Episode 73: Happy Father’s Day!

My dad, this is Emily and James,

wishing you a happy Father's

Day.

We love you!

Here's your Pine Valley shanking, cop shop, watering hole shopping, brats and sauerkraut chomping, wet-in-the-line daddies.

73.

Here we go.

Let's go.

Well, Ryan, I'm up here in the Wassup Business Show chopper looking at traffic.

We've got, once again, a big backup on 39, northbound and southbound.

So stay off that if you can find a side road

instead.

It's still going on.

There's a lot of construction this time of year.

I always say there's two seasons.

Uh-huh.

Here we go.

Wisconsin traffic.

Uh-huh.

One is winter and the other is construction season.

Oh, right.

That's

why you have a sense of humor, see?

That Larry

really gives a thorough traffic report, man.

He really is a talented traffic reporter, part-time traffic reporter for the Wausau Business Show and the Wausau Business Show traffic chopper.

Yes, when he's not chiropracting.

He goes way up there.

I think he's the pilot, too.

I think he does it all.

Very talented.

Yeah.

Well, Night Market hit it out of the park again this past Thursday.

Place was packed.

I mean, there had to be thousands, if not tens of thousands of people there.

Favorite, I don't think, Wausau fires on all cylinders during Night Market.

Yeah, it was crazy.

I ran into a bunch of

people I knew.

A ton of people I obviously didn't know, and really cool vendors and stalls and the restaurants were popping, everything was happening.

So nice job, River District.

Yeah, on that, putting that on.

There's only two more.

It's the coolest event I think WASA puts on, and

they only do three a year.

If you ask me whether or not I'd go to the 400 block on a Wednesday night, or the Thursday night if

I had to choose, the night

market?

It'd be a hard decision.

Yeah, they're both cool.

We're lucky to have both of them right here in downtown Wausau.

Summer Shintig is today, Saturday.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

They're like 10 hours of music.

Yeah, it's gonna be nuts.

Live music on the square, it's gonna be awesome.

And congrats to our friends at Wine Brenner

and Marshfield.

They

opened up their new like 90,000 square foot facility that they've been building

since

we interviewed them.

They had a ribbon cutting and everything.

I was

lucky enough to check it out.

It's a beautiful building in Marshfield, so good for them.

Yeah, thorough good.

The mayor was there, gave a nice speech.

each, and some guy said

this.

He's very loyal to his thorough goods,

which I love.

Absolutely.

He's

never going to put another one of those competitor boots on.

It's one of those brands that I think a lot of their customers are very loyal.

One of the most iconic boots in America made right there in Marshfield, right here in Central Wisconsin.

You think work boots, you think thorough good.

Let's be honest.

And on this Father's Day weekend, who do we got coming on?

Paul, who's our guest of honor this Father's Day weekend?

Chad

Franson from Channel 7.

Love him.

He's bringing the sunshine.

Yeah.

And in honor of interviewing Chad,

friends in this weekend.

Paul and I have grown our goatees out.

Yes, we have,

in honor of

Chad.

But Chad's got some awesome stuff he's going to be talking about, the weather central Wisconsin television 7, 9, the saga with Melissa Langben.

Let's get into that

a little bit.

Yeah,

absolutely.

We'll have to bring that up.

Chad has been working in this market as a weather professional for well over 20 years now.

Yeah, I think it's 28 years.

We'll ask him about something like that.

Very excited to talk to him about his career at Channel 7 and Channel 9.

Right.

Right.

He started there.

And he is a dad.

He is a dad.

So it's appropriate.

Good weekend.

Happy Father's Day weekend, everybody.

Yep, you bet.

It's the number one small talk.

topic to talk about ever ever in

the history of

mankind Ever I think they've been doing it for Millennials is the caveman.

What's the weather gonna be tomorrow?

I mean when you get to an elevator someone's gonna bring up

the mother.

It's a beautiful day out there, isn't it?

Raiden cats and dogs.

Yeah, can you believe it?

Well, yeah, it's climate would we've been on earth for a long time I can believe that it's raining once in a while

So Chad is gonna give us the history of humanity when he comes in through the lens of wassail weather.

