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WKEF
Dayton, Ohio
Branding	"Dayton 22" (1970s- mid-80s) ABC 22 (present)
Slogan	Dayton's News Source
Channels	Analog: 22 (VHF) Digital: 51 (UHF)
Affiliations	ABC (1966-1980 & since 2004)
Owner	Sinclair Broadcasting Group
Founded	August 22, 1964
Call letters meaning	Kathrine Elizabeth Flynn
Former callsigns	WONE (1964-1965)
Former affiliations	Independent (1964-1966) ABC (1966-1980) NBC (1980-2004) ABC (2004-present)
Website	ABC 22 Website

WKEF is a broadcast television station in Dayton, Ohio, affiliated with the ABC network. It broadcasts on channel 22. WKEF is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group with its transmitter is located in Dayton. It is the sister station of Fox Broadcasting Company affiliate WRGT-TV.

Channel 22 signed on August 22, 1964 as WONE-TV. Conventional wisdom suggested that it would take the ABC affiliation, since it was Dayton's third commercial station. However, it started as an independent station since the Dayton market was decently covered by WKRC-TV in Cincinnati and WTVN-TV (now WSYX) in Columbus. However, ABC wanted its own affiliate in Dayton. As such, beginning in 1965, WONE began running ABC prime time shows and sports, plus any daytime ABC shows that WKRC pre-empted. WONE had no local newscasts at the time.

Soon after the station joined ABC, it was sold to Springfield Television Corporation (owner of WWLP in Springfield, Massachusetts), and renamed WKEF. By the end of the 1970s ABC had finally gained an equal footing with CBS and NBC (with shows such as Happy Days), and was unhappy with the Cincinnati/Dayton arrangement. ABC affiliates in Cincinnati and Columbus were preempting decent amounts of daytime programming, late night shows and some of the weekend kids shows. ABC wanted a station in Dayton that could run its whole schedule and be able to reach Cincinnati and Columbus. It also wanted a station that had local news. WKEF began a newscast in 1978, but this was not enough to save its affiliation with ABC.

So on January 1, 1980 when WDTN's affiliation contract with NBC expired, ABC quickly moved its affiliation there. WKEF was then left to take the NBC affiliation. Unlike its ABC deal, WKEF now ran NBC's entire schedule.

In 1984, the Springfield Television group (WKEF, WWLP and KSTU in Salt Lake City, Utah) was sold to Adams Communications. Adams broke up the group in the late 80s, selling WKEF to KT Communications in 1989. KT, in turn, sold WKEF to Max Television (later Max Media) in 1995. Unhappy staffers often joked that WKEF stood for "We Keep Equipment Forever" but in 1995, WKEF invested millions in new equipment, updated it's on-air look and hired almost a completely new staff. Ratings improved but WKEF remained a distant third in the ratings behind WHIO and WDTN.

In 1998, WKEF was sold to Sinclair in a group deal. Sinclair was already managing WRGT owned by Sullivan, and Sinclair moved WRGT's operations to WKEF's studio. In 2001, Sinclair bought most of Sullivan's stations, but could not buy WRGT because the FCC does not allow common ownership of two of the four highest-rated stations in a market. Also, the Dayton market has only six full-power commercial stations — too few to permit duopolies. Accordingly, WRGT was sold to Cunningham Broadcasting, whose stock is almost entirely owned by the Smith family, founders of Sinclair. This effectively gave Sinclair a duopoly in Dayton.

On August 30, 2004 WDTN again took the opportunity to sign up with the more popular network, dropping ABC to switch back to NBC. Thus, as of August 2004, WKEF became an ABC affiliate again. WKEF now runs the entire ABC schedule, though only a few months after becoming an ABC affiliate again, the station, and all other Sinclair-owned ABC affiliates including sister WSYX in Columbus as well as two other ABC affiliates in Ohio, preempted the movie Saving Private Ryan.

