• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

EARLY LOCAL WEATHER (BEFORE TECHNOLOGY)

gregg75

gregg75

Today weather is one of the most sophisticated aspects of local news, but it wasn't always that way.

Are you old enough to have seen weather reports done on a blackboard? Such was the case at WRBL TV 3 in Columbus, Georgia. Now, this wasn't 1949 but the mid-60's. The popular weatherman was Doug Wallace and he would draw just about everything from clouds to wind on his chalkboard map of the USA. By the time he was finished the board was just one big 5th grade mess!!! They must have been the last station in the country to use a chalkboard. At the end of his segment he would toss his chalk into the air and catch it!

Sophisiticated back then was using pre-made felt material and sticking it on a map. A sun here, a cloud there and rain over here. Not as much attention was given to local weather, but the national scene was covered to the max. You may have been living in Miami, but you knew what the weather was like in Seattle for that day.
 
gregg75 said:
Not as much attention was given to local weather, but the national scene was covered to the max. You may have been living in Miami,
but you knew what the weather was like in Seattle for that day.
Click to expand...

Reviewing the national weather patterns, storms and fronts is OK, as the "bad weather" may
have already hit your local area or soon will, but a complete waste of time is the showing (and
reading some of) the "temps across the nation"--whether it's the highs or the currents. If you
just have to know what the temp is in Fargo, go online or check tomorrow's McPaper!

As to old TV weather technology (long before green screen)--"weather in motion." The WX guy
slaps some round magnetic symbols up on the map and they start twirling and spinning as they
depict a specific weather occurrence.

And from the late ‘70s, do you remember that hideous B&W national sat map that came down on
the afternoon news feed? It was a film that had to be processed, then sent to the networks in
advance of 5 PM ET for the feed. How early in the day were those images captured?
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
Reviewing the national weather patterns, storms and fronts is OK, as the "bad weather" may
have already hit your local area or soon will, but a complete waste of time is the showing (and
reading some of) the "temps across the nation"--whether it's the highs or the currents. If you
just have to know what the temp is in Fargo, go online or check tomorrow's McPaper!
Click to expand...

Online yes but I believe the trend more/less for many newspapers ( mostly smaller papers ) is to only feature temperatures on a regional basis whether its just for one state or perhaps a tri-state area such as my hometown paper in Virginia. Only the temps for Virginia and West Virginia are shown..not Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee who touches those states. And the "nationwide cities" are usually limted to only those with big busy airports like LA, NYC, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas and handful of others. Sometimes I can't help but think that "sales" could play a role there, say if you live in a market where Southwest Airlines is popular you can bet your paycheck that Baltimore, Denver and Dallas would somehow end up on the weather page.

Funny when I think of those old weathercasters I think of two things...

1. the weathergirl who sometimes sings the forecast or plays with puppets ( like Baltimore's WBAL in the late 60s/early 70s )

2. being something like an informerical...example The Atlantic Weatherman being dressed up in a gas station employee uniform.
 
I recall an early local LA weather cast (can't remember what channel) where the weatherman stood behind a glass wall with a sort of silhouette map of LA county. He would announce tomorrow's predicted temps in various cities, and write them with a black marker or grease-pencil. Since he was standing behind the "invisible shield" so to speak, he had to write the numbers backward from his viewpoint,
 
I bring you..."23 Newsday", WAKR/23 (Akron, OH, later WAKC), with Jack Ryan doing the weather in 1981.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTxoa8N1C2I

Look! Stick on plastic temperatures and graphics! Fllp the map to get from the national map to the Ohio map! At least they had a CG machine that wasn't bad for 1981.

:D

WAKR/WAKC was the Cleveland market's secondary ABC affiliate. It's now ION O&O WVPX, serving the entire market with no Akron/Canton newscast. (It had one in recent PAX days, produced by the Cleveland NBC affiliate.)
 
Lkeller said:
I recall an early local LA weather cast (can't remember what channel) where the weatherman stood behind a glass wall with a sort of silhouette map of LA county. He would announce tomorrow's predicted temps in various cities, and write them with a black marker or grease-pencil. Since he was standing behind the "invisible shield" so to speak, he had to write the numbers backward from his viewpoint,
Click to expand...

I don't know where this originated, but it was common in many markets in the late 60's and 70's. Ira Joe Fisher was doing this in Spokane in the 70's, and took it to NYC later.

In Seattle, we had Bob Cram, the cartooning weather man on KING. He would draw actual cartoons to describe the weather. This dates to the late 60's. He was soon replaced by real weather stats, although the technology was still quite ancient until about 1975 or '76 when everything went electronic.
 
Not all of the boards were a mess: Wally Kinnan, the weatherman (a true meteorologist, not a DJ who took an online course) used to draw a detailed weather map free-hand, on the air - while explaining what was happening. His competition just used something like 'fridge magnets - a smiling sun or a frowning cloud.