Yes.

All right, so we'll be

We'll be right back with Chad Franzen from Channel 7.

I think he might be taking over from Mark Holly as Chief Meteorologist now that Mark's gone

into sales.

I don't know, we'll see.

Seems like the obvious fit, we'll see.

We'll be right back on Father's Day weekend with dad, Chad Franzen.

That's nice.

On the Wassup Business

Show.

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Let us help your business do the incredible.

Incredible Bank, member

FDIC.

I was just talking to my friend of almost 30 years in the broadcast business, and he's now selling drugs.

But he does

podcasts, and he does a podcast with Chevy Chase called Fletch Lives.

OK.

And so

if you're a fan of Chevy Chase or Fletch Movies, he still talks to him.

But he hasn't talked to him in like a year because Chevy ghosted him.

I don't know.

But he said that he's like, hey, podcast him.

You'll enjoy it.

And I said, I don't think I've ever done one before.

Oh, welcome.

Chad Franzen, everybody.

Welcome.

Yeah.

So this is your first podcast?

First podcast.

Well, we've got Chevy Chase on the line here.

Chevy, can you give us some pointers?

Yeah.

Well, where

did you grow up, Chad?

I grew up out west.

I was born in South Dakota and went to high school in Montana.

And then I went to school back in South Dakota and Mississippi and

kind of landed

back here in central Wisconsin.

28 years ago.

And that because of Channel 7?

Because of Channel 9 at that time.

Okay.

Yeah.

The dreaded competitor.

So you've been on

both stations?

I've

been

on

both.

Well, so has Tony

Schumacher.

Tony's been on both.

Justin's

been on both.

Our weekend meteorologist, Jeremy's been on both.

We now have Eric Rotech working with us.

Yes.

Welcome back Eric.

So we have, we have, there's some cross-pollination that happens.

And here's a little secret for you.

My very first job offer from a broadcast professional is getting ready to retire.

up in Rhineliter at channel 12 called me and offered me my first TV job.

W J F W J F W. Yeah.

And I'm his initials offered me the job and the

Hey, it was very low, as you can imagine.

And so I turned it down and it was a couple of weeks later, I got called from Channel 9 for a few dollars.

And I was like, hey, I guess this is kind of what the business does.

So I better take a job and get out of

here.

The

big markets now in Wausau

versus Rhinelander.

Where are you already in Wausau at that time?

Or did that land you in Wausau?

That landed me

here.

So I was at graduate school down in Mississippi and I'm not a deep South person.

I just went there for a couple of years, get my master's and that was it.

What

part

of

Mississippi?

Starkville,

Mississippi

State.

And so I was ready to get the heck out of there.

And so I've never had been to Wisconsin before.

The Frans and Family Tree kind of started out in the Price County area.

So there's always this family familiarity.

In the Frans and Circus, I was related to them as well.

Cool.

So I

knew about Wisconsin, but I'd never been here before.

So I was driving up from Mississippi, just happy to be done with the Deep South.

Yeah.

And I'm driving into Wausau.

Now, keep in mind, this is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Ribbon wasn't what Ribbon is these days.

And so I'm pulling into town.

It was much larger.

What do you mean by that?

I was like

the town of Ribbon.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm

pulling into town.

There's nothing out there.

It's Walmart.

And that

was it.

State Park Speedway.

I'm

crying at that point because not that Starfield, Mississippi was really big, but I had come from

Billings Montana, which is pretty good size.

I

had spent summers

in

Denver.

If you're driving into

and I'm just,

there's no one here.

And

you

thought that was Wausau?

I thought that was Wausau.

And thankfully, I was staying at a hotel downtown, and I got into downtown.

The mall was here and everything, and I was like, okay, I can breathe.

It's a little more happening.

There's a city, and then you run into the quick trip, and there's like, oh, now we're a big time

city, because we got a

few

of those.

Yeah,

finally,

we

were legit.

We have a quick trip.

So it was eye-opening, but

at the same time, it

was great.

It's funny that you mentioned that, because we've been up at the chalet, overhearing guests or people, tourists that come to Wausau.