Ratings wise, WKEF's newscasts have always been a distant third place behind WHIO-TV and WDTN. Throughout most of the 70s, WKEF decided against airing its own newscasts possibly owing to low ratings; they relied instead on brief audio-only news updates from newscasters at local radio station WING-AM. They ran these updates at selected times in the morning, afternoon and evening using a still slide on-screen with a picture of the newscaster. WKEF brought back their news programs in the late 70s under the moniker 22 Alive! News, with anchors Tom Miller and Jack Marschall. While the newscasts contained elements of Sinclair's "News Central", 22 Alive! still suffered low ratings.

On some nights (usually Sundays because of ABC programming) there are times that WKEF is runner-up to WHIO. On June 5, 2006, WKEF debuted a morning newscast, which will help them compete with WHIO and WDTN's news departments.

For many years, WKEF produced the daily children's program Clubhouse 22 hosted by Malcolm McLeod in the early 1970s, with Joe Smith taking over in the mid 1970s. Their cohorts included Duffy the Dog, Stan The Man and later Dr. Creep (Barry Hobart). Dr. Creep was also the host of WKEF's weekly horror movie show, Shock Theater. Nationally syndicated conservative talk-show host Mike Gallagher began his TV broadcasting career at WKEF as a weatherman, sportscaster and special events host.

WKEF broadcasted The Tube on digital channel 22.2 and on Time Warner Cable's digital lineup on channel 723. WKEF and other Sinclair stations dropped The Tube on December 31st, 2006.

• Lori Webster, anchor/reporter then news director, now with Lexis Nexis
• Michelle Kingsfield, Lead Anchor 1999-2007( now at WDTN )
• Anita Brikman, anchor (now at WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C.)
• Carl Day, lead anchor, (now @ WDTN-TV)
• Marsha Bonhart, lead anchor, (now @ WDTN-TV)
• Janet McGill, lead weather specialist 1979-94, (married to WHIO-TV's Mike Hartsock)
• Don Brown, Sports Director, (now part-timer @ WHIO-TV)
• Natasha (King) Williams, reporter, (now @ WHIO-TV)
• Laurie Penco, Lead Anchor, 1995-99
• Leif Pedersen-Diaz, Investigative Reporter, 1994-1996 (went to WFOR-TV Miami)
• Andy Banker, reporter/anchor
• Ray Crawford, Sports Director
• Scott Arnold, reporter (went on to WDTN-TV, now at WTVF )
• Guy Fogle, Sports
• Mario Barson, Sports
• Roscoe Shaw, Meteorologist (now runs a soup kitchen in Dothan, Alabama)
• Karen Jordan, anchor/reporter, now in Chicago WLS-TV
• Cornell Barnard, anchor/reporter
• Kristi Piehl, anchor/reporter
• Gary Somerset, anchor/reporter
• Marc Cox, reporter (now @ KMOV-TV)
• Tina Rezash, lead anchor, (went on to WDTN, now with Dayton Business Journal)
• Mike Bettes, meteorologist (now on The Weather Channel)
• Jo Corey "Miss Jo", 1960s local host of preschooler program "Romper Room."
• Toody the Clown (aka: "Toody Too"..as in "22")1960s children's show host
• Malcolm McLeod, early 1970s host of "Clubhouse 22"
• Joe Smith, staff announcer and late 1970s host of "Clubhouse 22"
• Barry Hobart "Dr. Creep" host of "Shock Theater" (aka "Saturday Night Dead.")
• Bernie Wulkotte aka: "B.W." a Dayton Daily News columnist and WAVI radio personality who hosted local evening movie program, died in 1980s
• Johnny Walker, staff announcer, public affairs director and host of local segments of the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, later president of Hara Arena, died in 2005
• Ed Krahling, first news anchor in 1965-66 (later moved to WHIO-TV in 1967...retired in 1993, died in 1998)

• DaytonsNewsSource.com
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WKEF