WSYX - TVSpy

A.J. Ross Joins WKYC in Cleveland

Merrill Knox — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:37:02 +0000

A.J. Ross is joining Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC on April 15, according to the station’s Director’s Cut blog.

Ross will be a multimedia journalist at WKYC. She comes from Pittsburgh, where she was most recently a freelance reporter for ABC affiliate WTAE and the New Pittsburgh Courier.

Ross has also worked at WSYX in Columbus as a reporter for the evening newscasts and at WMBF in Myrtle Beach, S.C. as a reporter and anchor.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sinclair Executive Defends Election Special: ‘it was hard-hitting, but it was fair’

Merrill Knox — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:05:42 +0000

Scott Livingston, Sinclair Broadcasting’s vice president of news, is defending the company’s election special against criticism that it presented an anti-Obama agenda. The special — which aired on six stations in battleground states on Monday night — was a “continuation of the engagement of the audience and the process of educating them about the topics,” Livingston tells TVNewsCheck:

“No doubt it was hard-hitting, but it was fair,” said VP of News Scott Livingston, who oversees the local news operations of 42 Sinclair stations. “No one is disputing the facts of the stories that aired in the special.”

Livingston said no partisan agenda was at play in producing the show — nor in choosing the markets in which it was played. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sinclair’s Election Eve Special, Broadcast in Swing States, Criticized as Partisan

Merrill Knox — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:51:07 +0000

Sinclair Broadcast Group is under fire for an election special that aired on stations in battleground states Monday night. The half-hour special — broadcast on the eve of the election in Columbus, Dayton and West Palm Beach — is being criticized as a partisan attack on President Barack Obama. Talking Points Memo, which first reported on the special, writes it “sounded more like Fox News than local news”:

ABC affiliate WSYX in Columbus aired a half-hour “election special” twice on Monday night — first at 6:30 p.m. instead of World News with Diane Sawyer, and later at 11:30 p.m., during the slot normally held by Nightline. Rather than a side by side comparison of the two major party candidates, however, the special featured some of the most partisan criticisms of President Barack Obama, and spent relatively little time examining Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

“Much of the first two years of President Obama’s term in office was spent developing and defending Obamacare — that’s the Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March of 2010,” anchor Bob Kendrick said, near the program’s halfway point. “It supposedly guarantees health care for any U.S. resident who could not obtain good health care otherwise. The biggest parts of the law go into effect in 2014, with other pieces of it rolling out over the next decade. The cost of Obamacare is making many Americans sick to their stomach, though.” continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Investigative Reporter Stephen Dean Lands at WRTV

Merrill Knox — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 12:47:51 +0000

Investigative reporter Stephen Dean is joining WRTV, the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis.

Dean spent 11 years as KPRC in Houston. He left in May to join WSYX, spending just three months at the station before submitting his resignation.

“My ethics have always been completely unbendable, when I feel I cannot do my job with those ethics, then I can’t do my job at that station,” Dean told Houston media blogger Mike McGuff about his departure from the station.

Dean joins WRTV in late October. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Investigative Reporter Stephen Dean to Join WSYX

Merrill Knox — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:16:59 +0000

Stephen Dean, an investigative reporter at KPRC in Houston, will join WSYX in Columbus, according to media reporter Mike McGuff.

Dean joined the Houston NBC-affiliate in 2001. He is an Ohio native that started his career in Columbus radio, eventually joining WCMH as a reporter in 1993.

“I am thrilled to be going home to be doing the exact kind of investigative reporting that I love doing so much in Houston,” Dean told McGuff. “It is the perfect chance to go home.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Jerry Martz Joins Weather Central From WSYX

Merrill Knox — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:14:30 +0000

Chief meteorologist Jerry Martz has left WSYX to join Weather Central, an independent weather data and graphics supplier.

Martz joined WSYX, the ABC-affiliate in Columbus, in 2006. Martz will be based in Pittsburgh, where he spent nine years as a meteorologist at ABC-affiliate WTAE prior to joining WSYX.

“After 6 1/2 years, my last day at WSYX,” Martz wrote on Facebook last week. “Going to miss a lot about the biz, but looking forward to what lies ahead!”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sinclair Creates Virtual Triopoly in Columbus

Andrew Gauthier — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:30:22 +0000

Sinclair Broadcast Group has reportedly inked a shared services agreement to manage Columbus CW-affiliate WWHO, which would give the company a virtual triopoly in the market.

Sinclair owns ABC-affiliate WSYX and manages Fox-affiliate WTTE for Cunningham Broadcasting.

