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How TV Weathercasters Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Chip Clark.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: There's Charles w Wayne Action Bryant, and there's Jerry the
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Weather rolland and put the three of us together, you've
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: got yourself the weather team of Stuff you should Know.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: That's right. This is a kind of a fun one
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: that Dave Ruse helped us out with. Yeah, you commissioned
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: did a great job. Weather people, that's right, weathercasters, broadcast meteorologists.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: We're talking about not just meteorologists in general. That's a
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: this is a very specific subset of meteorologists. They're meteorologists
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: who are on TV presenting the weather TV weather people. Yeah,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: this is Ken Cook.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Oh I forgot about Ken Cook.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, dude, he's still around.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's kind of the fun thing that you
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: will see partially in this episode. And if you just
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: are from a city that has local news, which is
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: to say everywhere, right, if you if you get a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: gig like this and you want to and you don't
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: do anything wrong, sure like the idea from the weather,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: from the from the TV station is that they will
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: have you for thirty years if you will stay on,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: because that's what they're after. They're after a someone that
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the local audience bonds with, they trust, they know and
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: love you. Just these jobs don't go away unless you're
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: just not any good at it for some reason. But
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: if you lock in, like if you're like a Dallas
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Rains or a Ken Cook and you lock into your
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: job as the local weather personality, you're set for life
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: as long as you don't screw it up.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which, interestingly, like a little corollary to that, Chuck,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: is that that that low turnover makes the jobs really compare.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Oh sure, I read that TV weather people are not
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: friends with the other channels weather people really. Yeah, it's
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: super competitive from what I heard, which is strange because
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: when you think of the TV weather person they're like
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: the friendliest, nicest person in the whole group.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the gang fight and Anchorman in the Alley.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we'll see, Anchorman, as hilarious as it was,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: was also incredibly accurate.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, So we're talking.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: About weathercasters, broadcast meteorologists, TV weather personalities. I'm going to
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: give those examples every time. No, And there's a really
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: long standing joke that says, what other profession could you
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: be wrong half of the time and still get paid
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: a million dollars?
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, put around a very, very long time. And it
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: kind of underscores just how people typically think of the
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: weather person. They remember when the weather person gets it
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: wrong a lot of times, but whether people are Do
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: you remember we talked about how incredibly stressful a court
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: stenographer's job must be. I think the weather person on
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: TV might have a job that's equally stressful to that.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: You think, let's talk about the components of the weather
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: person's job, Chuck.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I think it looks like a good gig. And in
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: fact I wanted for a very brief time. And I've
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: mentioned this before aspired not aspired, that's overshooting it. Thought
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: briefly in college about trying to be a weather person.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I don't because I was into meteorology. As I mentioned before,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I used to watch the Weather Channel with my best
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: friend Rat in high school. Yeah, while we hung out,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and I took a weather and climate course in college,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and that further reinforced that. I was like, this is
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: really cool. And I was a pre journalism major I
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: was in. I wanted to be I thought I wanted
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: to be like a broadcast news kind of reporter type.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: But I thought no one, And this was, you know,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: eight nineteen year old Tack. I was like, nobody's trying
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to be a weather person these days because it's so uncool,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: like that would probably be a pretty easy gig to get. Yeah,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: not to little dude.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: And there's so much work to it too. So first
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: of all, not everyone's a meteorologist. And this is a
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: big boat of contention among the meteorologists who do present
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: on TV.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, most of them are now, but not all of them.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Yes, but from what I saw, by most, that means
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: slightly over fifty percent. Oh really, Yeah, it's not like
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: the vast majority from what I've seen, I.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Guess I'm thinking most major cities. But yeah, you're right,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I guess sure. Sheboygan doesn't have a meteorologist.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: I think if you are an actual meteorologist on TV,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: you command more money and probably a little more respect,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: who knows, of course, But while you're while you're working. So,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: say you are a meteorologist, okay, so you have to
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: have an understanding of how the weather works. You have
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: to understand how you can communicate that understanding to the public.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: In an understandable way, So understanding all around you have
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: to have. It's a good personnel, Like you can't be
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: like me some dark smow. You know, you have to
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: be nice and people people want to like you, and
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: so you got to be likable in return. You also
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: have to have like a lot of poise because you're
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: up there on live TV. Don't forget, all of this
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: is live And one of the things I didn't know
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: about weather people they don't have a script. And if
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: you ever watch a weather person deliver their spiel in
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: a couple of minutes, most of the time they do
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: not mess up. They don't have to correct themselves. They
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: don't like like accidentally say half of a word. They're like,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: they're like the opposite of us.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: They do not screw up, and sometimes they do, of course,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: but most of the time it right. So the fact