You know, people from Chicago and there was like this 22 year old kid last winter and he's like, man, I thought this was a ski town,

right?

It's actually just a Walmart town because he had only seen Red Mountain.

You know, they never leave that corridor.

They don't even know like we're downtown right now.

They didn't even know this exists.

Yeah, these people.

Yeah, well, that's a shame.

And they also don't know

how to say it either.

I mean, you're

from Wasu.

Warsaw.

Yeah,

Warsaw is another one.

It's like, OK, well, we got at least the start of this.

Yeah.

And hopefully we'll just kind of

expand on that, make it a little easier for you guys.

Wausau.

So this was your first weather gig?

Yep, first weather gig.

Oh, wow.

When I was getting ready to graduate from college, my first college, I wanted to work at the National Weather Service.

And at that time, the Weather Service falls under various departments and

governments, right?

Yeah.

DOC Department of Commerce had gotten a huge notice to cut back.

Now, this is back in the 90s.

And the National Weather Service took about 33% pay cut at that time.

So all my job opportunities were gone.

Just dried up.

OK.

And so my father was like, hey, maybe you should continue on education.

You like teaching.

My dad was a teacher for almost 50 years.

And I was like, yeah, I'll go to Mississippi State and I'll be a teacher.

And that school specializes in broadcasting.

OK.

Our former chief meteorologist that now works in sales, Mark Holly went there.

Mark, hi, Mark.

Hi, Mark.

So

we

hit.

So there was this.

track that the graduate school is really made for television.

And so I was actually teaching off-campus classes as I was on campus.

So a lot of my off-campus students were people that worked at the Weather Channel.

A lot of Mississippi State off-campus students are the big time networks.

So here I'm a little lowly kid trying to teach these kids

about weather meteorology meteorology and so I'm on campus and getting grilled and everything else and I'm teaching off campus now this is again 25 years ago

this is before

online stuff really existed yeah yeah and I tell you it was it was one of the hardest things I've ever done especially the first couple of times because if the the student isn't doing well and a lot of times again you're talking to some big time network people and they have big time egos and if you didn't grade them right they were calling and they were

Oh, you're never going to work in this business.

And

so you

kind of got a little scared, a little ruffled.

And the program directors like, don't let them fool you.

You are the teacher and they stood behind us.

And so we had a lot of our, my last class is one of the last classes that taught most of the off-campus stuff to the network.

So you were teaching like Al Roker?

Not Al Roker,

but a lot of Weather Channel people.

A

lot of them not there anymore just because Weather Channels.

once you're over the age of 40, they just kind of push you to

the side.

Oh, they do.

I didn't

know

that.

Yeah.

So there's some turnover there.

So I had some pretty big names, not L Roker and not Tom Schilling.

Those

guys were WGN.

Yeah.

Tom Schilling is a true meteorologist.

And a little known fact is when I went to, I went worked in Rockford for a couple of years down there on television, met Tom Schilling at Fermi Lab.

He had a conference every year.

He knew exactly who I was.

He goes,

Jeff

Franton.

I'm like, you know, me.

Oh, tiny little WREX Rockford television.

Right.

He goes, no, you used to work in Wausau.

He has a cabin up at Tomahawk.

Oh, no kidding.

At least used to.

So he was

seeing me on the weekends and actually knew my name and it could put the name with the face.

And so I was like, holy smokes.

That

feels pretty

good.

And he was, I think, the first six-figure meteorologist in television.

In the industry.

Oh, so you have a good history of the industry itself, right?

Yeah.

You get to know someone like that.

Now I can never name drop or anything else and make it work to my advantage.

But yeah, he was.

The drill deal was super nice guy.

And then the off campus people I talked had taught.

Some of them are still in the business, but now they're, you know, I'm an old man.

I'm 50 plus.

And I don't look at congratulations.

A lot of

makeup.

So these people are all, you know, 50 some 60 years old.

And obviously they're getting ready to retire.

A

lot

of

them have retired.

They're going on

different careers.

Yeah.

Not a lot of my broadcast class.

We had 25 of us.

And I'm one of five that still do in television.

I

would imagine there's a lot of turnover, a lot of moving around and everything else.

