:: Earl Green - Freelance Television Writer / Producer ::

In early ‘95, KPBI launched a nightly five-minute weather forecast with Mike Burgess, and I got to be Mike’s producer for much of his one-year reign before he bailed out for a similar gig at NBC 24/51. The year Mike anchored our news-less weather segment was like a golden time at Fox 46, and our working relationship was an example of that - Mike and I spent many a sleepless night at the station in the springtime, with him in the studio and me in the control room. The two screens you see here also show the on-screen warning system I devised with the combination of a digital video effects box and an outdated Video Toaster, which while it was not longer useful in production could still put text on a screen. The names of our viewing area’s counties were in grey along the left side of the screen, unless the warning/watch currently being displayed applied to the county in question, in which case that county would be highlighted. And since we used a DVE instead of a bug, our system didn’t obscure any of the picture, a big plus with viewers. This was in the day and age before the modern marvels of TV weather gear which dominate newscasts (and promo time) these days, and it was before the day when every other station in a given market had its own doppler. The shots above were taken in the wee hours of April 15, 1995, when a violent storm system rolled through - and we managed to kick ass despite our low-tech approach (the Toaster-driven on-screen warning system required full-time manual control). At one point, lucky viewers everywhere got to hear me lean in the studio door and whisper “Tornado warning, Adair County!” as loud as I could without just speaking up normally - this was a station that didn’t have an IFB anywhere in the building. It may seem odd to brag about having to do things that way, but we all pulled together and made it work.