Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412190032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COLLINSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
Two months after former Channel 57 news anchor Bill Wyatt went to work for the competition, Cable 6, the shenanigans continue.
It's a localized soap opera, with the personalities at the two stations providing more than enough material to keep the show rolling.
Here's a few of the latest details:
Wyatt, who went to work for Cable 6 even though it exposed his affair with a co-worker at Channel 57, continues to hold a sizable chunk of stock in his former employer. He recently attended a meeting of the Channel 57 board of directors. "I felt a little uncomfortable," he said.
Wyatt was fired by Channel 57 as a result of the fallout from the Cable 6 story.
"They've got me hung for $51,000," said Wyatt, referring to the value of his investment in the station. "There was no way I wasn't going to go."
He has hired a Roanoke lawyer to try to negotiate a settlement with Channel 57. The station wouldn't agree to the details of an initial compromise, so Wyatt said he withdrew the offer.
Last week, meanwhile, a Channel 57 cameraman got upset that Wyatt was videotaping him during a news conference at the Sheriff's Office. The cameraman walked over and tried to stop Wyatt.
He "was pushing the camera lens down, and Bill [Wyatt] would push it back up. We've got video of it all," said Charles Roark, Cable 6's owner.
Pete Bluhm, a member of Channel 57's board of directors, said the situation evolved because Cable 6 was attempting to intimidate.
"It's all innuendo, slander and gossip," Bluhm said of his station's competitor. "They wouldn't have any programming without us to talk about."
So it goes in Henry County, where gossip happens not over the backyard fence, but over the cathode ray tube.
And the local hoopla has received national attention.
Roark, Wyatt and Ramona Hines, the former Channel 57 employee who had the affair with Wyatt, have appeared on the Maury Povich and Oprah Winfrey shows, among others.
Wyatt, who took a vacation shortly after joining Cable 6, said he was at a Daytona Beach, Fla., bar when a woman saw him and said: "Hey, you're the guy that was on 'Oprah.'''
"I was trying to get away from it all," said Wyatt, who said his relationship with Hines - the scandal that started it all - is over.
But when will the battle between the two stations end?
Said Roark: "I don't know. We're going to cover the stuff they do if we think it's a story. Some people say, 'Charles, aren't you milking this for all it's worth?' Well, if you're still coming to feed, I'm going to milk you."
by CNB