People just don't

make it some of the

time I would

imagine.

And it's a hard business, you know, it really is.

And everybody's business is hard,

right?

You know, you guys come into work and not every day is smelly roses that are great.

Right, fire is

everywhere we go.

Yeah, today's a good example.

You

guys are doing the part right.

No, it's a well oiled machine, Chad.

Well, and that's just it.

So if you guys can go into work every day, if someone goes into work every day and has that smile on their face and they're like, I'm here to do my work and I'm happy

with

it, you stand it.

Well,

you seem like a very positive

guy.

You have to be in my younger, old days where I was first in television and I was in a four by three square and said the rectangles that make us look even fatter.

Yeah.

You know, I was

in force.

I was in square 16 by nine,

which is

the seven by three or whatever it is.

Oh, yeah.

So.

back in the four by three days, four

by three, when

I looked much better, I think, because I wasn't a stretcher.

I was, I wasn't a kid that was a hothead, but as man, man, you know, anybody had to comment, I wanted to just let him go because people, people will just email a call.

social media.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

It's gotta

be just be

vicious.

I hate you.

You're terrible.

Right.

It's supposed to be sunny today.

Jerk.

Yeah.

Every time.

Yeah.

And we cover 21 counties.

So good

luck.

Yeah.

And so I got to the point where I that hurt.

I mean

that you know I'd have kids come

in for

tours and say what's the hardest part of your day.

And I was like getting

dealing with the public.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because people hate you for just doing what you do.

Right.

And so that was the maturity factor of, now I was lucky that I went to graduate school.

So when I came out in the broadcast industry, we have some kids that started under 21.

I was already 24 as

I

got into grad school.

But it took me a few years to mature.

And then you start realizing that

life is not gonna be very fun for you if you're a negative person.

And this reason

is that I work in, if you're a negative person, it's gonna eat you

alive.

Oh my God, the scrutiny is unbelievable because it's different than sports where you're just reporting

what

happened or the news where you're reporting, you're forecasting what's about to happen, predicting what's gonna happen, and people are making plans around that.

And

they're emotional about what they're doing.

Farmers, you know?

I would imagine

farmers, they're investing their time, it has to do with dollars and cents.

The livelihood depends on the weather.

Absolutely.

That's

gotta be tough.

And so farmers and now I'm a board member for Wausau events.

So this call tonight

with

having to push things indoors.

That's a stress that I've helped endure over the last couple of years as I've gotten to know the Wausau events more as I've been on the board, making that call to not be on the 400 block.

Last week we had a tornado warning

through before the

event.

But it's like, you're not going to get anybody back out there because you still have to set up.

So we move it indoors

just

because no one's going to show up.

and go sit in the rain when it's 58 degrees.

Yeah, we always are.

We gotta put a plug in.

We like what you did when you moved the date to the back end to move it to September instead of just moving it somewhere else for, you know, in the Schofield Pavilion because then it impacts all the businesses downtown that don't have that revenue.

And that's just it.

So just like you guys know, it's not just, well, there's no concert.

There's everything leading up to it, right?

It's economic impact.

We have food trucks every week.

We have to cancel them.

Or if we're having a food truck, even tonight going to the pavilion, people are going to have to be willing to want to stay out there and stand in the rain.

Food vendors are great about it because a lot of them will have some overhangs and stuff.

But last week, we had storms around and tornado warning.

So that was not going

to

be an option.

But if you're making these decisions based on weather and you're doing it in advance, you can't do it the same day.

You've got to do it in advance because you have to notify vendors.

Police department, you know,

we

employ the police department to walk the 400.

So there's shutting

down roads, everything.

And so you're doing all these things

and

all these vendors Tesla is a part of it.

Now they bring a car in so people can drive on.

We have all these things going on.

So it's not just canceling the concert.

It's a snowball.

And

so the executive director and our board president start making those calls and start kind of shutting things down.

And last year, there was a couple of times where the threat from lightning, I was like, I don't think we should do this and

we

move it indoors.

And then at seven o'clock, it's sunny

and beautiful.

And people are like, what the heck?

Yeah.

