Six Hours of 1998 Cleveland
The post-it note on this Fuji PRO 120 said “Astros at Indians 6-27-1998.” That’s accurate — but it covers the last two hours. Before the baseball game, someone sat down in front of their Cleveland TV on a Saturday night in June 1998 and taped everything.
Six hours. Four networks. Miss Ohio. A tornado. Kids Say the Darndest Things.
What’s on the Tape
- 60 Minutes (CBS) — Heart transplant segment and pig organ harvesting story.
- Miss Ohio 1998 — WMFD Channel 68 / OTN (Ohio Television Network) — Full pageant broadcast. Donna Whitworth judging. Card tables on the stage. Contestants singing Bond songs with finger guns. Almost certainly the only surviving copy of this broadcast.
- Million Dollar Babies (CBS 19 WOIO) — 1994 Beau Bridges made-for-TV movie. Dense commercial breaks with 1998 Cleveland-market advertisers.
- ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings — Clinton healthcare and the China visit. Amish youth drug bust. Florida woman live-streamed giving birth, now wanted for writing bad checks.
- WEWS Primetime Live — Hotels segment. Reportedly referenced in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
- News 5 tornado coverage — Severe weather break-in. Tribe Time Live pre-game.
- Kids Say the Darndest Things (CBS) — Art Linkletter joins Bill Cosby. Wesley Chu plays piano. Wesley Chu now runs a production company doing video game music.
- 20/20 with Barbara Walters — Male-on-male sexual harassment on oil rigs. Sleep deprivation segment.
- Houston Astros at Cleveland Indians — Fox 8 WJW — The actual game. Interleague play, second year. Bagwell, Biggio, Thome, Ramirez, Lofton. With full 1998 Fox 8 commercial breaks.
Commercial Inventory
Miss Ohio 1998 breaks (WMFD/OTN):
- Meijer Deli commercial — Regional Midwest grocery chain spot.
- Northern Ohio Toyota — “It’s So Easy” — Local dealer co-op ad.
- Beltone Hearing Aids — Regional healthcare advertising.
- TV 68 bumper — “Ohio Is Turned On to TV 68” — Station ID for WMFD Channel 68.
Million Dollar Babies breaks (WOIO):
- Blockbuster — Terrifying New Releases (Scream 2)
- McDonald’s Mulan Nuggets / Szechuan Sauce — The 1998 commercial for the dipping sauce Rick and Morty made famous. Multiple versions exist online; this is the Cleveland broadcast cut with its local commercial context intact.
- Schwebel’s Bread duck commercial — “The ducks threw the bread back.” Regional Ohio bakery spot.
- Buy an Oldsmobile, get two free X-Files movie tickets — The X-Files movie came out that June.
- Vienetta by Breyers
- Drano Max — Old Lady Going Mission Impossible
- New Domino’s Heatwave delivery bag
- Primestar satellite commercial — A Mustang getting crushed.
- Francesco Rinaldi pasta sauce
- Bob Evans Wildfire Sauce menu
- Guiding Light promo, The Nanny promo, Frasier promo
Baseball / Evening breaks (Fox 8 WJW):
- La Fleur Molson Ice
- Canon Rebel G — “Get Creative with Agassi”
- When Trumpets Fade — Coming Soon on HBO
- MadTV with I Love Lucy promo
- Propecia for hair
- Cops / America’s Most Wanted: America Fights Back promo
Lost Media Status
Miss Ohio 1998 on WMFD/OTN is almost certainly the only surviving copy. Regional pageant broadcasts from small UHF stations in 1998 were not preserved. This one has card tables on the stage and a dance number to a Bond song.
The Schwebel’s Bread duck commercial and Northern Ohio Toyota dealer ads are one-of-a-kind regional content with no digital presence found anywhere online.
The McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce spot is not lost — multiple copies exist on YouTube and got heavy attention after Rick and Morty’s 2017 reference. The value here is the Cleveland broadcast version in context, surrounded by the local commercial breaks that aired with it.
The Tape
Fuji PRO 120 in premium high-grade formulation. The “For Videotape Libraries” marketing on the packaging was aimed at professional and archival users. Digitized February 28, 2026 via OBS capture in two sessions: 29 GB and 51 GB MKV files.
About This Tape
VHS-2026-028 is from the Sunbury Collection. Cataloged January 11 and opened on stream February 24 and 26, 2026. Two sessions — the six hours required two nights to finish.
Watch the stream archive at twitch.tv/90scraig.