notable Former Station Personalities
Contact Info
Address:
5800 South Marginal Road
Cleveland, Ohio, 44103
External links
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