All of the local TV stations have a slogan, but they don’t always live up to the branding.
WXIX-TV boasts that its news is “always local, always on,” yet anyone who watches Fox 19’s 10 a.m. news or the seven-and-a-half-hour Fox 19 NOW marathon morning news — spoiler alert! — knows it’s not “always local.”
WKRC-TV brands itself as “Local 12,” but there are plenty of non-local stories about the president, tariffs, tsunamis, floods, and wildfires.
But WLWT, which promotes itself as “Leading The Way,” actually lives up to its branding when it comes to celebrating its rich history. WLWT-TV General Manager Branden Frantz created the WLWT-TV Hall of Fame for the station’s 75th anniversary in 2023, and it inducted new members in 2024 and last week.
The Class of 2025 included Colleen Sharp, Bill Myers, and Peter Grant, who worked with WLWT-TV’s biggest stars, Ruth Lyons and Bob Braun, in the Golden Age of Live TV in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. During their careers, Sharp and Myers also crossed paths with David Letterman, Jeopardy! announcer Johnny Gilbert, and legendary TV writer Rod Serling.
Sharp, hired in 1966, sang on the Paul Dixon Show, Midwestern Hayride, Lyons’s weekday noon Fifty-Fifty Club and its successor, the Bob Braun Show.
Myers started at WLWT-TV in 1952, a week before his 18th birthday, as a “prop boy” for Lyons's show. He is best known from the Bob Braun Show as the announcer and TV weatherman reporting from the roof of the COMEX building at Ninth and Elm streets, across from WLWT-TV’s Crosley Square studios in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Grant, who died in 1990, was hired by WLW-AM as a newsman in 1932 and lived in a boardinghouse here along with WLW singer Eddie Albert (later the star of TV’s Green Acres). Grant was Cincinnati’s first TV news anchor. He delivered a newscast on WLWT-TV after it signed on in 1948 — a year before WKRC-TV or WCPO-TV debuted.
You can do the math. WKRC-TV and WCPO-TV turned 75 last year — and neither has bothered with establishing a Hall of Fame to honor its past stars.
Which makes the WLWT-TV Hall of Fame extra special — for both the Golden Age veterans, and the three other inductees: retired chief photographer Ron Schmidt, retired sportscaster George Vogel, and 1990’s salesman Michael J. Hayes, now the president of Hearst Television.
Inductees the first two years included entertainers Lyons, Braun, and Dixon; producer Dick Murgatroyd; WLW founder Powel Crosley Jr.; talk host Jerry Springer; newsmen Courtis Fuller, John London, and Bill Hager; salesman Jerry Imsicke; and executive Walter Bartlett.
“I salute WLW’s commitment to its rich broadcasting history,” said Myers, 91.
Myers’s first tasks included sitting under Lyons’s “magic” desk on her live noon show and handing her sponsor cards through a small door. Once he thought it would be clever to punch open the door — and he spilled Lyons’s glass of water. He feared he would be fired, but he stayed on the payroll until 1982.
While working at the station, Myers took classes at the old College of Music Downtown. One of his instructors was Serling, who started his career at WLW in 1950, nearly a decade before creating The Twilight Zone. (He recently was interviewed by an author writing a book on Serling.) Myers also worked as an engineer and cameraman in his Channel 5 career.
The Golden Age of TV stars, Myers says, didn’t think they were doing anything extraordinary back when most daytime programming was live.
“To us it was just going to work and trying to put on a show with your colleagues,” he said at the induction ceremony July 30.
Sharp, 85, grew up in tiny Economy, Indiana (population 300), between Richmond and Muncie. She’d walk home from school for lunch while watching Lyons’ Fifty-Fifty Club with her mother.
“I said, ‘One day I’m going to be on that show,” ‘ she said at her induction. “I did not want to be on Broadway. I didn’t not want to go to Hollywood. I only wanted to be on the television.”
Her first big break was singing on Dayton sister station WLWD-TV (Channel 2) in 1963. She was retained when Gilbert — still the voice of Jeopardy! at 97 — took over the show in 1965. Not long after that, Dixon “stole” her for flagship WLWT-TV in 1966 to work on his weekday show, Midwestern Hayride, and Lyons’s Fifty-Fifty Club, which became the Bob Braun Show. All were carried live on sister stations in Dayton, Columbus, and Indianapolis in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s.
Last year she ran across the number she had for Gilbert, who left Dayton in 1967. “I called him, and he sounded great! Of course he does, he has that great announcer’s voice,” Sharp told me. “He was surprised to hear from me. I told him, ‘I’m surprised your number is the same!’ “
When Paul Dixon did a week of live remotes from Indianapolis in the late 1960s, Sharp was asked to do an interview on an FM radio station at the outskirts of town by the morning DJ. It was Letterman, who once told me that Dixon was his TV idol, and he watched the show every morning on Indianapolis TV.
“I get there, and he had long shoulder-length hair, a mustache, and a big space in the middle of his teeth. He was a nobody then — except as an Indianapolis personality,” Sharp told me several years ago.
Sharp, who was Dixon’s sidekick with singer Bonnie Lou (Okum), was very touched to become a Hall of Famer.
“I never had my own show. I was just there to make others look good,” she said.
Vogel, a Georgetown High School graduate, started at Channel 5 as an intern while studying at the University of Cincinnati. He was hired in 1984 — several months before Bob Braun was canceled — and retired in 2024.
It turns out that the Friday night “Blitz 5 Tailgate” high school football coverage, to which Vogel contributed for years, was created by Hayes. Now a senior vice president at Hearst, which owns WLWT-TV, and president of Hearst Television, Hayes was general sales manager at Channel 5 in 1997 after Gannett sold the station to Hearst-Argyle. He was 31.
“I was just a kid from Indiana thrilled to have a job there,” Hayes said.
In his 39 years at Channel 5, Schmidt photographed everything from spot news and presidential inaugurations to Super Bowls, World Series, and other sports. He once filmed a reporter skiing down a slope by skiing behind him with a video camera on his shoulder.
“We are very lucky,” Schmitt said. “There are not many stations in this country — or the world — which would do something like this to recognize its history. I very humbly say thank you for this great honor.”
I also applaud WLWT for leading the way among Cincinnati stations in honoring the city’s rich television history.
Too bad WCPO-TV, WKRC-TV, and WXIX don’t do more to recognize their past personalities such as newscaster Al Schottelkotte; variety host-turned-news anchor Nick Clooney; weatherman-turned-variety host Ira Joe Fisher; anchors Edie Magnus, Carol Williams, John Lomax, Clyde Gray, Rob Braun, Cammy Dierking, and Tricia Macke; meteorologists Tim Hedrick, Steve Horstmeyer, and Tony Sands; sportscasters Dennis Janson and John Popovich; and entertainers "Uncle Al" and Wanda Lewis, Bob Shreve, Larry Smith, and Dotty Mack.
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