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: that they're they know what they're talking about. They're getting
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: it across in a logical manner that's spread out in
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: like some understandable way that you can follow that makes
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: sense on live TV, while manipulating images on a green
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: screen that they can't see except for monitors on either side,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: while also just being fun and chipper and doing it
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: all within your time limit. That's I say that that
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: is a high stress, really admirable job.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's what I say. That's your take. My take.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Admirable for sure, high stress for week one, and then
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I think you're on cruise control. Okay, next thirty five years.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Maybe not week one, but I see what you mean.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Sure, And I'm not saying again, not saying that they're
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: not doing a good job or whatever. But I bet
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you once they had that down, it's it's a pretty
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: great job. Sure, that's not super stressful. All right, that's
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: just my guess. Yeah, I no, you won me over
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: to your side. I'm usually my opinion is almost always correct,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: but it was. Let's go back in time, though, to
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: eighteen seventy went a very sort of mind the mental
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: thing happened in the United States weatherwise. It's when the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: National Weather Service was founded, and they from the get
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: go said, here's our mission. We're going to collect data
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: from all over the country from these weather stations. We're
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: going to send it out on the telegraph and people
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: can put it in newspapers if they want. And that's
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: just what happened. Starting in the eighteen eighties with New
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: York World, they started putting their own local weather forecast
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: on the front page. And then it took another cheese
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: probably fifty years or so, maybe not quite before a
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: paper would do the national weather and that would of
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: course be the New York Times did a national weather map.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so weather's always basically been associated with news,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: like right from the get go. And as news has
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: evolved in the way that news is delivered, the weather's
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: evolved alongside it. So when the news made the jump
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: to radio, weather was right there basically from the outside.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: And there was a guy named Jimmy Fiddler and he
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: was out of WLBC and Munchie Indiana and uh.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Munchie Monsey's Munsy.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: If it were Italian, it'd be Munchie.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love Munchie. We should go.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, it is Monsy. I know that because it's not
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: that far from Toledo. So thank you for corre.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Apologize about my asthma throat too. If people think I'm dying,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not. It's just a pollen season, dude.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: It is so bad up here, it's crazy.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really bad.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, three thousands we're talking about people, Is that the
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: level is high.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, because usually I don't get it too bad.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: But I've been wheezy and asthmatic for like six weeks plus.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: There's also the nice little bonus of it being cold,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: super cold, like it's February cold here right now, and
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: it's not like it was cold on one day. It's
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: set in cold. I don't know what's going on.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, uh. And I should also point out that laughing
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: uh triggers like that asthma, wheeze and cough.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll try to be funny. I'm not making any promise.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I know. I'm trying to contain my laugh because if not, I'll.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Go I would find that satisfying.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: All right, try and kill me, Okay.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: So anyway, he was out of WLBC in Muncie, Indiana,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: and he's known as basically the first weatherman, the guy
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: who created the what we saw as the weatherman and
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: eventually weather person all the way back in the nineteen thirties.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's sort of the more personality driven weather reporter. Yeah.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: As we'll see you know, well we can talk about
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: it right now. Actually, as we'll see if TV, as
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: TV became a thing that sort of came and went
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: over the years until it firmly established itself as like
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: whether people should be probably just a little more personality plus.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: But he was also the first human to be on
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the television reporting the weather. TV in the late nineteen
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: thirties and early forties was not a very big deal,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: only about and it's hard to find good numbers, but
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: they found a stat that said about six thousand TV
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: sets nationwide man after the war, that became in less
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: than a decade close to ten million TV sets. So crazy,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that's when that boom happened. But he old Jimmie phil
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: almost At Fielder Fiddler went on TV in Cincinnata either
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine or nineteen forty as the first
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: human TV weatherman.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, and I'm glad that you Caveat did that with
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: human because a lot of people were like, oh no,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: the first weather person of all time was Wooly Lamb,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: a cartoon character a Lamb. He didn't catch that from
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: the name. Who was just a total shill for Botany
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: wrinkle proof ties. Botany, I take it is the same
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: as the Botany five hundred company that outfitted guys like
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Rod Serling and all of them in the.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Fifties oh, nice looking suits.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: So Wooly had a goal that was that preceded every forecast.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: And I have not heard this, but I guarantee, just
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: from reading it, I can recreate it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: You ready, that's it.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: It's hot, it's cold, it's rain, it's fair. Way, I
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: already screwed it up. Hold on, let me try again
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: one and it too. It's hot, it's cold, it's rain,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: it's fair. It's all mixed up together. But eyes Botany's
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Wooly lamp predict tomorrow's weather.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I think that you nailed it.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: That's the only way you could thank you.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Or what was the star search? Four and three quarter stars?
