Jon Cash's exit hasn't affected ratings at WAVY-TV

So much for the "Jon Cash effect" on ratings.

When Cash, a popular WAVY morning weatherman, left the air in September, fans said they'd leave the Channel 10 station in protest. (Cash said he was fired because he had said he would switch to preaching full-time next year; WAVY hasn't explained his departure.)

Ratings for the November sweeps period show WAVY still on top from 5 to 7 a.m., though WVEC (Channel 13) - which started a 4:30 a.m. newscast in August - comes a close second. WAVY's president and general manager, Doug Davis, declined to comment on Cash's effect on ratings, calling it a "personnel matter."

Tod Smith, his counterpart at WVEC, which had been pulling closer to WAVY even before Cash departed, noted that Channel 10 has been "a longtime leader" in the morning. "Tradition plays into it a lot," said Smith, whose station tops the chart for evening newscasts.

As for the possibility of a storm of Cash supporters clicking elsewhere, "a lot of times, when something like that happens, there's an initial reaction," Smith said. "But just looking empirically at the data, I don't see it."

That doesn't mean it might not happen. "If you were going to see something like that, it's more over time," said Jeff Hoffman, the GM of WTKR (Channel 3), which leads at noon and is in a virtual three-way tie at 11 p.m. "It's not an instantaneous response."