MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — News and sports consumers in West Virginia today consider MetroNews a household name when it comes to providing news and sports in the Mountain State along with daily longform programs like Sportsline, Talkline, Hotline, MetroNews Midday and the West Virginia Morning News. But those programs and names associated with them were not nearly as familiar to radio listeners in 1985.
It was on Aug. 12, 1985 when the first MetroNews newscast hit the air at 5:55 a.m. At the anchor desk that morning was Hoppy Kercheval.
“It was an anxious day and an anxious morning. Engineers were still working to ensure this satellite delivered network could be on the air at 5:30 in the morning when we sent out the first newscall and the first newscast at 5:55. An engineer, Chuck Snodderly, was literally doing the technical punchblock as we call it to make sure we could be on the air,” Kercheval recalled, now in semi-retirement from his years in broadcasting.
The concept of MetroNews was formed in the mind of young general manger Dale Miller who ran WAJR and WVAQ radio stations in Morgantown. He convinced station owner John Raese it was a worthwhile investment.
“We thought there was a need for it. We were getting all of our state news from Associated Press and UPI. I took a flyer and said hey, there’s a new technology out there called SCPC satellite. That meant that we could put a satellite receiver with our own channels in every single radio station. At that time it was very hard to do,” said Miller, who is also now retired from the company.
Miller and Raese boarded a plane for Missouri and toured the uplink facilities of Clyde Lear. Lear was considered the father of satellite delivery and the founder of Learfield Communications.
Miller and Raese returned home and began their planning. There were several obstacles. One was convincing affiliate radio stations to take the programs. Miller visited every radio station in the state and convinced the operators at 37 stations across West Virginia to give it a shot.
“Not only did we give every one of these stations satellite dishes, but I cut a deal with ABC and gave them top of the hour national news which a lot of them didn’t have at the time,” Miller explained.
Amazingly he sweetened the deal with another relic of a bygone era.
“One of the biggest selling points was I gave all of the radio stations a fax machine so they could send in the affidavits. Up until that point a lot of the stations didn’t have that,” he added.
Kercheval made a few of the visits with Dale and began to develop his rapport with each station manager.
“They had to be convinced and one of the biggest obstacles was we’d go to a radio station and say we wanted to do a statewide network. Their response would be, well I’m in this town and what do I care about other parts of the state. We had to overcome that by making the argument that even though this state has very different sections, there’s still a commonality. We’re all West Virginians and many times what happens in the state news-wise affects everybody. So, there was some convincing to do with these local radio stations,” Kercheval explained.
They signed up 37 charter affiliates to carry the news and sports and some of the longform program. WAJR had long been the flagship station of the Mountaineer Sports Network and worked hand and hand with West Virginia University to deliver WVU football and basketball games along with the coaches shows. During the early days, those were produced through telephone lines. The relationship became even more solidified when the products were delivered via satellite.
Miller tapped into the rich vein of talent he was able to attract and with a young, new sportscaster named Tony Caridi launched the MetroNews Statewide Sportsline, which remains on the air today as the state’s longest running sports talk show. Kercheval’s Metronews Talkline started as a one day a week show on Wednesday from 10 am to 12 noon.
But radio was evolving and the news/talk format was on the rise. Miller knew it and made the adjustments.
“I came to him and said we need to take this thing every day. At first Hoppy went crazy about that because he was still doing news and had all of the duties of being a news director. But, it just made sense to use this and provide more longform programming and our affiliates wanted it,” Miller explained.
“It was Dale Miller’s vision and I didn’t want to do it. All I could think of was, ‘This is going to be a lot of work!'” Kercheval laughed. “Initially I didn’t want to do it, but eventually I came around and I’m glad I did.”
With a satellite network at his control, Miller was also able to make his vision of high school sports a reality. He worked closely with the West Virginia SSAC to broadcast every game of the state boys basketball tournament and made it available to every radio station who wanted to carry it with advanced production and crystal clear sound. It was something most stations had never dreamed was possible.
“It just cost too much for little stations to do it at that time. When we brought in MetroNews it allowed us to do all of the games and not have that restriction,” said Miller.
Over time the coverage expanded to the girls state tournament, the state high school football championships, and the state high school baseball championships. Today third and fourth generations of West Virginia high school athletes are being featured on the vast MetroNews Sports programs which branched out into the High School Sportsline and MetroNews Gamenight, the most carried show of any on MetroNews.
Through the years MetroNews added West Virginia Outdoors, the West Virginia Morning News, MetroNews Hotline, and most recently MetroNews Midday. In 2000, the company moved the news operations to Charleston to operate out of the state capital and left the sports operations along with the administrative headquarters in Morgantown. As trends evolved Miller was also the catalyst for development of the MetroNews website wvmetronews.com and eventually added a podcast network and MetroNews Television to the company’s offerings.
Miller believed the success of his vision in the early to mid-1980s was tied to one common thread.
“What really made MetroNews what it is was the incredible quality of the staff and the longevity of the staff. There are very few radio companies that have ever existed that have had the incredible longevity of people that we have. You’ve be been there 35 years Chris, Jeff Jenkins a little longer. Tony Caridi over 40 years, Hoppy almost 50 years. It’s amazing, it’s honestly amazing just the kind of people we’ve been involved in like the Travis Jones’ and Kyle Wiggs’, it’s just a group of people who have stayed together and I think that is what has made it really special,” he said.