Sunday, April 13, 2008

Don't You Think This Guy's Overdoing It A Bit?

This was the opener of Neil Justin's column today in the Strib:

Imagine dating someone for more than a decade, falling madly in love, convinced you'll be together forever and ever. And then, one night, it's over. No goodbye kiss, no phone call, not even a text message.

That's how lots of fans felt about how WCCO seemingly handled the dumping of popular meteorologist Paul Douglas ...


As someone who hasn't regularly watched any local news in years, being a fan of a meteorologist seems downright silly. Especially when that meteorologist is a bore like Paul Douglas. Growing up in North Dakota on WDAY and WDAZ I was blessed by an honest-to-goodness "weatherman", Dewey Bergquist. He was a weatherman because that's what they were called back then and if memory serves me correctly, Dewey wasn't a certified meteorologist anyway. Dewey was odd and goofy. He gave the next day's weather a letter grade, accompanied by a wacky cartoon. He hosted the Saturday afternoon matinee movie and/or showing of The Little Rascals, we're talking real Floyd Robertson territory here. Once at a keg party across the hall in the dorm, those suitemates and a few other of us turned off the music so that we could watch Dewey's weather segment. There was an outcry about the music until we yelled: "Fuck you! We gotta watch Dewey!" This resulted in another handful of guys yelling "shit yeah!" and joining us with beers around the TV set.

Dewey Bergquist, now there's a weatherman to fall in love with.