It seems like a long, long time ago (and, boy, was it ever) but in a previous lifetime, fresh out of journalism school, there was a nearly four year period where I was actually a TV weatherman. Not full-time, I hasten to add, but I did read the temperatures, make forecasts and gamely pretend to have some kind of responsibility for bringing rain (bad Bryce!) or bringing sun (good Bryce!). These are not memories I ordinarily dredge up, mind you, but seeing Nicholas Cage in action in his latest movie, The Weather Man, brought them back to the surface.
Northwest News
KVAL-TV, Eugene, Oregon
@ The Last Century
As you can see from the picture, when I say this was a long time ago, I pretty much mean it was a long time ago. This is what I look like today.
I also have to clarify -- I wasn't primarily a weatherman. I started out in TV news as a reporter and a back-up anchor at a station that had one primary weatherman, a meteorologist named Jim Bradley. I noticed that whenever Jim didn't work, the anchors just read the weather off the wire copy. Nobody was going to get up to the weather board and take that on. So I went to the news director and said, "I'll do it." I think it seemed like a good way to get more air time and that was part of my thinking but, honestly, the main reason I did it was that, as the anchor of the weekend newscasts, I just thought our show looked lame without a bona fide weathercast.
Doing the weather at KVAL-TV in Eugene back then involved standing behind a plexi-glass map which (because you were writing backwards) was shot in a mirror. Standing behind the plexiglass and writing on that map made people think both Jim and I could actually write backwards and, when they would confront us about this in the grocery lines, we'd often just shrug and act like it was a special skill. With that mirror, if I'd actually had a recognizable part in my hair, this could have been odd, switching it back and forth but, as you can see, I had Will Ferrell "Anchorman" style helmet hair. I bought a handful of weather books, Jim was extremely generous in his time, and soon I actually knew enough terms to sound sort-of, semi, educated. I ended up doing back-up weather at KEZI-TV in Eugene for about two seconds and later at KVOA-TV in Tucson, Arizona -- although my primary gig was as a reporter and an anchor. When I moved to Los Angeles to work for CNN as a correspondent, my weather days were over.
I have done many things on-air in my career -- from anchoring to hard news to light features up to and including being the newsmaker giving the interviews when, as the head of the TV Academy, I had to explain why the Emmy awards were being canceled post-9/11. Nothing was ever as hard as doing the weather.
I know, I know. Everybody thinks that doing the weather is easy. That's why characters in films are portrayed as alcoholic or depressed or goofy or dumb. This is how they have the Nicholas Cage character describe the gig:
"My job's very easy—two hours a day, basically reading prompts. … I receive a large reward for pretty much zero effort and contribution."
In my experience, that's just not true, and that's just not how the average weatherman or weatherwoman feels about their career. The truth is you are up there without a net -- trying to sound informed based on information that is incomplete or that you've had too little time to assimilate while at the same time trying to be the comic relief on the set. Except for the times when all hell is breaking loose like floods or hurricanes or brush fires in which case you need to sound sympathetic and authoritative. Plus, you must be one of the most technologically sophisticated on-air people in the station because TV meteorology is all about the latest toys, full of bells-and-whistles or even plexiglass map-and-mirror gags. Slate has a great article about what you really have to do to be a TV weatherman. Hard as it was, for example, to do the weather behind that plexiglass map, it's even more daunting ushering in cold fronts and marine layers against a green screen backdrop.
It also seems, by the way, that the news lately really points out that the role of the weatherman is not frivolous, if it ever was. The more Mother Nature scratches us back with her long fingernails, the more our climate changes due to global warming, the more disasters have personal and political consequences -- well, it all adds up to needing trained, weather communicators. Notice I do not say meteorologists. They, too, can do that job and well, but having that degree is not as crucial as knowing the importance of the position, and caring enough to track down good information and get it out to your audience. At least that's my opinion, and I'm sticking with it.
Here's my favorite weather story. I was anchoring the Today Show cut-in, the five minutes of local news that comes at 7:25 and 8:25 every morning. At KVAL, we would do about 2 1/2 minutes of news, go to a one minute break, then come back with weather to round out our five minutes. As we went into break, I realized I had forgotten to rip the weather copy off the teletype. I ripped off my microphone and sprinted back to the newsroom, grabbed the weather forecasts, then sprinted back to the studio. As I entered, the cameraman was counting down, 5...4...3... I sat down, clipped the microphone back on my tie... 2...1... The red camera light went on... I tried to talk but I couldn't. All I could do was gasp for air, my lungs heaving in and out, my face bright red. There was nothing for the director to cut away to. So, for one very long minute of air-time, I sat there behind the desk, breathing heavily with the camera on me, and said not a single freaking word. I kid you not. I still remember the sheer panic and subsequent humiliation of that moment like it was yesterday.
Okay, here's another favorite weather story, but it's not about me. It concerns Sandy Hill -- who was pretty big nationally for a while at ABC and CNN. This is back when she was in Seattle. They're expecting snow so the weatherman comes on, does his thing, predicts that they're going to get a half-foot falling overnight. The next day comes and there's no snow. That night on the news as they're ad-libbing into the weather segment, Sandy turns to this guy and says smugly, "Well, Jim, where's that six inches you promised me last night?"
The guy sits there, shocked, unable to compose a single English sentence and then he busts out laughing. In fact, everybody's laughing hysterically on that set except for Sandy and finally they just have to go to break.
Let me be clear. I don't even know if this story is true. It may be one of those "urban legend" type stories that is passed around and changed to fit different people and circumstances. All I know is that I heard it in the late 70s about Sandy so if it is an urban legend, it's one that started decades ago. Anyway, true or false, I liked it so much I put it in the first TV script I ever wrote -- something called E.N.G. (Electronic News Gathering) -- which became a big series in Canada for about five years.
These days I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a cumulo-nimbus and a funnel cloud but, God, I loved local television...
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Check out my MOVIE SMACKDOWN! review: The Weather Man (2005) -vs- Bruce Almighty (2003)