Or you had comedian Sonny Elliot who did a weather forecast peppered with jokes. Many people tuned in just for the jokes.

Or Trudi Thurman, who had a low sultry voice and did the weather report wearing tight sweaters - giving a whole new meaning to "warm front."
 
When I lived in Vermont in the late 1980's I was amazed to see WCAX (Burlington) meteorologists still writing on a board with a marker pen!
 
OHIOMEDIAWATCH that YouTube video was a hoot!

Something tells me that weatherman was very PROUD of his temperature boards. The station sure was making usage of their computer generated graphics machine.

That "Mommie Dearest" movie commercial seemed to be odd in a newscast. Can you imagine turning in and seeing that and thinking it was a news story?

They had the sports guy sitting way in the back, like he had been misbehaving. I guess the news guys had to scoot over so the camera could get him. TV 23 at it's finest!
 
davect said:
When I lived in Vermont in the late 1980's I was amazed to see WCAX (Burlington) meteorologists still writing on a board with a marker pen!
Click to expand...

KPAZ-TV 21 Phoenix, in its pre-TBN days as a half-secular, half-religious independent, had a ultra-low-budget 5 PM newscast - the only one in Phoenix at the time. Their weatherman stood in front of National Geographic maps of the US and Arizona, with clear plastic overlays that he marked up with his trusty Magic Marker. This was in the mid '70s; the newscast only lasted a couple of years.
 
The weatherman on the Channel 23 video was Jack Ryan, who was also a WAKR/1590 disk jockey who went by the name "Jolly" Jack Ryan.

The station had a long history of using radio personalities to do the weather. Tim Daugherty (current WONE/97.5 morning co-host who also tracks afternoons on 1590) did it for years.

That set was later replaced by a more traditional set with lots of wood (fake wood) paneling.
 
Weather at the same station 3 years later, after the main set change (a commercial for the All-New 1985 Mercury Lynx is first!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB0ju7xQzA8

The weather anchor is Rose Gabriele, one of the station's regular news reporters. The maps look like blown-up versions of the ones in the 1981 video. The station does have color satellite (presumably courtesy of NOAA) and color radar (courtesy of NWS at Akron/Canton Airport).
 
Full video of WAKC's last set, in this "23 Newsday" open:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek4mG_KmJC0

That's weatherman Tim Daugherty (WONE/WAKR) on the left, and the anchor is Joyce Johnson. Joyce now writes for local weekly newspapers, occasionally fills in doing news on talk WNIR/100.1, and is married to former WJW/8 reporter (and OMW reader) Don Olson.

Don't recognize the sports guy.
 
It was before my time, but in the very early days of Pittsburgh television there was a weather
broadcast called the Serta Perfect Sleeper Weather Forecast, sponsored by Serta mattresses.

The weather would be read live by a fetching young lady dressed in a negligee, lying on a
Serta mattress. I think there was some crude hand drawn map on an easel behind her,
not that anybody was looking at that.

My father told me about this years ago and I always thought he was making it up.
Such fare seems far too racy for Pittsburgh TV in the early to mid 1950's. But it's true.
Two local TV legends, Eleanor Schano and Ricki Wertz, each took turns in the negligee.
 
Al Sleet, The Hippie-Dippie Weatheman, seemed to do just fine with lo-tech weather maps, thank you. He was able to give the folks in Secaucus, New Jersey, plenty of warning that a squadron of Russian ICBM's was headed their way.

Absoute best YouTube weather video: Paul Lynde doing the weather on Channel 13 in Toledo. "The Boater's Forecast---Ah, screw 'em!"
 
Here's a few more I found with their STAR ratings

CAPTAIN WEATHERMAN from WSAV in Savannah Georgia doing his thing with a
magic marker and map in 1964......on the worst map of Georgia I've ever seen. A bird puppet
drops down with tomorrow's forcast. A clam holds the tides. (8 min)**************
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY8rQJAQ_4I

Jim English in Pennsylvania. He used a lot of magnets in his show.(4 min)*****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr74zll5ZxE&feature=related

Paul Lynde does Toledo weather 1978 (6 min)*******
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX_igvcBICc&playnext=1&list=PL14E42B035C47F5D4&index=81

Iowa WHBF weather mid 60's in front of green screen (4 min)****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW0mmAkL9PU

Weather girl from Australia (appears to be hypnotized) (1 min)****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKx0uYZqSn0&feature=related
 
Don McNeely on KFVS-12 Cape Girardeau Missouri back in the '70s was da-bomb! He would have a map (probably magnetic) with all the fronts already drawn on it. Then during the course of the forecast, he would draw where the fronts would be by the same time the next day. He would also write in the afternoon temps (not necessarily the high temps) at cities all across the country with his magic marker! Not sure if he memorized them or what!
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom