4 Cleveland TV Commercials From the 1980s

Here's four commercials from early 1980s Northeast Ohio media. These all aired in September, 1983, and probably didn't air too much beyond that since they're somewhat time-sensitive.

-Cleveland's NBC affiliate, WKYC, was an owned-and-operated station until the late 1980s. For most of that decade, they followed the "Today Show" with "AM Cleveland," hosted by Scott Newell. The suit-plus-sweater look never made sense to me (especially under those hot lights), but it's interesting that the show had a live audience. It's also interesting that the end of the promo shows Newell walking on stage to start the show: he just stands there, staring at someone and trying to suppress a laugh. I wonder what was going on there.

-Al Roker was the weatherman at WKYC in the early 1980s, before heading to WNBC (New York City) and then the "Today Show." Here, he does a promo for a black-tie event, which was supposed to feature former Cleveland Brown/Miami Dolphin Paul Warfield (a Warren, Ohio native and an enshrinee in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton).

-John Lanigan was somewhat of a "shock jock" (before that term became popular) on Cleveland's WGAR-AM, from 1970-1983. Here, he does a promo for a Walt DisneyWorld vacation contest (including the then-new EPCOT Center). Lanigan would leave for Florida (where he has split his time for decades), but when radio didn't pan out down there for him, he returned and signed on to WMJI-FM... where he would would remain until 2014.

-Just before Lanigan returned to Cleveland, WMJI flipped from a branding as M105 (a competitor to rock powerhouse WMMS), and became more of a Top 40 station, a move that would put the station at-or-near the top of the ratings ever since (save for a period in the 1990s when they fell to #2 behind sister station WGAR-FM, which had gone country). This is one of the early promos for WMJI, which I found fascinating as a child.