WLW founder Powel Crosley Jr., zany 1960s daytime TV star Paul Dixon, longtime producer Dick Murgatroyd, veteran reporter John London and his late newsroom boss Bill Hager comprise the second group inducted into the WLWT Hall of Fame.
London, a former radio reporter hired by the TV news department in 1984, says he’s the classic example of “which one of these don’t belong with the others?”
The modest London grew up in Middletown watching the Paul Dixon Show and other programs directed and produced by Murgatroyd on the station that was part of the Cincinnati broadcasting empire started by Crosley 100 years ago.
“When General Manager Branden Frantz called me in and told me about this, I was astounded. I was floored,” London says.
London is especially humbled to be entering the WLWT Hall of Fame with Hager, a longtime colleague and boss. News 5’s managing editor suffered a fatal heart attack while bicycling two years ago at age 51.
“Every piece of copy read on the air went through Bill’s hands. He had a nose for news. The younger staffers — producers and reporters — were mentored by Bill. It was common for him to be on the phone with reporters four to six to eight times a day,” London says.
“It is a tremendous honor to be inducted with Bill because he was so integral to the daily News 5 report, and to have worked alongside people like Bill and Courtis Fuller.”
Fuller, who retired from anchoring Aug. 25, was inducted into the first WLWT Hall of Fame class last year with talk show hosts Ruth Lyons, Bob Braun and Jerry Springer; executive Walter Bartlett; and salesman Jerry Imsicke.
“The great thing about the WLWT Hall of Fame is that it’s a real mix of recognizable faces and those from behind the scenes that you might not know,” London says. “It’s nice to have the Hall of Fame to note the station’s history and all of WLWT-TV’s firsts, such as the Cincinnati’s first TV station and the first NBC affiliate.”
Many of those firsts were made possible by Crosley’s leadership or standards. The Cincinnati native got into broadcasting because he wanted to build a cheaper radio set for his son in 1921. He became the “Henry Ford of radios” and started a station in 1922 for his customers to hear.
That grew into the Crosley Broadcasting empire which included the nation’s first 500,000-watt commercial radio station; the manufacturing of a variety of consumer products and appliances; and Cincinnati's first successful television broadcasting experiments as W8XCT in 1946. He also bought the Cincinnati Reds in 1934.
Unfortunately, Crosley sold his broadcasting company to AVCO (Aviation Corporation) in 1945, before the dawn of television in 1948. He died March 28, 1961, six months before the Reds won the National League pennant.
Dixon presided over a crazy, unpredictable live daytime show from 1955 to 1974 weekday mornings on WLWT-TV and simulcast on AVCO Broadcasting sister stations in Indianapolis, Dayton and Columbus.
His most famous stunt was devoting the entire 90 minutes to a wedding ceremony for two rubber chickens, Pauline and Harry, on March 11, 1969. Dixon’s antics inspired young David Letterman, an Indianapolis weatherman who watched the Paul Dixon Show on old WLWI-TV (Channel 13) in Indianapolis.
An Iowa native, Dixon came to Cincinnati from Chicago in January 1945 at age 27 as a newsman for WCPO-AM. He transitioned to television when WCPO-TV debuted 75 years ago, on July 26, 1949. He began by mostly pantomiming to records with Wanda Lewis and Dotty Mack, and became so popular that his show aired nationally on ABC and the DuMont network. He moved to New York in 1954 to do a show on DuMont, but returned to Cincinnati after it was canceled in 1955 to work at WLWT-TV. The show ended when he suffered a fatal heart attack at age 56 on Dec. 28, 1974.
Murgatroyd was directing shows at Columbus sister station WLWC-TV (now WCMH-TV) when summoned to the mothership to produce and direct WLWT-TV’s legendary shows hosted by Lyons, Braun and Dixon. He worked 16 years for AVCO until 1980, after Dixon and Midwestern Hayride left the air, and four years before Channel 5 canceled the slimmed-down Braun Show.
For years “Murgy” was the keeper of the flame for the Braun/Lyons legacy, organizing many reunion appearances with Nancy James, Rob Reider, Colleen Sharp and the late Bonnie Lou (Okum), Marian Spelman, Elsa Sule and bandleader Cliff Lash.
Murgatroyd also was active in Republican politics as Kenton County Judge Executive (1999-2004) and a deputy chief of staff to Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher (2004-05). He was also a founding faculty member of Northern Kentucky University’s School of Media and Communications, and a member of the NKU Foundation board from 1999 to 2011. He has been director of operations and marketing for Visiting Angels, an in-home non-medical elderly health care service, since 2009.
Hager, the longtime News 5 managing editor who died in 2022, was “the heart and soul of the WLWT-TV newsroom for over 25 years,” according to the station’s announcement. The graduate of Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism led Channel 5’s breaking news coverage on the Goshen tornado, the 2018 mass shooting at the Fifth Third Center Downtown, and other big stories. He also coordinated countless candidate debates for News 5.
Hager was honored with a regional Edward R. Murrow Award and three regional Emmy Awards. He was inducted into the Ohio Valley Emmy Silver Circle in 2023.
London, a Fenwick High School graduate, was recruited from WUBE-AM’s news team by Jerry Springer after they each covered the 1983 Air Canada fire at Greater Cincinnati International Airport.
“I’ve been around long enough to remember Bill Hemmer in sports. And Bob Trumpy and Thommy Brennaman,” says London, who's in his 70s and working part-time.
The WLWT-TV announcement says that London’s “an encyclopedic knowledge of the people and events in Cincinnati” … and "provides meaningful, insightful context to everything he reports on." His “expertise in fair and balanced political reporting has earned him the trust of political campaigns and candidates on both sides of the aisle.”
The five men will be honored in a private ceremony Nov. 14 at Crosley’s Pinecroft estate in Mount Airy.
