Sports programming WUAB was the over-the-air home of the Cleveland Cavaliers from 1994 to 2019, previously carrying Cavaliers games from 1972 to 1975 and again from 1980 to 1988. From 2006 until 2019, WUAB simulcast five Cavaliers regular season games per year with Fox Sports Ohio (now Bally Sports Ohio), along with select playoff games. The station is perhaps best known as the over-the-air home for Cleveland Indians baseball from 1980 to 2001, with Bruce Drennan, Joe Tait, Reggie Rucker, Jack Corrigan, Steve LaMar and Mike Hegan as play-by-play announcers throughout this period. WUAB telecast Len Barker's perfect game on May 15, 1981, to date the most recent perfect game in franchise history. From its launch into the 1980s, WUAB featured Ohio State Buckeyes football and basketball, along with Notre Dame Fighting Irish football. Channel 43 also has carried select hockey games from the first AHL Cleveland Barons, the Cleveland Crusaders, the NHL Cleveland Barons, the Cleveland Lumberjacks and Lake Erie Monsters. Additionally, the station has telecast Cleveland Gladiators arena football and Cleveland Force indoor soccer. Throughout the 2010s, it served as an affiliate for the Raycom Sports-operated ACC Network. In 2018, WUAB carried Cleveland State Vikings men's basketball games. Newscasts Prior to 1988, WUAB staff announcers presented brief news bulletins during program junctions; one of the announcers, Marty Sullivan, famously read bulletins in-between "Superhost" tapings by wearing a suitcoat on top of his Superhost costume. WUAB committed to establishing a news department in June 1987 with the hiring of Daniel Acklen as news director and intentions to launch a 10 p.m. newscast by January 1988, the first attempt in the Cleveland market since WKBF-TV's attempt failed in 1970. While the rest of the staff were relative newcomers to Cleveland television—including Romona Robinson, Bob Hetherington and Frank Cariello—Gib Shanley was hired as sports director, fulfilling Acklen's hope of luring an established market personality to the station. Existing talent at WUAB, including Indians announcer Jack Corrigan and Prize Movie host John Lanigan, became contributors to the newscast. The debut broadcast of The Ten O'Clock News on January 4, 1988, was marred by technical problems, but WUAB's ratings for that evening doubled compared to the previous Monday. By the fall of 1988, Akron Beacon Journal television critic Bob Dyer credited multiple on- and off-air improvements made to the newscast but noted Shanley's veteran presence and 15-minute long sportscasts nearly overshadowed everyone else.