Thursday, August 30, 2007

23 NewsDay .. Where are they now?

I'm constantly asked, "whatever happened to such-and-such on the old 23news?" I figured it was time to give folks somewhere to turn to get those answers.

For the record, WAKC-TV (formerly WAKR-TV) was an ABC affiliate in Akron from the early 1950's through 1996. Eventually, a sale of the station lead to owners who dumped the network connection and the news department with it.

To that end .. I've added a separate blog dedicated to Akron TV News with individual page links to some of the "old" 23 news folks. I'll maintain links to the "old timers" here on my blog so you can easily find them (hopefully Google will cooperate too!)

I've contacted as many as I can find to tell them about the project and to let them update their own info on those pages. For example, if you click on "Phil Hoffman", you'll see he's already blogging about how he moved away from TV news and into education.

I'll try to add a few more links each week, so if there's a former 23 alumnus you'd really like to find, let me know and I'll do my best to get some info posted.

Mark Williamson tells me he might upload some old blooper reels, and Jim Kambrich is planning a "hello" tape too. So I hope to have some video links for you soon. This could end up being really, really fun.

Enjoy .. Eric

3 comments:

Tim Lones said...

Eric:
Excellent Idea! Perhaps down the road you might mention some other folks from years past..Jack Ryan, Professor Jack Fitzgibbons, from research I've done I know Eddie Elias hosted sports shows in the 1950's before founding the Professional Bowlers Association in I believe 1961 and there was also longtime sportscaster Bob Wylie..Also would be glad to link your blog to my Cleveland Classic Media Blog and give it a mention..

http://clevelandclassicmedia.blogspot.com/

Frumpy Curmudgeon said...

Boy, some of these folks bring back memories from WAY back when I interned at WAKC in the fall of '87 and worked at WCUE in the summer of '86. Thanks for sharing...

Anonymous said...

How bout the weather personalities for WAKC??

Where are they now???