WEWS Channel 5-First In Cleveland

WEWS Channel 5-First In Cleveland
This being the first post, I thought I would share some thoughts about WEWS-TV 5 in Cleveland..Most Clevelanders hardly remember when Channel 5 was NOT an ABC affiliate. The call letters stood for E. W. Scripps, founder of the Scripps-Howard Newspaper chain, who also owned the Cleveland Press (Now E. W. Scripps, Inc. ) To prepare for the new station, which would be the first TV station in Ohio, Scripps-Howard put WEWS-FM 102.1 on the air early in 1947 to give some of the on-air employees experience.

WEWS signed on the air officially December 17, 1947. The station was affiliated with all four TV networks at first. The First program was the Cleveland Press Christmas Party with special guest, Movie Actor Jimmy Stewart. There were something like 300 TV sets in the Cleveland area. As other stations signed on in 1948 and 1949 WEWS settled into being the full CBS affiliate. My guess would be that WEWS is probably the station that has been owned the longest by the same company outside of Network owned and operated stations.

Below is a Saturday, February 12, 1949 schedule taken from TeleVue, a very early Cleveland TV Magazine..

WEWS-5 CBS/DuMont/ABC


10AM-6:30 Test Pattern
6:30 Lucky Pup Review-CBS/New York
7PM News-ABC/New York
7:15 Wren's Nest-ABC/New York-Early 15 minute sitcom
7:30 Western Film
8:30 Pabst Presents-Cleveland Barons Hockey (American Hockey League) The Barons take on the Washington Lions live from the Cleveland Arena.
10:30 Next Week On Television..

On most of the Network Programs, the sponsor and the originating Network/City are listed as The coaxial cable from New York to Chicago had just been completed a month earlier

And from Friday, May 26, 1949

Source:Canton, Ohio Repository Newspaper

4PM Distaff-Women's Talk
5:30 Uncle Jake's House-Gene Carroll
6PM Small Fry Club-DuMont
6:30 Lucky Pup-CBS
6:45 Vincent Lopez-DuMont
7PM Sports Special
7:30 World News (Probably CBS News-Douglas Edwards)
7:45 Linn Sheldon Show
8PM Film
8:15 Dugout Interviews
8:25 Baseball:Chicago White Sox At Cleveland Indians (Indians won 4-0)

Bob Neal And Indians Legend Tris Speaker were the Broadcast team (Source:2005 Cleveland Indians Media Guide)
11PM Coming Attractions

Linn Sheldon was one of the first Cleveland TV "stars" On his "Linn Sheldon Show" he lip synced popular records..His was the first sponsored show in Cleveland, by Rogers Jewelers..He also did coming attractions shows (sort of a "video" TV Guide) Sheldon gained lasting fame as Kid host "Barnaby" from 1956 till well into the 1980's on KYW/WKYC 3 and WUAB 43..