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EARLY LOCAL WEATHER (BEFORE TECHNOLOGY)

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,
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Back in the 80s, I remember seeing a forecaster using that method on a national Canadian broadcast - I'm thinking Global, but it might have been CTV. He had a grease pencil in each hand and worked ambidextrously. Yes, Canada had double-digit temperatures before the global warming - even in Celsius! ;D
 
dhett said:
Back in the 80s, I remember seeing a forecaster using that method on a national Canadian broadcast - I'm thinking Global, but it might have been CTV. He had a grease pencil in each hand and worked ambidextrously. Yes, Canada had double-digit temperatures before the global warming - even in Celsius! ;D
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Something tells me you're thinking of Dave Devall at CFTO, who was known for writing backwards on glass with both hands, although that must've been in the early 80s - by the mid-80s he had computer graphics. In more recent years he still did occasional backwards drawings on glass at the end of his forecasts, because it was so popular with viewers.

All in all though, Canadian newscasts tended to be pretty far behind in terms of weather forecasting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxhLFKzUd0o - This clip features the debut of a new weather map that Winnipeg weatherman Murray Parker drew on with a black marker. The year? 1988.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihf_uZAw4jE - It was no different a year earlier on the CBC station in Toronto, except that they used a white marker.

Of course, don't forget that WPVI was still using a magnetic map long after everyone else moved on...
 
WKYC-TV 3 Cleveland-Someone mentioned Wally Kinnan earlier..Here is the only clip of YouTube of Wally I've ever seen, From 1971..Intro by Virgil Dominic with a surprise guest-Lawrence Welk!

Notice the temperatures on the weather maps in the back..Look like Magic Markers...Based on the temps showing..Looks like this is in the Spring or Summer

Also seen in this video:Doug Adair and Sportscaster Jim Graner..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq8YdnjdztY

Wally was known as a trumpet player in big bands dating back to World War II
 
FreddyE1977 said:
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.
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A good friend of mine in his private collection has a weather forcast from early 1954 from Denver's then KOA-TV 4 ( now KCNC ). Not only was the weather report sponsored by Marlboro cigarettes but the weather girl was smoking it up while doing the weather at the same time. This was back when Marlboro was still considered a smoke for women just before they switched sexes and then came the Marlboro man. If that wasn't bizarre enough the film my friend has also features an ad that starts off with a shot of a baby sitting in front of the Colorado state flag with a voice over ( pretending to be the baby ) saying ".daa daa goo goo...mommy before you spank me..light up a Marlboro cigarette..". I have tried for the longest time to get him to upload this on You Tube but sadly he just won't do it. I guess he is concerned about what KCNC would do if he would uploaded this.

Anyway I think I would rather see the woman on the mattress in Pittsburgh than the "Marlboro chick" from Denver.

For the record if you want to see print ads of this baby and Marlboro..get the book "50's ads" by Jim Heimann. Its in there.
 
Question for everyone: When did your market first get weather radar? Channel 33 (WKJG, NBC) was the first in Fort Wayne with on-air radar, around 1973.
 
MattParker said:
Another question for everyone: Why were (before technology) "weather girls" so sexy, and today's female meteorologists not?
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I think part of it had to do with perception dating back to the 50's that women had to just be a "pretty face" to get a job and didnt have to know weather that well..Dick Goddard used to say when he got started in TV that one station had a "pretty girl" doing the weather and another had a clown or comedian in a lot of markets...

Today though I think Betsy Kling and Hollie Strano of WKYC-TV 3 Cleveland both hold their own as being "sexy" and I believe they are both meteorologists too..
 
I guess the markets I've seen in Texas have been mostly free of smoking and negligees ( :D ;D )

Harold Taft, the late/great WBAP-KXAS/5 meteorologist was still hand-drawing maps even into the 1970s/1980s when the other stations had gone to magnetic and electronic layouts.

Taft appears in this weather promo for the station in the early 1970s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q810ukRbkBs ...a video image of the old black&white radar can be seen. This rare opening http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wriaqcGVQV0 , has Taft still putting the finishing touches on his map at news time. Another sample is from a time when weather at Ch.5 had its own opening and title http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07BWrLNkqCo (sadly it is incomplete). Check out how LONG (compared to today) Taft's weather segment is in 1980: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nwfVh_39Bg , complete with the station's first version of color radar--it looks like something from Tic-Tac-Dough. When he died in 1991, Taft was still working for the station up till that time; Ch.5 even carried his funeral live.

The only female-led weather segments I remember, there were 2: Sandra Brown (yes, the author) did the weather for a while at KLTV/7 in Tyler (concurrently with her husband, Michael, who did news there)--my grandmother's cat would sit on top of the TV and swat around at the stick that Sandra would hold while doing the weather :D :D ; and Jocelyn White, who did weather at KDFW/4 in Dallas--she got lots of airplay when the then-chief meteorologist Wayne Shattuck was recovering from a car accident...my uncle always said that every time Jocelyn would do the weather, he couldn't see Texas because of her, well, chest.
 