What did

you guys do?

Yeah.

Well, again, it takes a couple hours to set up.

Yeah.

You're not going to be out there and lightning.

Lightning is the most deadly killer there is

of

all the natural hazards.

So you

don't want to be out there in that.

Yeah.

And so it's a tough thing and you take it on the chin.

And so that's a that's a PR nightmare that over the last 10, 20 years.

I'm okay to take that.

I'll fight that.

I'll take that.

Right.

Thankless job

kind

of though in the

public's view.

It

is because at the end of the day, it's like, I understand weather affects everybody, but at the end of the day, you can only control what you can control, right?

I don't have

that magic wand.

You're doing your absolute best.

The

best you could possibly do,

you know.

And

some days are better than others.

Yeah.

And you know, and then the other aspect of it is, is we cover in weather, we're covering 20 counties.

from all the way to the UP, down toward Madison, well, Clare to Green Bay, that's our viewing

area.

And so we understand that a lot of people live in Marathonwood and Portage Counties, that's our more populated area.

But at the same time, it's like, you have to give service to the Northwoods, you have to give service to Southern Wisconsin.

Well, and what was the curve that you taught us about last year or something?

It was the prediction curve.

Oh,

yeah.

Yeah, so how modeling works in computer forecasting is it's kind of a leapfrog effect.

And so if you predict day one and think of it as a frog jumping and you want it to jump on a straight line.

So if you forecast day one and the frog jumps and it's straight, that's great because day two, you feel pretty good about

day

two happens and you're getting that straight line.

It's what happens when the modeling is off a little bit and then it becomes astronomical.

It's an exponential curve if you want to do all the math.

Yeah.

So if the frog is jumping and says day one tomorrow

let's say tomorrow is 70 degrees and partly sunny and the frog jumps, but then all of a sudden tomorrow is 80 and sunny.

Now the frog's not in a straight line, it's off.

Day two behind that is going to get worse.

It's going to be more off because you've already started down that path.

And so that's how it kind of works for forecasting and modeling.

As much as we have all these great tools and things have changed so much in 20 some years I've been doing this, the more you overtake it,

it's online, more you overtake the plumbing, the worse it can get.

That's exactly what can happen with computer modeling is if day one is off, day two is probably off and day three gets really bad.

And then now your seven day forecast is very suspect.

So what do you do?

Throw it out at that point and kind of start over?

You look at, so you're relying on your knowledge in your education or experience, there's several models kind of choose from.

And you kind of look at the reality of it.

The first thing you got to learn to do when you're forecasting is what's happening right now.

There are times when I'm doing a morning show and I don't want to go outside because it's four o'clock in the morning and see what's happening.

And there are times where I'm on the air and I'm like, we're brains moving in later today and it's been raining for half an hour because I did not do the due diligence

to see what's going

on right now.

So that's what you have to know what's happening right now.

What computer model picked that up and showed that.

And if it did, then you feel pretty good about the forecasting.

Got it.

Yesterday to today, the forecast was pretty consistent with the amount of rain we were going to see in the afternoon.

And this going back to the 400 block and how we were probably going to have to cancel or push indoors is because the modeling yesterday was very consistent with a very soggy afternoon.

We may see a break in some of the rain action winding down after six o'clock.

But

no one's breaking

into the Leatherman mode.

Yeah, I love

it.

But nobody wants to go sit out there in the rain and be miserable.

And it's going to be in the 50s.

And it's only, yeah, we're going to set probably a record

a record low maximum temperature today, which is the lowest high temperature of the day for this period of record of a hundred and some years.

Yeah, for a hundred years.

It hasn't been

this cold.

Fifty eight degrees, nineteen seventy four was the coldest time of coldest day high we had on today.

OK, so.

I don't know if we'll get back to that today.

So we're probably gonna set a record in that

room.

So this is an unusual, I mean, we're in the middle of June, right?

Yeah.

It should be 78 and sunny.

Oh, you would hope so.

Yeah.

So what do you look at though?

I mean, I know you have all the models, but then don't you just call somebody up from Minneapolis and hey, what's it gonna be?

What's it like over there?

What's headed our way?