While WSYX and WTTE currently operate out of the same building, Sinclair CFO David Amy told Broadcasting & Cable that there were no immediate plans to move WWHO’s operations into the same complex. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Animal Cruelty Suspect Assaults WSYX Reporter

Andrew Gauthier — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:37:04 +0000

A man accused of animal cruelty was not happy to see Dave Detling when the WSYX reporter showed up on his property last week.

When Detling attempted to ask Shane Dykes about a humane society investigation into the abuse of horses on the property, Dykes bore down on him, grabbing his collar with both hands and shoving him to the ground.

“What part of ‘Get out of my [expletive] yard’ don’t you understand?” the man shouted at Detling as he shoved him (video inside).

“I go deep for my stories and I’m always polite,” Detling wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday, linking to the story. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Tracy McCool Moving to Evenings at WJW

Merrill Knox — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:35:44 +0000

Tracy McCool, who has anchored the WJW morning newscast for eight years, has been named the new evening anchor at the Cleveland Fox-affiliate.

McCool replaces Stacey Bell, who left WJW last month to move to New Jersey with her husband. She will anchor the 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts.

McCool is an Ohio native who began her career at WJW as an intern and worked her way up to a producer at the station. She made the transition to on-air work at WICU in Erie and WSYX-WTTE in Columbus, returning to WJW in 2000.

“We’re all very proud and happy for Tracy,” WJW president and general manager Greg Easterly said in a statement. “Hers is truly a ‘Cleveland’s own’ success story that all of northeast Ohio can appreciate.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sinclair Broadcasting, Insight Cable Fighting Over Carriage Agreement Extension

Merrill Knox — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:12:48 +0000

Sinclair Broadcasting and Insight Cable are facing down a December 31 deadline to renegotiate their existing carriage agreement.

If a deal is not reached by December 31, Sinclair-owned stations that are carried by Insight Cable will be blacked out. The affected stations are WDKY, in Lexington, KY; WSYX-WTTE in Columbus, OH; and WSTR in Cincinnati, OH.

“Like any business, we’re not prepared to sell our product if we can’t get what we think is an appropriate price for the product,” Barry Faber, executive vice president and general counsel for Sinclair, told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Insight is currently being purchased by Time Warner Cable, which had their own retransmission dispute early this year. The Herald-Leader reports the carriage agreement between Sinclair and Insight will expire before that deal is completed.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Ohio Stations Yank Ad Featuring Grandmother

Andrew Gauthier — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:59:39 +0000

Thirty TV stations across Ohio have reportedly pulled a political ad off the air over its controversial use of footage featuring a great-grandmother from Cincinnati.

78-year-old Marlene Quinn recently signed on to appear in an ad opposing an upcoming ballot initiative. The ad (embedded above)–in which Quinn recounts how a group of brave firefighters saved her granddaughter’s life–was apparently so effective at swaying voter opinion that a group supporting the ballot initiative used footage of Quinn in its own ad (video inside). continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Former WSYX-WTTE Anchor Testifies as Eyewitness in Homicide Trial of Friend

Andrew Gauthier — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:21:48 +0000

Gabe Spiegel, a former anchor with Columbus’s WSYX and WTTE, appeared in court this week to testify in the trial of his friend Edward Scott Miller, who is charged with aggravated vehicular homicide in the death of a bicyclist he struck during an all-night partying binge with Spiegel.

Miller was giving Spiegel a ride home in July of 2009, after an early morning outing at a strip club, when his car struck a bicyclist shortly before 6:00 a.m. The bicyclist, who was wearing a helmet at the time, died four days later from head injuries suffered in the accident.

Spiegel testified that he and Miller discussed calling a cab upon leaving the strip club, but ultimately decided that Miller was okay to drive. According to The Columbus Dispatch, when the prosecution asked Spiegel if he thought Miller was “in a condition to drive,” he answered, “No question.” continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Emily Riemer Joins Boston’s WCVB as Morning Anchor-Reporter

Andrew Gauthier — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:14:09 +0000

Emily Riemer is joining Boston’s WCVB and will co-anchor the ABC-affiliate’s weekend morning newscasts alongside Steve Lacy.

Riemer comes to WCVB from Sinclair duopoloy WSYX-WTTE in Columbus, where she worked as a political reporter and news producer.

In addition to co-anchoring WCVB’s weekend morning newscasts, Riemer will work as a general assignment reporter for the weekday morning newscasts.

Riemer, who became known as a hard-nosed political reporter in Columbus and even did a one-on-one interview with President Obama last year, began her TV career at WCVB, where she was a summer intern during her time at Ithaca College.

Video of Riemer reporting, inside… continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.