May 21, 2004, 11:57 PM
The Doppler Nation
By Dan Lovett
They are a dandy band of broadcasters, those Doppler Boys.
Many of them have the title Dr. as their introduction. There was Dr. Frank Field at WNBC-TV in New York who named his first born son, Storm. And Storm caught the eye of the weather guru’s at WABC-TV where he pranced across the screen on the nightly Eyewitness News shows. Out Los Angeles way, there was Dr. Fishbeck at KABC-TV. Here in Houston there is Dr. Neil Frank at KHOU-TV. Where do all of these weather Doctors come from anyway? They are all goof balls, not meteorologists. Surely they were all born on the road from parents in vaudeville. Funny thing though, the most likeable weather guy in the country didn’t carry the title of Dr. He was just plain old Willard. Why did most of America like Willard Scott? Because he didn’t pretend to know much about the weather, instead relying on his good disposition to humor all of us and not messing around with all those highs and lows. Like the rest of us, Willard would just look out the window and tell us what the weather was going to be.
Today we have to deal with the Doppler Boys. How could we not exist without these guys to burden our day with their bodacious forecasts that are seldom accurate to begin with. Which Doppler do you believe? Big Arse Double Tracker? Rolling Thunder Doppler? Double D-Cup Doppler? Viper Doppler? Damn Big Doppler? Big Bopper Doppler? Dog eat Dog Doppler? Dos Cajones Doppler? This is the Doppler that can track two systems at once.
The Doppler Mafia is for real folks. How do we know? We go to El Paso, Texas. ABC7. KVIA-TV. You knew it had to happen. As sure as a Manitoba Moma comes out of Canada, there had to be a Doppler Dave in Texas. There is.
Dave Speelman, not yet a Dr., spits out the daily forecast on ABC7 El Paso. If there was a Storm Field in New York City and a Blizzard Bill in Toledo, Ohio and a Bahama Bruce in Miami, there had to be a Doppler Dave in El Paso. And this weather guy has a side business to his TV weather appearances. It's Doppler Dave's “Energy Bill Busters,” a company that installs energy saving products for homes and businesses. How convenient!
No doubt Dan Rather really wanted to be a weatherman. It was 1961 when he covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston and he did it without a Doppler. The man had courage. He could have been Dan Blather today, wearing a muslin turban, jerking us all around with his unreliable forecasts instead of biased network anchoring on the CBS Evening News.
The Doppler Nation is widespread. First Alert Super Doppler at KCBD NewsChannel 11 in Lubbock; KTRE Weather 9 Thundercall in Lufkin; and Doppler 2000-PLUS at KPRC in Houston. They need to update their Doppler, this is 2004. In Beaumont at NBC affiliate KBTV, there's 4WARN Doppler; SkyWarn7 in Wichita Falls; Triple 9 Doppler in Abilene; Eagle Eye Doppler in Waco. And on it goes.
I hate to say it, but even my old friend Ed Brandon at Eyewitness News here in Houston is a member of the Doppler Mafia, but Ed is fortunate that he doesn’t have to put up with such nonsense much longer. Brandon has been on Channel 13 since Eyewitness News was born in the late 60’s. Before that, Dave Ward and I worked with a weather guy named Troy Dungan on 13. He left for Dallas and still checks his rain gage at WFAA ABC8. As for Brandon, they’ve reduced his role at KTRK in recent months; he does nothing more than the six o’clock news now. Some new Doppler Dandy has become the station's chief meteorologist, whatever that means. I guess we blame him for the bad weather and give Brandon credit for the good. Works for me. Over at KPRC channel 2, they have big Frank Billingsley and his dog Radar. I’m tellin’ ya, these Doppler Boys are a different breed folks.
Most of the ones I’ve worked with from Houston to New York to DC to San Francisco are OK guys. But let me tell ya about this weirdo in Frisco. Where else? His name is Pete Giddings. I had just gone to work at KGO-TV ABC7 in S.F. in 1988 and I hadn’t even met the guy until we went on the six o’clock news show. (After our award-winning presentations, that’s what they do in local news now, We’re First with Award-Winning News, never mind the facts) Well anyway, this guy Giddings and I are walking out of the studio together and I say to him, “Pete, great to be working with the top weatherman in the nation.” I figured that would be the right stroke for his ego. It wasn’t. He halted in his tracks, turned towards me and screamed, “Do you know the difference between a weatherman and a meteorologist?” I was floored and certainly intimidated. He proceeded to give me the answer, “The difference between the two is about $300,000 a year.” And then walked off. It was in his contract that Pitiful Pete had to be introduced as chief meteorologist. From that day on, whenever I was around him, I would ask, “how are the meteors today Pete”? Ooooh, he became a very angry meteorologist I left KGO in 1998 and was told they gave Pete the gate about a year later when they hired Spencer Christian, who was being shown the door by ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Oh, there was this weather girl at KGO-TV in San Francisco, who had posed nude in Playboy and had an affair with 49ers coach Bill Walsh. Shortly after that story exploded in the Bay area, Christine Hansen got out of the weather business and married winemaker Jim Fetzer. But that’s a story for another day.
Dan Lovett is a former ABC News sports anchor.
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