That's called family.

Okay.

And there are certain ones I take text messages from and there's other ones that get the do not.

Blocked.

How far west do you go and how far out do you look to see what's coming?

You know, in the old days, that's how it was forecasting.

You

know, when I go do school talks and we talk about the good old days and not the 1900s, you go back to the 1800s when telegraph started and the westward expansion happened.

That's kind of the genesis of forecasting.

They would get telegrams from, let's say, St.

Louis.

to the East Coast saying, we just had really bad weather here.

And then they would notice a couple of days later that weather would move there.

And so that kind of started things.

So in the old days before internet and stuff like that, you did kind of call, you had phone numbers, you can call the thermometer six at the airports and you could call and get their information.

Nowadays with internet, it's just cheap, easy

and

free.

But so you do start looking upstream.

On Monday night, I was looking upstream for Tuesday to decide when the rain was going to come in yesterday.

And was it going to be a potential for thunderstorm?

And when you say upstream, you mean upjet stream, right?

Correct.

And does the majority of our weather, I'm going to geek out

a little bit.

Yeah, let's do

it.

The

majority of our weather come from the southwest up, or does it come from the northwest up?

Because it's not a straight linear line.

Very rarely do we get what's called zonal flow, which is true west to east across this part of the country.

In the summertime, it's usually a Southwest.

In the wintertime, it's usually Northwest.

And

that's because of how cold it can get,

right?

If in the wintertime, a cold front comes through with the snowfall.

It could get arcticly cold.

Yeah.

Well, there are clippers.

Yes.

Y'all

better

clippers.

You guys want a geek?

I'm bringing my key card in.

Yeah.

Just go to work.

We give it a

try.

Just push

the button.

Just

get a green

screen in here.

Yeah.

You guys

easily could.

So yeah.

And so right now, typically we would have like a Southwestern wind flow at the different levels of the atmosphere, but we don't.

We have a Northwest.

That's why it's so much cooler.

Yeah.

And so we're trapped in this kind of cool climbing pattern.

We saw this coming about a week ago and that it was

going to move anytime soon.

And this is the time of year you want that sweaty heat, right?

Yeah, we had

a very wet April.

May was the complete opposite.

Crops get out in the field.

And all of a sudden it's like, I need sweaty heat and

it's not there.

How long does

it take for that jet stream to move?

You

know, this time of year, it can be very stable.

So seven, 10 days,

14 days.

Okay.

Well, while we're talking about it, might as well bring up the barometer.

Go ahead.

Who's got the extra aches and pains

today?

So low pressure causes aches and pains.

That's true among people.

Rapid changes usually cause

that.

And then extremely low can really affect people that are really in tune with weather.

Like today, the low pressure system is deepening pretty quickly.

So we're getting pressure falls.

So your body's starting to experience that.

I don't normally have a lot of back problems, but today my back decided to have back spasms.

So I went and looked at the pressure fall map and I was like, yeah, I can see why that's happening.

So people that

have other elements or sore shoulders and stuff, your body's really in tune with the weather and those kind of rapid pressure falls can really bring in those extra aches and pains.

Will it blow me up or does it not, does it just impact the joints or whatever?

The

joints, it really depends.

You know, if you're looking pretty bloated

today.

I was gonna say.

I always had that problem.

It must be the pressure, the barometric pressure.

I carry my winter weight year round.

So it's like we need a four by three screen.

We'll just shave it off in post.

Yeah, but how far out does the barometric, like the barometer, how far out does that forecast or help forecast?

So what you're doing when you're looking at a true computer model, there's two ways of doing it.

There's one called MOS, which is model output statistics.

it's actually a printout of numbers.

And this is one thing that I did for my parents when they were trying to learn how to forecast weather and I do it in schools is I'll show them the old way of modeling, which is all the blurs and the colors and all the blobs moving.

Yeah, those you're looking at pressure maps and you're looking, that's what you're watching when you're doing forecasting pressure falls pressure rises and everything between.

Then there's a thing called MOS model, I'll put statistics that puts on a piece of paper with numbers.

