A weatherguy on CBS2 WBBM-TV by the name of Paul Douglas caught my attention. I say "weatherguy" because that's the way he presented the weather. He gave you the forecast as if you just asked him "Hey buddy, what's the weather going to be like?" After a short tenure in Chicago he moved up to CBS4 WCCO-TV in Minneapolis.Fast forward to 2008. Early this month CBS announced it would be making massive layoffs. (The boys and girls down the street at WIFR won't be going anywhere because the layoffs are only happening at the stations owned and operated by CBS. CBS owns and operates stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, Miami, Denver, Sacramento, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore.) With revenue down significantly, the company slashed budgets for all of its properties. The only thing stations could do was lay people off. More than a hundred people are faced with unemployment.
Paul Douglas was removed from his position as Chief Meteorologist of WCCO-TV today. It's a shame because this guy was so good at his job. Problem for him and a lot of on-air talent is television is a business. High salaried people will be the first to go when a station isn't making money. Luckily for Paul, he started a successful weather graphics company back in the '90s and won't be left penniless. Luckily for me and my colleagues at WREX, we work for a small company with a good reputation for not laying off employees when times are tough.
This probably won't be the end of media companies axing employees. If profits don't start trickling back to television stations it may be impossible to save some of the broadcast veterans like Paul Douglas.
KARE-TV in Minneapolis put together an entertaining piece about Paul's tenure at that station. You can click here for the video.
6 comments:
Wow, he was one of the few TV meteorologists I actually tended to trust growing up in the MSP suburbs. This is pretty shocking news.
Good grief, Paul Douglas was my favorite TV meteorologist the entire time I was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.
In those days I didn't have a decent car (and there was no parking anywhere on or near campus anyway) so for 3 years I walked 2 miles each way to campus and home again every day, with all my books and papers and research projects and homework assignments stuffed in an oversized backpack (ooof).
As we all know, Minneapolis can have some pretty unfriendly weather from time to time, and I counted on Paul Douglas to alert me to what I was going to face on my trek to school and back the next day.
Best wishes, Paul. I know you'll excel in whatever you do next.
That's a shame that is happen, yeah I heard about this Zack told me about it the other day when I was talking to him, this is hard times that were facing and well it's only going to get worse before it get's better.
they could of cutted some of the not so importnat news people like hollywood scoop or something like that, they cant cut a metorlogist, they are important. they tell us what our weather is going to be like! so all of you at wrex, i appericaite the work all of you do! i wish i could spend a day there to see what u guys really do!
I saw the tribute they did, that guys looks hilarious. I think we could use a fourth meteorologist in Rockford ;-P
daniel the market in sales at this time is not the best to maybe have a fourth person to do weather.... If we needed a fourth person to do weather, it would have to be on the weekend mornings. I would think, then again I could be wrong.
But I would think that the market that we are in is just not enough, someday matter of time it will happen give it time.
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