Okay, I've updated the code in my original post to reflect what I currently have, and now when I run the script I get the output in /dev/tty9, which is what I'm going for. However... I still have two problems.

1.) When I run the script from crontab, the script does not run. It shows the following output in /var/log/syslog:

Dec 27 11:59:01 penguin /USR/SBIN/CRON[5333]: (root) CMD (root^I/home/
+jason/Desktop/monitor_script/nms/nms.pl)
Dec 27 11:59:01 penguin /USR/SBIN/CRON[5327]: (root) MAIL (mailed 25 b
+ytes of output but got status 0x0001 )
Dec 27 11:59:01 penguin /USR/SBIN/CRON[5326]: (root) MAIL (mailed 24 b
+ytes of output but got status 0x0001 )
j
[download]

** I just figured out a solution, I told it to sleep for 30 seconds, then execute itself again. Does anybody see any problems with this?

2.) Each time the script is ran manually, the screen is cleared with initscr() function from ncurses. Does anybody know how to not have the screen clear? I want it to look as if the screen updates, rather than have it clear and have the systems reappear after they have a successful or failed ping.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.