My Evening with Pat Sajak



If you think everyone who has lived in L.A. has encountered a celebrity or two, you're probably right.  This is one of my stories.

When I was growing up I wanted to be a TV weatherman.  My friends had the usual childhood ambitions of doctor, lawyer, teacher, cop, fireman, astronaut and athlete.  I wanted to wear nice suits and get paid to talk.  And as comedian Lewis Black put it: the job of TV weatherman in a place like San Diego is the easiest job in the world. 

"What's the forecast, Lou?"

"It's gonna be nice." 

I also figured doing the weather at 5, 6 and 11 meant you got to sleep in every morning. 

I felt the calling after watching Dr. George Fischbeck, an avuncular  former  schoolteacher  who broke into television as host of an afternoon science show for kids on PBS.  His studio set resembled a home garage and each week he tackled the science questions every parent of a precocious child has heard.  Why is the sky blue?  How do airplanes stay up?  How does a tree know to grow an apple?  Dr. George gave the answers with cool chemistry experiments, homemade weather instruments, and common household objects.  In the days before computer graphics the man could hold children's attention with just cardboard and scissors.  His TV weather forecasts were no less compelling and his career at KABC 7 in Los Angeles spanned from 1972 to 1990.  He was the king of cumulonimbus.

Across town, the main weekday weatherman at KNBC 4 was Pat Sajak.  Before racking up 30+ years as host of Wheel of Fortune, Pat delivered the forecast with a boyish mug and the same wisecracking asides that have been one of the game show's hallmarks.  I have to guess that between them Pat and Dr. George dominated the ratings.  The CBS affiliate and four independent stations had their own weather anchors and I can't recall the names or faces of any of them.

I knew I needed a connection in this nepotic industry.  So when I got a college journalism assignment to write a biographical sketch, I set out to interview someone doing TV weather in Los Angeles and find out how to crack this nut.  KABC said Dr. George was on vacation.  Pat Sajak promptly took my call.  I told him about the assignment and my dream job of TV weatherman.  Having landed in the nation's #2 media market by the age of 30, he could probably tell that this nervous college freshman asking to job shadow was no threat to his career and agreed to meet.

The Burbank studio he worked in is a heady environment.  The station's newsroom at one time or another has seen the likes of Tom Brokaw, Tom Snyder, Bryant Gumbal, and Nick Clooney (George's dad).  Pat's co-workers included consumer advocate David Horowitz, who had a syndicated TV show; Harvey Levin, who'd go on to create TMZ; and sports anchor Stu Nahan, later seen as the ringside announcer in the early Rocky movies.  The studio was also the television home of Tonight Show host Johnny Carson.

It was 8:30 at night and Pat had just returned from a dinner break.  We sat in a small office where he studied weather wire copy and typed notes for his 11 o'clock report.  In between bursts at the typewriter, he recounted how he landed in L.A.: raised in Chicago, marriage to a college sweetheart, a lead in college to his first overnight gig at an AM radio station, a stint on Armed Forces Radio, and the advances through small markets before catching a break in Nashville as a disc jockey and weatherman.  Then KNBC called.  I was living at home my first year in college and started asking myself if that nomadic lifestyle was really for me.

After a stint in makeup, Pat was on with the weather halfway through the 11:00 news.  His notes crawled on the teleprompter and he pretty much ad libbed the segment.  After sports and during a commercial break, he returned to the set to fill his chair while anchorman John Schubeck wrapped up with a feature story and said goodnight.  The closing theme grew over his final words, the stage lights dimmed to silhouette the set and everyone in the studio fell silent as the camera shot faded and the station cut to commericals ahead of the Tonight Show.  I watched this production and considered the perks of the job: nice clothes, good money, low stress, famous colleagues, a two-hour dinner break, and spending part of each day at work in a hushed temperature-controlled TV studio.  OK, maybe I could deal with relocating now and again.

We filed out of the studio and walked toward the guard station at the entrance to the building.  Pat said he loved his job and was grateful for it every day.  But TV news in any market has no job security.  "Someday," he said knowingly, "this is going to end."  What then?  He said he'd like to host some kind of TV show.

I turned in my guest pass.  It was 11:45 p.m. and I had one more question.

"How late do you sleep in?"

"I get up around nine or ten."

I wondered if I could get hired to do the weather in Modesto after college.