, channel 8, is an
Owned-and-operated television station of the
News Corporation -owned
Fox Broadcasting Company , located in
Cleveland, Ohio . Its studios are located northeast of downtown Cleveland, near the shore of
Lake Erie , and its transmitter is located in
Parma, Ohio .
On
June 13 ,
2007 , the News Corporation announced its intent to sell WJW, along with eight other Fox owned-and-operated stations.
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The station launched on affiliate, and later became a secondary provider of
ABC programs, sharing that affiliation with
WEWS (channel 5). Following an
FCC -dictated realignment of VHF channels in the Midwest, the station moved to channel 8 on
December 10 ,
1953 . Its former channel 9 allocation was moved to
Steubenville and given to a new station, WSTV-TV (now
WTOV ); the switch took place only two weeks before WSTV-TV went on the air.
In 1954 Empire Coil sold two of its television interests -- WXEL and
KPTV in
Portland, Oregon , the United States' first
UHF station -- to
Storer Broadcasting . The new owners also changed the station's call sign to to match new sister stations WJW radio (850 kHz., now
WKNR ) and WJW-FM (104.1 MHz., now
WQAL ).
George B. Storer , the company's founder and president, was a member of the board of directors of
CBS , and used his influence to take the CBS-TV affiliation from WEWS in
1955 . The WJW stations later moved into the former Esquire Theater building at 1630
Euclid Avenue , near Playhouse Square.
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 , previously at
WAKR radio in
Akron , worked for WXEL starting in 1949. Freed hosted an afternoon movie and performed live commercials for several years before he became the self-titled ''
Father Of "
Rock And Roll "'' while as an evening host on WJW radio, before moving on to radio jobs in
New York City .
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 also broadcasted 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
1960 , WJW-TV became the broadcast rights holder of the
Cleveland Indians . Channel 8's partnership with the team continued until
1979 , when the Indians moved to then-independent station
WUAB (channel 43).
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. Daly and Adair reigned as Cleveland's top news team until
1968 , when Daly was hired away by
WLS-TV in
Chicago . Adair remained at channel 8 until the mid-1970s, when he joined
WKYC-TV (channel 3), which was then owned by
NBC .
One of the most memorable programs produced by WJW-TV 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 channel 8 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 ''Hoolihan and Big Chuck'': "Hoolihan" being Bob Wells who did the station weather forecasts as "Hoolihan 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, to become co-host of a daily Christian TV program with his wife, Barbara, his position was filled by local jeweler and
Little Person John Rinaldi who had also previously performed in skits on the show.
Mainly airing on Friday nights before moving to Saturday nights in the early 1990s, the ''
Big Chuck And Lil' John Show '' had been the only locally produced television show in the Cleveland market that was primarily entertainment, that is, not news or informational. The show ended its run on
June 16 ,
2007 following Schodowski's official retirement.
The station moved to its present studios at 5800 South Marginal Road on
November 2 ,
1975 . While WJW-FM was sold in the late 1960s, Storer kept WJW-AM until it was sold in late
1976 . The AM station's new owners were allowed to keep the WJW call letters, forcing channel 8 to change theirs (at the time, the FCC did not allow radio and television stations with different owners to share the same call letters; this is not the case today). Thus, channel 8 became on
April 22 ,
1977 , with the new calls being a variant of WJW.
At the same time, the station hired former WKYC-TV news anchor
Virgil Dominic as its news and public affairs director (a position which he held until
1995 ), and also began to pump considerable money into its news operation. The name of the newscasts even underwent a transition as well, going from ''City Camera News'' to ''
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. On
September 16 ,
1985 , it regained its historic calls as WJW radio changed its call letters following another ownership transaction.
After Storer Broadcasting was bought out by
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 1985, the station underwent a series of ownership changes. KKR sold the stations to
Gillett Communications in
1987 ; shortly thereafter
SCI Television was spun-off from Gillett to take over the stations after Gillett's bankruptcy.
New World Communications purchased WJW-TV and the other SCI Television stations in
1993 .
Like most of its sister stations, channel 8 pre-empted portions of the CBS schedule, usually the late morning daytime shows. In the 1990s, WJW-TV and its fellow New World stations prepared to launch their own morning newscasts, and as a result, channel 8 began to pre-empt ''
CBS This Morning '' as well. The station also gained notoriety in 1993 by being one of the few CBS affiliates to tape-delay the ''
Late Show With David Letterman '' by half an hour in favor of ''
Murphy Brown '' reruns. Despite the preemptions, CBS was generally satisfied with WJW, which was one of the network's strongest affiliates.
In September 1994, as part of a deal between New World and the
News Corporation , WJW-TV dropped CBS and became a Fox affiliate