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Wooly lamb though was a full year or more after uh, Fiddler,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So I don't see why the date is under dispute.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: So I don't care. That's probably just the internet thing.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if Fiddler was considered a big
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: liar or something because they date says that there's no
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: archival footage of it. But if he said that, he did.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Well just because they didn't cord that stuff back then.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Right exactly? Remember in our sitcoms episode, they didn't start
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: recording until the late forties early fifties. Maybe it was
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: just live, not even live to tape, right, But the
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: fact that he's saying he did it, I don't see
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: why they would be like, no, you're lying. It was
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: really Wooly Lamb.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was in his obituary, so I'll go with that.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: But there was one other thing that Jimmy Fiddler did
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: that created the persona of the TV weather man in
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: addition to that whole you know that the personality that
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: you were talking about. He took weather data from all
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: different sorts of places and put it together and interpreted
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: it in a way that he could then present it
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: to the public who would then know what the weather
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: was going to be like tomorrow or the day after.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: That was Jimmy Fiddler who created that.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: That's right, and that set the standard.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: It did, and Wooly Lamb kind of set a weird
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: standard too in the post war years, right.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Uh, I don't know about this what happened.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Oh well, so Wooly Lamb. So imagine a cartoon Lamb
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: as your weather person on your local TV station.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I've got I'm there.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Kind of weird. There was a period in the late
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: forties early fifties where that would kind of be a
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: fairly normal thing. Or in addition to cartoon lambs, there
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: were puppits.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I get what you mean.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: There were other cartoons. There were there were all clowns,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: all sorts of just weird stuff, rhyming guys like we'll
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: talk about a little bit of that. But Wooly Lamb
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: and Jimmy Fidler really set the stage for whether people
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: would come. And I think, Chuck, I have just set
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: the stage for our first at break well done.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: All right, So I mentioned before TV's booming post war,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: close to ten million TV sets in the end of
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. By that time, they had about seventy
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: local TV stations, which you know, doesn't sound like a
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: lot compared to today, but obviously you know your major
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: cities are going to have them, and it took a
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: long time. And we'll talk about when the FCC broke
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: things up and allowed more than one per city as well.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: So a little bit. But in the forties, this is
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: where I was talking about sort of personality plus kind
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of coming and going. There were a couple kinds of
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: weather forecasters on television when it first started really rolling
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: out postwar, and that was the really sort of dry kind.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Some of these people were former there were veterans from
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: the military who knew about the weather from you know,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: do that in the military. Sometimes they were just really
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: stuffy science types. Sometimes they were not science people at all,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and they were just stuffy, but they were just kind
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: of boring. But if you you know, like I said
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: at the beginning, you could lock into a job even
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: back then, right and have it through the nineteen sixties
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: and into the seventies. And that happened in a few occasions, right. Yeah.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: There was a guy the chief meteorologist at WTP in Washington,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: D C. Lewis Allen, and he was there for many decades.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure when he retired, but he was around
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: for a very long time. There's people still alive that
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: remember him as their weather man, right, yeah, And he
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: was really well known. He was an incredibly accomplished meteorologist.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: But he was also a pretty good little drawer, and
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: so he would draw in like what the next day's
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: weather was going to be like he called it a woodle,
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: a weather doodle. And I've seen from the research, if
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: you have a little thing like that or a good
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: sign off for something. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean talk
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: about endearing the public to you, that's all. It takes
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: a woodle.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, go screw yourself, San Diego. Yeah. Clint Yule was
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: another one. He became known nationally as mister Weather because
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: he became the first national deliver of weather in the
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: late nineteen forties when he debuted on the Camel News
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Caravan on NBC. Camel Cigarettes of course sponsored that, and
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: he worked out of Chicago, but kind of invented a
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: system that would become the green screen later by putting
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a map, a Rand McNally map of the United States,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: under plexiglass and then drawing on it with a race marker,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and he would you know, draw you know, like weather
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: fronts and rain and dry weather and stuff like that.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: He would draw words on it. Then it moved to color.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: He made those color markers and he was the first
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: sort of national do to come around.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: One little tidbit about Clint Yule, that Ram McNally map.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: He had to bring it from homes.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was his.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: It's hilarious.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: They didn't cover it. I mentioned the two types of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: weather people. This was sort of into the nineteen fifties,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: so I guess it was three types. You had your
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: sort of dry types, but in the fifties they really
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: wanted to spice it up, and that's when you got
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: either your wacky men, like you mentioned the rhyming weatherman
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: that was out of Billiams out of Nashville, or people
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: that had puppets. Willard Scott was very famous weatherman his
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: entire career, but had always been pretty wacky, and was
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Bozo the Clown on TV before that, and was Ronald
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: McDonald and TV commercials before that, I think the first
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Ronald McDonald. Yeah, but you had those wacky types, these
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: weird men trying to inject a little entertainment into the
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: news weather. And then you had what were known men
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: as weather girls, which was hey, let's get in a
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: track a young woman. Let's put her in a nice,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: fashionable outfit. Who cares if she knows meteorology, Let's just
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: put her on her TV screen.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the first weather girl was Carol Reid at
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: WCBS in New York and they brought her on to
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: go head to head with the weatherman tex Antoine at WNBC.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: And the reason why was because it's like you said,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: the FCC opened up competition in nineteen fifty two for
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: TV licenses, So that's where we got more than one
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: local TV station. Yeah, so all of a sudden there
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: was that competition, and they figured out, well, people don't
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: really take the weather all that seriously. It's not like
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: crime or something like that. Let's use that to kind
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: of gain viewers by just being a little wacky. So
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: tex Antoine he had a cartoon named Uncle Webby and
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: he would blame Uncle Webby the Weather Bureau if he
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: got it wrong, it was Uncle Webby's fault and it
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: was kind of like a gruff sidechick. And he was
