You’re Welcome, Mr. Salyer

Here at OMW, we don’t toot our own horn very often. (For one, there’s no sound on this website, so you wouldn’t hear it. Yes, we’re kidding.)

But on one major local media news story, we’ve led the way both locally and nationwide.

OMW was the very first place many learned about the sale of then-FOX O&O WJW/8 “FOX 8” in Cleveland, a purchase recently completed by Local TV, LLC, the operational arm of private equity giant Oak Hill Capital Partners.

And here, and only here, did you learn that WJW and the other stations bought by Local TV had a 10 year affiliation agreement with outgoing owner FOX to keep that network on the stations.

This, despite various questions in print – “it’s not known if WJW will stay as an affiliate of FOX” and the like.

So, you’re welcome, WJW programming/promotion boss Kevin Salyer.

Plain Dealer media writer Julie Washington checks in with Salyer in the aftermath of the Local TV deal’s closure, in an article found this afternoon on Cleveland.com.

Quoting the article:

Channel 8 will keep showing Fox programming, even though it’s no longer a Fox owned-and-operated station.

“Viewers are not going to see any difference at all,” Salyer said. “It’s more of an internal thing.”

You’re welcome, Mr. Salyer.

Now, we can understand why the FOX 8 programming honcho is not too thrilled with us.

After all, our excellent sources inside South Marginal led us to the news – an exclusive – that FOX corporate was finally getting its wish with the end of the popular local show “Big Chuck and Lil’ John”.

That’s a story that local WJW brass were not at all happy with, despite our portrayal of them (from what we have been told) as the “good guys” in keeping the show on as long as possible, despite years of pressure by the suits in New York.

That part of our story was basically confirmed in the station’s prime-time salute to “Big Chuck” at the end of the “BC&LJ” run, where the ever classy Chuck Schodowski thanked Salyer on the air for keeping the show alive, especially in recent years.

In this story, we’ve mined our sources to verify that FOX wasn’t leaving WJW behind without a long-term affiliation with the network.

And until the Julie Washington article that came out today, we’ve been the only one saying that.

Stepping away from the Vindication of OMW (no relation to the Youngstown newspaper) for a moment, Salyer also doesn’t expect Local TV “to shuffle anchors or reporters in the short term”, at least.

We have no information on that, but we’d consider a talent shakeup at WJW to be nearly Television Suicide for the new owners at Local TV.

What happens down the road, when expensive, long-term anchor contracts come up? We don’t know.

But we’d have to agree…we also don’t expect any immediate on-air/personnel changes at the Local TV-run “FOX 8″…