I did it for the money

The weather set was at the opposite end of WTVR's Studio 1 from the news set. There were two spacious studios, but weather had to be broadcast from the same studio as the news because the station had only two color cameras.

Nothing ever brought me the public recognition that being the "News/90" weatherman did -- not being a reporter or even an anchorman. Nothing.

And I fell into the job because it paid a talent fee, an extra $25 each week. (In today's dollars, that would amount to about $140.)

Dick Collins, who had been the WTVR weatherman for many years, left the station in the summer of 1970. Management posted a notice that any staff member who wanted the job could apply. I'd been out of the Air Force for six months, and I was still struggling to set up an apartment, buy clothes and create a life. I needed the extra money.

I took solace in the fact that being the weatherman wouldn't interfere with my job as a reporter, since, in those days, it took only about 30 minutes to set up the weather boards and become familiar with the weather bureau's forecast, which we got from the AP wire. The forecast was allotted about two minutes in the 6 p.m. news block and the same again at 7 p.m.

In those days, the weather was not seen as the audience draw that it has become today. I didn't know anything about meteorology, but that wasn't a prerequisite.

I auditioned and got the job.

Each evening at about 5:30, after the stories I had covered that day were edited and packaged, I'd gather the forecast information from the teletype machine and head for the studio. It took me about 20 minutes to set up the weather boards.

The maps were painted with a metallic pigment, and I had a box of magnetized numbers, along with little magnetized circles labeled "H" and "L" to represent high- and low-pressure areas, and -- honest to god -- shoestrings that had magnetized triangles and semicircles glued to them to represent various fronts. For the forecast itself, I had magnetized clouds, suns, raindrops and snowflakes to work with.

That was it: Just me and some magnets and maps.

(Six months later, CBS began providing us with daily videotaped satellite images showing the cloud cover. This was seen as a gigantic leap forward in TV weather technology.)

I had a lot of fun with the weather broadcasts, mainly because I didn't take them very seriously. To be clear, the journalist in me wanted to make the forecast accurate, but my sense of humor quickly surfaced. I began to develop a playful approach. For example, whatever city had the day's highest or lowest temperature became "one of my favorite places," even if I'd never heard of it before. Cut Bank, Montana, popped up a lot with the coldest temperature. Who the heck in Richmond, myself included, had ever been anywhere near Cut Bank? But the bit worked.

When the forecast was for temperatures below freezing, I'd suggest that people be sure to bring their brass monkeys indoors for reasons that I left unspoken -- but the audience got the reference. One Friday evening, one of the engineers was leaving as I was sticking my shoestrings and magnets to the weather boards. He told me he was playing golf the next day and asked about the forecast. "It's going to be windy but warm," I told him. When I began my on-air forecast that night, I told the audience that it would be a fine, warm day for playing golf, "but be careful, because the wind might blow your balls away." To be perfectly honest, I didn't get the double meaning of what I'd said, but the cameramen did. There were hoots of laughter that I didn't understand until after the broadcast had ended and somebody told me what I'd said.

The cameramen got into the act, too. One night, one of them began to strip off his clothes behind the camera in an effort to break me up. It didn't work. I beat David Niven's famous line at the Oscars by four years. "Marty," I said to him, "put your clothes back on. Nobody is interested in your shortcomings." Everybody in the studio howled in laughter. I have no idea what the TV audience thought. They hadn't seen what was going on off-camera.

Within a few weeks of my debut as the WTVR weatherman, I began to realize the power of the position. People would stop me wherever I went to talk about whatever outrageous thing I had said the night before. They were paying attention, and they apparently liked the irreverence.

Frankly, it got to be a pain in the butt. As a reporter, I might have covered a really serious, important story the night before. But all anybody wanted to talk about was what I had said on the weather. The situation provided hard evidence that viewers were seeking entertainment more than information. Today, nobody even bothers to pretend otherwise.

I kept that weather gig for about two years. Despite the fact that I couldn't go to the grocery store without being recognized, it was an enjoyable part of my TV career. Even today, on the rare occasions when I am recognized in public, I'm usually asked, "Didn't you used to be the WTVR weatherman?"

Sometimes they'll even ask, "Didn't you used to be Don Dale?"

Well, yes, I was. And, oddly enough, I still am.