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: extraordinarily popular. So they brought Kyl Reid on as an
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: attractive twenty six year old who didn't have any training
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: in meteorology, right, but she was very likable. She had
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: a good smile and she had a good sign off.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Chuck, I'm going to give it to you. You can't
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: you can't not take this. Have a happy, have a happy,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: that's very nice.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so she kicked off the whole weather girls thing.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there was another one named Ginger Stanley. She
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: would sometimes get in her bathing suit and get in
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: a tank of water on the CBS Morning Show to
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: deliver the weather. Yeah. Another one, and this is hard
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: to believe. They had in lingerie in bed Yeah, in
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, I know, which imagine the lingerie then
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: was just some head to toe Yeah, I had to toe,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: you know, gown that just looks sort of silky to
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the touch would be my guest.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: And then you had the fact that it was a
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: legit entree point though if you wanted to do serious news,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: so you would just get in. However you could, like
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Diane Sawyer was one of these quote unquote weather girls
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: in Louisville, and they said take those glasses off, hin, Yeah.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: And then seldom make passes at girls who are glasses.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: You looked too smart. And Roquel Welch was in fact
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: in San Diego and she was the sun up weather girl.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Fact to the podcast, Roquel Welch at the time was
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: known as Raquel.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Tahata Yeah, which means lime tree. Oh does it? Yeah,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Roquel lime tree.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: That's also Raquel means squeeze.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: And Welch means grape juice.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Wow. I'm all I'm starting to see the pattern now.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: I think in the nineteen sixty one was sort of
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the apex of the weather girl phenomenon, when they had
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: four hundred and sixty six TV stations nationwide in about
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: three quarters of them were using weather girls. And that's,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: you know, generally not the case anymore. When you see
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a woman that is the local meteorologist, and at least
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: in a big city, chances are she has her meteorology degree, yes,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: and a certified as well.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: It's definitely not a novelty or like they're using sex
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: appeal to get people to watch the weather. That's not
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: what they're ostensibly doing any longer. But what I found
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: interesting was that Tarol Reid, who started the weather girl era,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: also ended it when she was let go in nineteen
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: sixty four. I believe that's considered the end of the
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: weather girl era too. And the reason that the weather
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: girl era came to an end is because the pendulum,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: which had started with stuffy academics and then swung to
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: women in lingerie in bed giving the weather, yeah, we
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: started to swing back the other way where the actual
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: like legitimate meteorologists are like, hey, what we're doing is
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: actually kind of important and it's not as easy as
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: you guys think. So we want a little more respect,
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: and so to help kind of give them back, the
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association started coming
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: up with certifications and seal of approval, seals of approval
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: that I, like a legit meteorologist on TV who was
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: doing good work, could get and basically use as like
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: a bona fide.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like why did I go to college and study
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: this and work on training my hair part for the
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: past fifteen years? Yeah, and put all this money into
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: hair spray If I can't get on TV because there's
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: a lady in our lingerie in bed.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm in the process of training my hair part.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: My hairdresser, Michael something, get it over. Yeah, he thought
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: it was over way too close to my ears, So
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: he's moving a little closer towards the crown of my head.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Very interesting, It is interesting, and it's actually kind of
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: a rough transition period because my hair wants to go
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: back down, but I've got to go back up this way,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: and it doesn't always want to do that. I constantly
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: run my stuff my fingers, so my stupid hair it's awful.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: And they by doing that because it's been cold lately,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: it creates a lot of static, so it just ends
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: up like stuck to my foreheaded one large mass, and
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: I end up with a helmet head ironically looking like
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: a nineteen seventies weather person.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: I my hair, I've been getting it cut on the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: sides and in the back, and I just I've been
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: doing all kinds of crazy hair stuff since the pandemic.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: But what I realized is, I think what I'm subconsciously
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: going for is the haircut I had in high school
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: was when I had like the long, all one link,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the bangs skater cut and kind of shaved up on
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the sides and in the back. I'm getting there, can't
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: quite envision that. I'll send you a picture of well,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I'll say you with bags for real, well not bangs,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: like combed straight down on my forehead.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: So now like Anthony Keatus's current haircut, time.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Of thing, no no no no, no, no no, I'm swooping
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: it up and over like always. But it's just sort
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of that all one linked sort of thing.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: I'm still having trouble.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I'll see you on tour soon, okay, and we can
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: talk about each other's hair in the green room.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, So let's move on beyond our hair, right, because
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: we're coming to another pivotal watershed moment in TV weather
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: people history.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're coming to the Anchorman years. This was, like
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you said, that movie was true in a lot of ways.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And in the nineteen sixties, sort of the late sixties,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: WABC in New York said, all right, you know, the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: news had always been sort of a serious affair, like
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: when you think of national news, you think of like
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the Walter Cronkites and stuff like that. Was it wasn't
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: like the news as we know it today even locally.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: And WABC in New York said, you know what, let's
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: let's transform our newscast and have a little more fun
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: with it. It was called happy Talker, Happy News, and
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: we'll this news team will have two very personable anchors,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Like everyone's got to be personality. Plus, now everyone's got
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: to kind of joke around as you go to commercial
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: or maybe the weather man even or the sportsperson interjects
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: from you know, the side when they're talking a news story.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Obviously not you know, if it's like a really serious story,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: they don't come in and joke. But if it's the
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: cat stuck in the tree and the little old lady
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: who scaled it to get it down. Everybody in the
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: newsroom is now this one big fun group, laughing and
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: joking about it.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Right, And the goal is to make the viewer think
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: that they're watching like a group of friends who hang
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: out like off hours and stuff like that too, right, yeah,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: like Anchorman, exactly right, Like that was the thing. Like
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: in Anchorman, they actually did that, and they were I
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: didn't realize it, but they were parodying happy talk, happy news.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: And there was a news manager specifically named al Primo
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: who's brought into WABC to get ratings up, who's credit
