Speaker Recap for January 23, 2012
One of our favorite weathermen was back to grace us with his presence once again! Who “woulda thunk” that weather reporting could be so funny? After listening to the humorous history and articulate anecdotes of Monday’s key note speaker, TV weatherman Dave Bender, now we all know!
Dave shared insights into his history and the development of his craft of meteorology and “live” television broadcasting. After starting out as a humble 16 year old busboy in his hometown of San Diego, Dave’s quick wit and confident personality soon landed him “better” jobs at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, where he rose through the ranks from cage cleaner to wild bird trainer to animal show emcee. Always ambitious, Dave turned this latter position into several national television appearances on the likes of the David Letterman Show (a la the “stupid pet tricks” segment), as well as on shows hosted by Merv Griffin and Tom Snyder.
While in college Dave discovered a liking for all things weather, and took his first weatherman job in Yuma, Arizona right out of school. A year later he moved back to a local San Diego station, and soon thereafter transferred to a larger “gig” in the nation’s capitol, where weather became more interesting than just “a high of 82 with a chance of sprinkles later tonight.”
Thankfully, Dave ultimately found his way to the Sacramento television market in 1993 and has been reporting for our local stations ever since.
His job presents interesting challenges of coordinating his commentary with the ever-changing charts, maps, and graphics going on “behind” him, all the while listening to “voices” in his earpiece imploring him to speed up or draw things out, etc. He picked out a humorous story about once pointing to where a map should have been only to discovery his co-anchor’s enlarged nose displayed on the screen. It’s not just the weather that is unpredictable on live TV!
Dave summed up his opinions about so-called “global warming” by commenting that “the planet does its own thing” most of the time and there may not be enough reliable data to form strong conclusions just yet. He believed that annual fluctuations in weather patterns were perhaps due more to the unpredictable changes in our sun, affecting the polar caps, and creating “El Nino” and “La Nina” temperature fluctuations, more than overall global changes.
Finally, while Dave might aspire towards a national weatherman post someday on CNN or FOX, he is quite happy with his current position and glad to be fully employed in this ever changing economy. Look for him daily on KOVR 13.