And it's a very cheap and easy way of doing a forecast, not the most accurate,

but

for

someone that doesn't know anything about whether you can usually show them in about five minutes, how easy it is

to

get close.

Now, that doesn't bring in rain chances and some other things.

But

if the barometric pressure is falling, how quickly will it get colder?

So usually it kind of follows along with it.

So our pressure falls starts as the front rolls through.

Okay.

So the temperatures will continue to fall until we get to a wind shift.

Okay.

And right now, even though we're going to stay in the northwest wind, so today we're going to shift to a northwest wind, which is a cooler wind.

We'll stay that way the next three days.

But we are going to warm up.

And the reason for that is is we're going to get sunshine.

So if

we didn't have any sunshine tomorrow,

Friday or Saturday, that Northwest wind.

And if we stay cloudy, I would say the temperature would be the same as today.

It's only because we're going to get some sunshine that will warm up that extra 10 degrees.

That's a

difference.

God bless the sun.

God bless the sun.

God for the sun.

I meant to ask, what's a black hole sun?

Is

that a thing?

Just a

sun.

Just one of those that sucks in the other one.

OK.

It's a black hole with a sun.

Yeah.

OK.

Yeah.

I get it now.

But Chad, you were saying you

You worked in Rockford too for a little bit, and then you came back to Wausau, so you left Wausau, moved to Rockford, and then came back?

Yep.

When was that?

Our industry is based on contracts, and you guys work with contracts,

right?

Yeah,

sure.

Ours are employment contracts.

Okay.

As I always say, these aren't the Jordan Love $60 million year contract.

Not yet.

Someday, not for us.

So we're usually signing a one or two or three year deal.

And so people have a tendency to fall in love with their favorite television person that comes to town.

And usually without fail, after about two years, they disappear because it's a beginner's market.

And so for most people, they have a two year contract.

Some have a little longer than that.

Yeah, when I was at nine, the aforementioned Tony Schumacher wasn't going anywhere at that time.

And I really kind of wanted to be a chief meteorologist.

I'd been on mornings a long time.

Yeah.

The year that Justin Low became available.

I called him up and I was like, Hey, come work for us at channel nine.

So I get off mornings.

So

he became our morning person and I went to weekends for a half a year to get some severe weather experience.

Okay.

Yeah.

Rockford at that time was the sister station to the old ownership of channel nine.

So it was an

easy move for me in that regard.

I'm not going to say a lot of great things about Rockford, but I could tell you I got there and I was there exactly two years and left.

Well, now they have a new hard rock casino.

I noticed.

Yeah.

They have a big casino.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When I got to Rockford, this is, uh,

So we're talking 2006 and 2007 and Rockford at that time went through some really bad growing problems because Hamilton Sunstrand, the manufacturer that built space shuttle parts, space shuttle program had been canceled.

Hamilton Sunstrand was this big plant that took up city blocks.

It was huge, massive.

And so the unemployment rate shot up real high.

And so right away, I was kind of living in a decent area.

And I don't know how many break-ins I had because the unemployment rate had gone up so high, people were looking, there's a lot of trouble going on.

And so that kind of really soured me on Rockford pretty quick.

The general manager at Channel 7 had, we had played paddle ball and racquet ball against each other over the years.

He called me out of the blue.

and said, Hey, I'm going to have a morning opening.

Would you consider coming back?

I was like, that sounds interesting.

Yeah.

And he goes, I want you to come back.

We're going to do it.

We'll meet.

We'll talk, contract and everything else.

We met at the old stage shop, which is now Gorskies.

And

he

purposely told me to wear

Nothing nice and wear a hat because he didn't want anybody knowing I was coming back to town.

Yeah.

Now, that's a good ego feed.

But at the reality of it is, is that you leave the market and nobody knows who the heck

you

are.

I heard that

they missed you a lot.

So I heard

that.

So I was at nine for six years.

I went to Rockford for two and I've been at Channel seven 20 years this May.

And as of today or a few weeks ago, you were promoted to chief meteorologist.

We're still looking for a chief

interim interim.

between Jeremy and I were row shamboning half of the week

until

we

find someone.

So Mark Holly had

Mark Holly is a family guy and working in television.

