Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 10, 1994 TAG: 9409120067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
It took about two months for a nationally publicized scandal to cost Wyatt his job with the station.
Wyatt - one of several personalities caught up in the fight between Henry County's two competing cable television stations - was fired Friday morning after a meeting between Channel 57's general manager and a member of the Southern Broadcasting Corp. board of directors.
The board member, Pete Bluhm, said the firing was "a business decision" based on Wyatt's actions. Wyatt walked off the air during his nightly call-in show Tuesday night and has not returned phone calls or returned to work since then, according to a press release distributed by Bluhm on Friday.
"We renew our commitment to bring you good quality local programming and to do it in a manner that will reflect our community as the decent, respectable and caring community that it is," the release advises viewers.
Wyatt, 33, learned about his termination from a reporter.
A few hours later, he was trying to figure out how his lifelong dream had turned so quickly into a nightmare.
"Everything I've got is tied up in Channel 57," he said. "I cannot ignore my financial interest in the station."
Wyatt owns about 20 percent of Southern Broadcasting, Channel 57's parent company.
Asked about Wyatt's financial ties, Bluhm said: "He's a stockholder. As far as I'm concerned, that's as far as it goes."
The firing of Wyatt was just the latest turn in what has become a daily soap opera on Cable 6, the competing station that's known for its sensational approach.
Wyatt's problems began when Cable 6 aired reports that he was having an affair with Ramona Hines, a Channel 57 co-worker. Hines was fired, and the story grew when she did a series of interviews on Cable 6 confirming her relationship with Wyatt.
Wyatt later admitted the affair and made an on-air apology to his family and peers, but Cable 6 kept the heat on. The situation reached a boiling point Tuesday night when Hines called Wyatt during his call-in show and they became involved in a lovers' tiff. Hines made the call from the Cable 6 studio and the conversation was video-taped.
Channel 57's general manager, Pat Painter, was watching the quarrel and decided to pull the plug on Wyatt's program.
Wyatt refused to take a phone call from Painter and left the station. Minutes later, he showed up at Cable 6 in Collinsville. He confronted Hines, and then went into seclusion until Thursday afternoon when Cable 6 viewers got to see live video of Wyatt and Hines leaving the station's parking lot in Wyatt's van.
Wyatt said Friday he's guilty only of falling in love with Hines, who before she was fired had been promoted from a sales associate to equipment operations manager at Channel 57.
Wyatt, who has three children, said he was separated from his wife and Hines was separated from her husband when their relationship began.
"I didn't choose to fall in love with her," he said. "That part just happened."
Wyatt contends that he told members of the Southern Broadcasting board about his relationship with Hines at least a month before Cable 6 broke the story.
"I realized my position might set me up for a Cable 6 story and I wanted to be up front about the relationship," he said. "I'm not experienced with affairs or whatever you want to call it. I looked at [the board members] for direction, and they told me not to worry about it. I was told to be up front about it. They didn't want me to try and hide it."
After Cable 6 broke the story, Wyatt said he became increasingly frustrated when the board of directors told him not to give interviews about the situation.
"They tied my hands," he said. "Cable 6 was like a freight train and the board of directors wanted me to stand on the tracks, put my hands out and try to stop the train. It was suicide. What I wanted to do was step off the tracks, watch the train go by and then wave at it."
Wyatt said he harbors no resentment toward Cable 6 and its owner and producer, Charles Roark, for the public display of his personal life, but he does have a problem with Roark's accusations that Channel 57 was trying to put Cable 6 out of business.
"We've never attacked Cable 6 or Charles Roark, and we sure could have," he said. "All we've done is reacted to viewers' calls about what was going on."
Wyatt, however, said Southern Broadcasting board members "watch Cable 6 more than they watch their own station."
"They always react to Cable 6," he said. "Maybe now they'll bring in someone that Cable 6 can't go after. But that won't happen."
Roark, who has agreed to appear on the Maury Povich Show with Hines, her husband, Cable 6 reporter Bob Sharp and possibly Wyatt, had this to say Friday: "Bill Wyatt brought me the stories and dropped them in my lap."
by CNB