“You’ll do anything for ratings!” Lang yelled as Bartlett disappeared under the water.īefore moving satellite imagery became prevalent, a weather reporter’s tools were a map and a marking pen. At the end, he announced he was going home, handed over his microphone and dived into the bay, headed north toward Marin County. “He could take something as dry and scientific as weather and make it something that was fun to watch and giggle.”īartlett delivered one report in his tie and shirt with his slacks rolled up to his knees while standing in shallow water at the bay front. “Joel was the high jinx of weather for 30 years,” said George Lang, Bartlett’s longtime cameraman and close friend.
To emphasize how hot it was, he stood with an ice cream cone dripping down his hand and onto his sleeve as he delivered his report. “Whoo, I love the feel of the rain in my face.” That means it’s still raining, and clear up to my knees,” he’d announce. He’d broadcast his report standing in floodwater.
#FAMOUS WEATHERMAN TV#
“Joel was the real deal, but he was also very personable and charming.”īartlett may not have been the first TV meteorologist to stand in miserable weather to deliver his reports, but no competitor out-suffered him. “Joel was a real meteorologist who was a scientist who took it seriously, and that was not necessarily the case with TV weather people back then,” Tokuda said. “Doing the weather on TV was one of the luckiest breaks for anyone to have, and it happened to me.”īartlett, who had no previous TV experience, was hired in 1974 and soon joined by co-anchors Wendy Tokuda and Dave McElhatton and sports anchor Wayne Walker, to complete one of the most-loved foursomes in Bay Area TV news history. “A lot of things in my life have been blessings in disguise,” Bartlett said in 2012, during his induction into the Silver Circle by the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He was in hospice care after a three-year battle with gastrointestinal cancer. He knew his craft well and stayed on the cutting-edge of weather-related technology, but he would deliver information in a way that wasn’t pretentious, she said.Bartlett, who had a knack for getting out of the studio and into the middle of the inclement weather he was covering, died March 31 at his horse ranch in Sonoma County, said his wife, Sahar Bartlett. He’d remind her that “this isn’t brain surgery - it’s TV news,” Varon said, and if something went wrong while delivering the news, she should not dwell on it. Taft, who answered any of her questions about working on television and never made her feel nervous. Less than a decade later, Varon found herself working with Mr. Taft was “already a legend” in 1980, but after just a couple of minutes talking with him, Varon realized there was nothing to be intimated about. Taft when she was a senior at Columbia College, doing promotions for a country-music radio station at the time. You can’t fake that.”ĪBC 7 reporter Roz Varon met Mr.
“I’ll never forget him telling me, ‘It’s about the connection,’” Mowry said. “The connection to the viewers and the connection to your coworkers.
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