Legendary Broadcaster Fred Griffith Signing Off Cleveland Television

Fred Griffith (right) with WKYC Program Director Terry Moir (left)

By Frank Macek

Longtime Cleveland broadcast Fred Griffith will sign off from local television on Wednesday, February 22nd, after a 50 year career in broadcasting in Northeast Ohio.

Most recently, Fred was a host of Channel 3's 10 a.m. weekday program, "Good Company" with Andrea Vecchio, Michael Cardamone and Joe Cronauer.

Fred first joined Channel 3 in May 2000 after leaving his longtime home at WEWS where he worked for 33 years, as a reporter, news producer, news and public affairs director, and for over 26 years, host of the daily two hour Morning Exchange program.

For nearly five years he was also co-host of the hour-long Afternoon Exchange.

Fred holds the national record for time on live TV, with more than 13,700 hours.

He is in the Cleveland Press Club Hall of Fame and holds the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Professional Journalists and the Cleveland Association of Broadcasters Award for Excellence. He has received Emmys for his work and in 1992 was inducted into the television academy’s Silver Circle.

Griffith grew up working in his family’s restaurant in Charleston, West Virginia. He majored in philosophy at West Virginia University. After service as an Air Force officer, he became a broadcast journalist, working as a radio news director in Charleston before moving to Cleveland in 1959.

He has been a serious climber and a long distance runner, and is among the small group of people who have stood at both the north and south poles. He has been to every continent.

He has worked with his wife, Linda, on six cookbooks. Nuts, their most recent work, was published in April 2003 by St. Martin’s Press. The Best of the Midwest (Viking, 1990) profiled creative chefs in the region. The New American Farm Cookbook (Viking, 1993) grew out of a study of the farmer-chef connection. Their first book for Chapters, Onions Onions Onions, (1994) won a James Beard Award. Cooking Under Cover (Chapters,1996) was a best seller and a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. Garlic Garlic Garlic from Houghton Mifflin was published in 1998. He has also written Cleveland; Continuing the Renaissance (Towery, 1997). He is a columnist for Currents, published by the Chagrin Valley Times.

Between them they have five children and 10 grandchildren.

As WKYC Program Director and former Morning Exchange Executive Producer Terry Moir said in a note to the Channel 3 staff, "Fred does have the distinction of being geographical bipolar having stood on both the North and South poles!" and we wish him well wherever his new adventures in life take him in between.

Photogallery:

Click on the picture below to view a photogallery taken from Fred's farewell this morning, courtesy of our WKYC ace photographer, Ryan Haidet:


Click photo for a photogallery

Video:

Click on the video below to watch a segment of Fred's Farewell from "Good Company" on 2/22/12:

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