MattParker said:
Another question for everyone: Why were (before technology) "weather girls" so sexy, and today's female meteorologists not?
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Of course everyone has their own idea as to what is sexy and what is not, but to me I can't think of really of any unattractive female weather forcasters out there. But with that being said I believe the "gotta have good looks" trend is actually more important if not just as important with the guys now than it is with their girls. For example Brian Bolter ( anchor at FOX O&O WTTG ) has a HUGE following among women because Brian has a bunch of tattoos ( of course you don't see that on WTTG but its an "open secret" thanks to Facebook ) and also because Bolter is very much into extreme sports as well as a guy who enjoys a cigar ( many women like that too ).

Meanwhile Denver's Ken Clark ( KDVR FOX 31 ) sports a shaved head and for years a goatee which is a very popular look among guys now so as a result KDVR is getting a lot chicks and younger guys tuning in just so they can watch that "bald headed goatee dude".

Today its just about even..both guys and girls are supposed to "look sexy" when it comes to being on TV.
 
mleach said:
my friend has also features an ad that starts off with a shot of a baby sitting in front of the Colorado state flag with a voice over ( pretending to be the baby ) saying ".daa daa goo goo...mommy before you spank me..light up a Marlboro cigarette..". I have tried for the longest time to get him to upload this on You Tube but sadly he just won't do it. I guess he is concerned about what KCNC would do if he would uploaded this.
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Or maybe Philip Morris. Or even the Feds.
 
I think the worst had to be the weather on WLIO in Lima Ohio in the early 1980's. The maps were hand drawn and the weather girls would point to one city and call it another. The anchor desk was plywood with carpet remanants on it and the weather girl that I spoke with said the only reason she got the job was that station manager told her that she had great boobs. She had no training in meteorology and had no intest in getting training. At least this is what she told me about the station. I used to watch it when I lived in Findlay just to see what they were doing since it was so funny. One time a weather gal pointed over near Zanesville and said, "now here in Cincinnati today".......I laughed so hard I nearly lost my dinner
 
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
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Amazing how Captain Sandy could just write in the temps of the cities across the U.S. like he has them well memorized. Was he still there when WSAV went color?

Almost all weathermen had to stop the drawing and writing when the stations went color because color cameras picked up all the orange-colored numbers that black&white cameras didn't. Look at Captain Sandy again and watch him trace the cold fronts and read the temps from the same place he draws them.

Oh, and the way he got the present temp from his friend, Arthur-mometer.
Bad Oh, baaaaaddd.... :D
 
I suspect a lot of them were looking at "information" on the walls, floors or
elsewhere. It seems like they tried to make the most out of what they had to offer.
 
azumanga said:
mleach said:
my friend has also features an ad that starts off with a shot of a baby sitting in front of the Colorado state flag with a voice over ( pretending to be the baby ) saying ".daa daa goo goo...mommy before you spank me..light up a Marlboro cigarette..". I have tried for the longest time to get him to upload this on You Tube but sadly he just won't do it. I guess he is concerned about what KCNC would do if he would uploaded this.
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Or maybe Philip Morris. Or even the Feds.
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Hmmm..dunno..but I have a feeling that neither Phillip Morris, KCNC-TV or even the Feds, chances are could care less about an ad this is close to 60 years old.
 
And then there's this one from 1986, from CKVR/3 in Barrie, Ontario. The studio map seriously looks like it could've been from 1976. Their more-advanced satellite map was exactly the same as the one on their then-sister CITY in Toronto, sans the star marking Toronto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MNtcWQf37U

By the way, "skule" is NOT the Canadian way of spelling "school".
 
I just heard this story today..This was on my Cleveland Classic Media Facebook Page..talking about Carl Day, Dayton (Ohio) Newscaster who passed away yesterday..His early years were at WJAN-17 in Canton..Leading into other memories about the station..

"Very early on, an employment agency sent a friend of mine out to the station to interview for an office job. Out of nowhere whoever was interviewing her informed her that they needed a "weather girl" and she looked perfect and put her on the air right then.. Just read the promper, she was told. (or the cards or something) . She went into a sort of out of body experience and managed to get through the weather report, and ran off, never to return."
 
firepoint525 said:
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!
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Dons weather map was the same after the station switched to color black lettering and white gray back ground! WPSD channel 6's weather map had some kind of 3d graphics that made the the effect of rain and snow always liked there map but loved don said it would!
 
Captain Sandy was on well into the 1970s. He was still on until 1979. I don't know if he used the same weather maps. Another person did the job after the guy in the 1964 video left. The people in Savannah loved him. When that video was posted, it went almost viral through Savannah.

It's amazing how far technology has gone in just the last ten years or so. As recently as the late 90s (around '98), WCSC was still using a color radar that couldn't distinguish between snow and rain, and only had like a 60 mile range.

Here is a video showing their weather coverage. Until 1997, WCSC still had the same meteorologist that signed on the station in the early 1950s (he died in '97).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7FRDdaryIc
 
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