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: was coming up with that format, and within a decade,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: every single TV station still today has the happy talk format.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: So the weather person factors into this, because Chuck, they
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: had to have their own personality, and they went back
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: to basically Jimmy Fiddler's personality and adopted that permanently as
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: this happy, peppy, science y type. In fact, a lot
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: of whether people, especially like local stations and smaller markets,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: are called upon to basically explain science stuff sometimes like
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: they're just the in house egghead basically, right.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the only person on staff of the science
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: degree probably.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Right, so there was one thing that really kind of
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: also happened from the happy talk format aside from it
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: just existing. Tex Antoine, who I mentioned, he was brought
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: on to WNBC in the fifties and gave everybody else
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: a run for their money. He got canceled long before
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: anybody ever even thought of the word canceled. But he
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: as part of his happy talk spiel, he would often
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: like make funny comments on news stories, and I think
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: it became so ingrained in his his pattern that he
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: didn't always stop and think what he was saying. And
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: this is definitely a case of that.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so he got he got he got fired kind
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: of immediately, I think.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, from what I saw for sure, And there were
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of people stepped up to try to bring
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: him back or whatever they were like. No, Don was
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: definitely over the line.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: All right, should we take a break, Yes, all right,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: let's take a break and we will talk about uh, well,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: let's talk more about weather people right after this.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Stop stop stop stop stop, Okay, Chuck. So, one thing
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: that we've kind of been tracking here is this kind
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: of evolutionless progression of delivering the weather on TV. And
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: one of the big technological advances was the launch of
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: the Goes one geostationary satellite over the US back in
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five. Because now we had serious av that
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: the weather people didn't have before. You could string together
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: these pictures taken every half hour of cloud formations and
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: basically do like a flip book on TV and show
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: people the clouds moving across the United States. And if
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: you watch today, that the cloud movement that just keeps
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: resetting over and over again, you know during the this
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: like one specific part of the weather task. Yeah, that's
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: the exact same thing. It's probably not coming from Goes
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: one anymore. It might be, but it's definitely in that
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: the legacy of the Goes one satellite.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. And if you're watching the news in the
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: mid seventies and all of a sudden you see a
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: front literally moving for the first time, like you're pretty
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: knocked out, it was a big deal. People really loved it.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: The green screen comes along in the eighties. That's what
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier. When you are standing in front of
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: a green screen, and maybe we should do like a
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: short stuff on chroma key technology.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: All right, we should do it in front of a
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: green screen.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: We should we've done stuff in front of green screens before. Yeah,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: lots sure, but yeah, they're standing there, they're looking off
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: screen at monitors, they're pointing, you know, you know, it
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: takes a little time to learn how to master pointing
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: at a blank screen and lining it up correctly so
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: you're pointing at you know, Kansas City and not ames
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Iowa by accident. Doppler comes along as sort of the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: next big thing or next rad next generation radar that
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: was in the early nineties and another big game changer
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: as far as you know, just more in depth and
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: detailed weather forecasting and also how to like you know,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: broadcast it for people's eyeballs.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, because you could see into the storm. Now
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: you could talk about the precipitation like inside the storm.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: It was really I mean, next generation.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Next gen athlete titled. So then we get to the
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: big question which a lot of people may wonder, is
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: like do these people, I know they have meteorology degrees,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: but a lot of times do But do they come
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: up with their own forecasts or do they just get
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: a print out of the national weather forecast and read
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: it on the air and move their hands around a
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: screen and it's a little bit of both. Sure, they
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: get all of their weather basically data wise from the
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: National Weather Service and from the NOAA. Why not, that's
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: where it all lives. That's where you're going to get
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the most accurate stuff. They're not going to be stubborn
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: and be like, well I don't want to use this stuff.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: They all use it. But they are like generally people
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: that have lived in this place for a while or
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: you know, after the gain experience, they also gain weather experience.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: And you might hear a local person say like, you know,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: this front is coming through, but you know, as we've
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: seen before in Atlanta, like in you know, eight years
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: ago when we had this happen, when we thought that
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: was going to happen. Like their experience in their their
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: sort of color commentary is their own, and it very
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: much comes into play and is relevant.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: My understanding too, is that they're taking this data from
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: the Weather Service and NOAH that they provide and having
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: to interpret it themselves, analyze it, interpret it, and then
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: and then I guess broadcasted in an understandable way. Right,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: So it's not like the Weather Service or no It
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: just sends out like, hey you can here's here's format
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: a if you want to be spicy today, here's when
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: that's a little edgy. Is nothing like that.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: It's not written for broadcast now, right.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: So even if you don't have a meteorological degree, you
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: have to understand how to read and interpret that kind
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: of data. And I don't think it's so arcane that
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: like no like the sigma characters used repeatedly or anything
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: like that. I think you can make heads or tails
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: of it because it's free and open to the public. Right,
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: it's available to everybody. But there's no purpose in not
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: using that information. That's what everybody does. It's what they've
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: been doing since eighteen seventy and it's one of those
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah, And at
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: the same time, there's a lot of work that they
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: have to put into putting this the puzzle pieces together
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: and giving a clear picture.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, if you're doing the morning news, you are showing
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: up to work at like three point thirty four in
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the morning, depending on what time your first broadcast is. Yeah,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: some of those first local news broadcasts are you know,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: four thirty five AM. And they got to be there
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: and know what's going on and look fresh and be
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: ready to go get those morning eyebags.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Calm down right the speaking of that, chuck, They a
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: lot of most of them do their own hair and makeup,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: unless you're in a really big city.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, was there a poll?
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: No, Actually, I've read I should probably shout it out.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: I read a post from tropicalweather dot net. Could not,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: for the life of me find out who wrote that.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: But they were clearly like a former TV weather caster,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: and they talked about, you know, day in the life
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: of a weather caster. And one of those things was
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: like they're like a one person show, Like they do
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: almost all their own stuff unless they're in a really
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: large market. Yeah.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're in a small market, you don't
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: have a weather team of like five or six people
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: put all this stuff together for you. You're like, you
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: know how to work the software, the graphics software, You're
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: like you said you are, You're you're doing it on
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: your own. Basically, if you're in a bigger city, then
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have like your weather team and stuff like that,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: and especially if you get to the tippy top of
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: like a Dallas Rains. I mentioned him a couple of times.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: He's the La Gui forever he may still be for
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: all I.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Know, what about storm fields.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, if you're sort of a weather celebrity and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: a big market, then I'm sure that you've got hair
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: and makeup and you've got people putting together all your
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: stuff for you generally, right. But you know, otherwise you're
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: kind of in the trenches doing the hard work. You you,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: you know, you probably don't go on to the field
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: as much if you're in a big city, but if
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: you're the small market person, you're probably still the one
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: that's standing out in the rain at times during a
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: big storm.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the other things, too, is when you're
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: when you get this picture of the weather together, it's
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: like four in the morning, you have to brief the
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: news manager on whether any of the weather warrant any
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: news coverage, which I hadn't thought about, but that's totally true.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, sometimes the weather makes the news, and that's
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: from coordinating with the news manager and the weather caster.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: You mean, like additional like it's a news story, yes, yeah, yeah.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: And then so in addition to just all of the
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: weather stuff, there's a lot of things that weathercasters cover
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: that we don't that don't really have anything to do
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: with the weather, but we still expect the weather caster
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: to give it to us celestial events, pollen counts, fishing
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: forecasts of course, all sorts of that stuff. Like if
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: you think about it, not really part of the weather.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: And in fact, that tropicalweather dot net really dryly put
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: it that the public relates astrological events to weather, considering
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: that it is viewed in the sky.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: It's kind of true. We all kind of think of
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: that as weather, but really not a lot to do
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: with weather. But the weather people have to look that
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: up to They have to research local events to put
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: the weather in context, like is the big May Day
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: parade gonna get rained out?
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Of course, like that kind of thing.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: So it digs the weather, makes it personal and important
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: to you by saying, like this thing you're going to
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: may or may not get rained out, and the weather
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: person has to know all of that stuff.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. When they're not in the studio and doing
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: weather stuff, they're usually pretty active in the community. You're
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: not going to find like a local TV weather person
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: that's just like a shut in off hours and doesn't
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: get involved. I think they're very much expected and it's
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: good for their brand obviously, to get out in the community,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: to be the guest judge at the Chicken Wing Flaning, which,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: by the way, I'm doing coming up soon. Oh really
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta. I'm a celebrity judge for the Kirkwood Wing
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Flaning Wow in May.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Best of luck.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: So if anyone wants to come down there and heckle me,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: feel free visit a elementary schools and go talk about
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: weather stuff there. And like I said, you're your own brand,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: so it will behoove you to to build your brand,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: and you do that through social media. So yeah, chances
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: are you got a big or hopefully a big Instagram following,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: or you're on Twitter or whatever, like you know, just
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: like any other on air personality, you want your name
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: to be out there.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, So you got up and got to work at
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: three point thirty. You took all of the tea leaves
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: from the NASA Weather Service and Noah put them together
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: into a picture that you can share with people. You've
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: made literal pictures of this stuff as graphics. You probably
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: in between the morning news and say the new News
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: if you're doing both of those, you taped a broadcast
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: for the website. You had to tweet the whole time
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: to try to build your social media following. And then
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: after work you had to go into an elementary school
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: and give a talk about weather and then go home, eat,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: go to bit and then get up the next morning
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: at I don't know, two forty five or three. That's
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: the life of a weather person.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: No, you go to the local fern bar.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah that's true. That's probably you could fit that
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: in there somewhere. You could fit a Harvey wallbanger at too, and.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's what you do in the seventies. But yeah,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a tough job. I mean, you lost
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: me at two forty five in the morning.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: No doubt. And then also there's I mean, unless you're
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: at the top of the heap, they're gonna tell you
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: need to work on the fourth July, on Christmas, on Thanksgiving,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: like and I saw one of the ways again to
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: from tropical weather dot net. If you want to get
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: your foot in the door, basically say I will be
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: the guy that works on Christmas and Thanksgiving and just
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: give me on TV. Let me show everybody what I've got.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: I got five thousand followers on Twitter, give me a shot.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Give me afraid, not afraid to stand in front of
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: a tornado.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Right, that's another one too. I mean standing in storms is,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: like you said, it's a real hazard of the job,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: but they kind of, depending on who you are, you
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: kind of have to do it.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's become a more of a thing. And
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I think in the last like twenty years or so,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Like I remember watching the Weather Channel the eighties, and
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: I don't remember seeing a ton of that, but people
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: watch the Weather Channel now to see what's the guy's name,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Jim Canty, Yeah, Jim Cantoorre. You know, is this the
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: one where he's going to be swept out to see
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: or not?
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: The one.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Dave linked to a clip of Hurricane Ian and Jim
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Cantoreian hanging on to us like a street sign. Yeah,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: and behind him is like a stop sign that's been
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: bent at the base and it's just flipping back and forth.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: And if that thing swung, it would chop Jim cantore
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: right in half. Like those things are heavy and they
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: can be sharp at high speeds, So it is definitely dangerous.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: But you said that it was from the maybe the
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: nineties or something that they started going out in the weather. Apparently,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Dan Rathers credited as one of the first reporters to
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: go out in a hurricane Hurricane Carla eighteen sixty one,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: when he was just a little cub reporter at KHO
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: You and Houston, and he went out and showed moves
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: like Alan the hurricane and kind of set that trend
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: that I guess. I think you're right. It wasn't something
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: that you would see until later on after the Weather
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Channel really kind of got into it.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel like it became a little
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: more like the storm chasy thing kind of cult holle
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: More Weather Channel, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, Which is funny.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: I know I said this before, but Emily loves Twister
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: and it is just so not her thing. And my
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: joke that I've used over and over over the years
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: when people talk about Emily's taste of movies is Emily
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: likes two types of movies, small indie dramas and Twister.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Liking Twister is so high.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Oh though it is Ohio now that I think about it,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: And she was obsessed with tornadoes growing up because of
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Sohio for sure. But yeah, the Weather Channel came around
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: in eighty two so I had never thought about it.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: When I was watching it in like eighty eight, it
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: was still pretty new. John Coleman was the was the
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: brainchild behind it. He got to start in the seventies
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: and eventually was the weather person for Good Morning America.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: And he was one of the ones that was like,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: you know, people want to watch people. They don't tune
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: in for the weather. They tune in to watch the
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: weather person, which is just sort of true and sort
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: of not.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it depends on the weather person really
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: if you think about it.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: But they also want to hear the weather, right, right.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: Although you know, I have something to confess. I have
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: trouble paying attention and focusing sometimes. Okay, I don't think
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: in the history of my entire life, I've ever absorbed
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: a weather report ever. Really, I'll watch the whole thing
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: and at the end I'll be like, I have no
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: idea what the weather's going to be tomorrow. Every single time.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: I haven't watched a weather report in a long time.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: I watch local and national news almost every night, so
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: it happens almost every day.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: That's yeah, I haven't watched local news since in probably
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: twenty something years.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're missing out, buddy.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not into it TV before eight pm. Well except
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: for Jeopardy.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Okay that's seven thirty so yeah, still.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: But then it goes back off at eight so usually
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: until nine.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Does it?
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: There's that hour of power where you're just sitting there meditating.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: No, that's when uh, that's when bedtime for Ruby happens.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: So you can't screen on KIT. She'll just be like,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: must watch, right, I don't care.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: I want to watch how the Equalizer ends tonight.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Oh dude, she'll watch. She was watching the stupid ads
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: on the gas pump the other day from the car.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: I was like, this is sick.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a problem, Chuck. You got a problem on
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: your hands there.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: And she said, screw you, dad.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: So well there's your other problem too. That and Emily
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: loving Twister. You got a lot of problems.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: That's right. But you know what's not one the weather?
