The Cincinnati Enquirer has decided to re-do the round of voting for the “TV Anchor Dream Team” contest pairings that were hacked, this time with security measures in place to ensure the purity of the vote.

For those who haven’t been following the drama surrounding the local anchor popularity tournament, eight anchors ranked from one to eight were paired off against each other in four categories: male, female, sports and weather in NCAA style brackets. However, the first round of meteorologists and one sports anchor pairing was hacked by an Internet bot which supercharged the totals for some anchors. One pairing drew more than 105,000 votes in a little more than ten hour period.

The Enquirer’s John Kiesewetter told TVSpy the paper still doesn’t know who hacked the contest or why. Voters will now have to enter a security code for each vote they cast. Read more

Cincinnati NBC affiliate WLWT will celebrate 65 years of broadcasting.

The first Cincinnati broadcast television station went on the air on February 9, 1948. At the time, WLWT was an NBC/ABC/CBS DuMont station on channel 4. One year later it dropped the other networks and stuck with NBC. Three years later moved up one click on the old VHF dial to channel 5.

The station celebrated on-air with cupcakes in the shape of the number “65″ held up by morning show anchors Lisa Cooney, Todd Dykes, meteorologist Randi Rico and traffic reporter Kyla Woods. Read more

A short-staffed weather team has brought Pat Barry back to WLWT, the station where he began his career as a weathercaster, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Barry is a veteran Cincinnati weathercaster who left Fox-affiliated WXIX last year. He began his career at WLWT, the NBC-affiliate, in 1984. He appeared on the Sunday morning newscasts last weekend and will continue to fill-in occasionally going forward, the Enquirer reports.

“It was fun to have Pat back on the WLWT airwaves,” news director Stacy Owen said. “Yes he’s going to be helping us out on the weekend mornings while Randi (Rico) remains on maternity leave, and we continue our search for Valerie’s (Abati) replacement. Steve Norris is still in the wings as well.”