You are one of two shifts.

Usually you're two a.m.

to one p.m.

or one p.m.

to 12 a.m.

And so that's hard with two boys.

My joke with Mark and I still say to this day is he was a kicker in football and I played offensive line through college.

And I always say to him every single time kickers are not real football players.

They're real people but not real football because they're a kicker.

All they do is just go kick the

ball.

OK.

All right.

Settle down.

Everybody settle down.

And so to this

day, I still joke with him about that.

Bust his chops.

Absolutely.

Can't let him off easy.

So we're in the process of looking to put your name in the hat.

I'm assuming, right?

Yeah, I think we're all kind of in the hat.

There's three

of us there.

Jeremy and I. Jeremy, I think is going on 20 years this year and maybe next year.

What a tough decision.

I mean, which

way is

the wind blowing on this?

Oh, I think the wind is circling.

Pardon the pot.

I think at this point, because we have a lot of, so you guys, we always talk about digital this, right?

Digital world.

My job has really been over the last several years is developing our digital plan.

I remember you saying

that.

So digitally, we're doing more things on our live streaming and more things outside of traditional TV.

And that's kind of been my focus and probably where I will continue to go down

that

path.

Facebook and their algorithms.

Well, I mean, you personally, not only for the station, but you personally have a hell of a social media following.

I think you have, what is it, 40,000 or something?

Pretty close there,

probably about 50 with TikTok now.

So my TikTok account was really just all my dogs.

And so fluffy dogs you can't go wrong with.

People love them.

It's great

for the algorithm.

Is it like a doodle?

One of those doodles?

Three golden retrievers.

Awesome.

So that works well for TikTok.

Well,

A couple months ago, I started doing weather on my account and then the station account and it started kind of growing.

And so I developed a mantra with us doing quick weather hits on it.

We're not necessarily doing a lot of live stuff unless weather warrants it.

But

like when severe weather happens at the end of the day, going live on social media platforms will rank behind going on air on television

because everybody comes back.

So as much as the broadcast television community and viewership starting to shrink a little bit, severe weather will always

Completely flip it back the other way.

Yeah

what we did the last couple of weeks with severe weather.

I'm 99% sure our viewership was probably double or triple what normally is.

I mean, I was tuning in.

And so speaking of that, during something like a tornado warning like we had last, an actual warning like we had last week, is that pretty stressful for you?

Very much.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you're like, it's stressful for all of us, I

think.

Yes.

And so my wife calls it the weather woody.

Oh, no, I'm not excited about this.

And the wringled tornado.

So

I

live out in west and building a new house and wringled.

Oh,

wow.

So

I'm on the air texting my wife and she knows when I send 911, she's got to go to the basement.

Yeah.

And she, she went through the Merrill tornado years ago, watched it and she was close to it.

And I didn't know her then.

Otherwise she would have got the lecture.

Yeah.

My mom now lives in town in the last two severe weather events with these tornado warnings.

I'm on the air texting my wife, my daughter and my mom, 911, get to the basement.

Yeah.

And I have no idea of what's going on behind the scenes because

I'm on air.

Yeah.

But I'm texting as I'm talking.

I'm like 9-1-1.

Well,

you're freaking out and trying to maintain your composure because it's so personal for you.

It's personal for you and tens of thousands of people are also relying on you at that same moment.

Very

much so.

And then so the Ringle one, Jeremy and Mark were still handling the coverage.

I had signed off and I took our photographer and I went chasing Townline Road

and

we caught the backside of the tornado that became the EF3 that hit Ringle.

And then we tried to go down all the different roads off of N.

And then eventually you get to N and Q. There's a big tree across the road there.

And conveniently, I was able to go down Q, which is where I'm starting to build a new house.

And so we could get there and see that that part wasn't hit.

But then when we worked our way back toward Riverside Elementary, it's a total help out job, right?

When you're storm chasing, you chase because

The National Weather Service relies on your information because radar doesn't see what's happening right above the ground.

Right.

Because of how radar works.

So sometimes the radar will say that there's a tornado when there's actually a hot and vice versa.

Last Wednesday is a

great example of it.