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Because I use my weather apps. That's how I ingest
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: the weather. I guess I'm like a gen z because
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: they've done research, Pew research, even the best research, and
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: they found this, forty two percent of people over sixty
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: five still follow the local news very closely and fifty
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: one percent of that group of people get their local
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: news from local TV broadcasts. Sure, if you go to
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: under thirty, it drops down to fifteen percent follow the
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: local news very closely, and twenty six percent prefer to
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: get their news from TV.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Right, so sixty percent of that group like diet it
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: from online.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm I want to see who that
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: fifteen percent of twenty something says is following the local
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: news very closely on television.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: I think it's like a retro kind of thing. They
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: also read letters by hand and stuff like that. Maybe
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: that's it, that's my guess. But so you could make
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: a pretty good point that the TV weather caster is like,
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: you know, a walking dinosaur. They're they're doomed, right, Nah.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: The thing is, no, you're right. The thing is is
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: if the Pew also did another poll where they asked
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: people like, what's the what's the most important part of
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: a local newscast, and everybody seventy percent of people said
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: the weather.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it topped.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Crime. Sports was second to last, just above restaurants, clubs,
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: and bars, which I found really surprising. But because they
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: treat this sports department like they're just gods or something, Yeah,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: so the weather person. As long as there's local news,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: there's going to be weather people because they're the bright
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: shining star of the whole thing as far as the
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: viewing public goes, even if they're not particularly portrayed or
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: treated that way. Although it feels like in recent years
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: like they've started to really kind of spotlight the weather
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: person a little more and how smart they are and
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: reliable and how great their family thinks they are, like
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: the thing.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I bet they had the same
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: fears just about local news period once national news became
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: a thing on TV. Yeah, and it'll always be around
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: because people I just think people like, uh, I like
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: that it's still on. I don't watch it, but I
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: love that. I mean the TV was on in a
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: restaurant I was at the night and that's where I
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: saw Ken Cook was still around. Yeah, like wow, look
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: at him still going.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: And Jeff Hellndry used to be the sports guy. I
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: think he's an anchor now.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: But that's the thing. I mean, like you can not
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: you know, participate or take part in something and still
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: be bummed if it isn't around anymore, you know. Yeah,
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: So there's another kind of route that some weather casters
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: are taking to wrap all this up, and that is
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: to basically interpret the weather as far as like climate
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: change goes. Yeah, and Dave put it really perfectly that
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: they're they're evolving into basic a science reporter who doesn't
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: just forecast the weather, but puts it into context, particularly
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: these days, in the context of climate change. Yeah, and
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: that's that's a pretty good new direction for them to
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: go in. It makes a lot of sense. And talk
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: about making yourself relevant.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, depending on what city you live in,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: that's probably welcome or not welcome. I did see John Coleman.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I was looking trying to find clips of him on
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: YouTube and there was one I couldn't find out what
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: year it was, but one where they he did a
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: full segment poo pooing climate change basically in the data.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I thought it was pretty interesting, the.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: Guy who founded the Weather Channel. Yeah, okay, oh Man,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: that reminds me. There's a book called Merchants of Doubt
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: I think I've talked about before, and it's like, it's
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: really unnerving. It's about stuff like that. It's about people
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: who don't I'm not accusing John Coleman to this, but
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: it's about scientists who are basically paid by huge companies
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: to so out among the public about whether the science
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: mind things like climate change or tobacco causing cancer was
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: actually legitimate or not and really set the world back
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: in all sorts of really evil ways. It's really tough
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: to read.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Hmm sounds fun.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, really that was a weird way to end this episode,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: but that's how we're gonna end it.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I got nothing else, all right.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Well, so Chuck said he's got nothing else. Everybody. That
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: means the time for listener mail.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: This is about Dolly Parton. We had a fun recent
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: episode on Dolly her majesty and this is from John
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Pizeric who lives in Japan. Hey, guys, want to chime
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: in with a fun Dolly Parton fact to just show
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: how she's become incorporated in all sorts of cultures. I've
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: included a picture for reference. But in dental school, when
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: you learn to do fillings, we use a thin metal
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: band to help shape the fillings for the tooth. However,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: sometimes a feeling would be particularly deep or large, and
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: stead of using the standard type one band, you would
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: need to use a type two band. To help students
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: remember what the Type two band looks like. They were
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: effectionally known as the Dolly Parton band because of the
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: bust like appearance she became famous for. And he's showing
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: me these little bands in one. One just looks like
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: a sort of a bent popsicle stick, like a boomerang
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: shaped popsicle stick. And one looks like a boomerang popsicle
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: stick with boobs where the boomerang meets in the center. Yeah.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: I canly check that out, so that must be what
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: he's talking about. I know Chuck has had his fair
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: share of dental experience, would almost guarantee that most Dennis
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: know the reference. If you were to bring this up,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: probably I'm going to do that, John, just so you know.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you for all you do. I wish my trip
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: to DC from Japan was able to coincide with your show,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: but a glass is not the case.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: So sorry, John, Yeah, sorry about that.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: John.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks for a great email though. We appreciate that.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: We always love learning new weird things, and that was
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: a new weird.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Thing for all right, Chuck, new for me.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with this, like
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: John did, send us an email. Send it off to
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.