11/08/2007 ... Legendary WMT personality Ford Roberts wrote;
The 'Weather Tower' was on once each evening. It was part of the 10-10:30p lineup, following the news at around 10:20 followed by the weather tower. Weather and not the Tower was part of the 6pm lineup as well. Since CBS had no show at 10:30, the news segment might have run to 10:35 - 40.. just like BBC! For some reason the news ran on WMT TV from 10:30 - 11:00p. May have been after KWWL TV, went on the air; with Steve Allen or Jack Paar and the Tonight Show.
The original host of the Shell Weather Tower was the salesman who sold it, George Dorrington. He is probably the weatherman in the WMT shot above. After a month or so a fellow named Roger joined the staff especially for weather tower duties. He lasted several months. Then Roy Howard, who came up from KIOA, did the bit although his main line, like mine, was radio. Then Jay Alexander, possibly around '55... although I am not sure on that.
I was told by the regional Shell rep that the Tower aired on WOC, Davenport, WCCO, Minneapolis and WMT TV. It may have been in other border states like Wisconsin but the rep's territory covered only the Nebraska, Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa.
J. Walter Thompson was Shell's agency and they built the studio weather tower and all its special items. Some of the commercial props were very expensive. One that we used just a few times was a four-foot long spark plug that indicated fouled points, then a sure-fire shot after filling up with Shell Gasoline with TCP.
One night before going on I found a memo from J. Walter to ';..the weather tower person.' They suggested that I simulate height, the weather.. wet uniform in rain, snow in winter, etc. For some reason the guys before had not seen this note but I took it to heart and from then on we had a whee of a time. Snow on shoulders when weather was appropriate in winter. A newsman would ' send "space capsules' with final baseball scores while lying on his back in front of the set. This started an avalanche of visitors who wanted to know exactly where the weather tower was located. This, I imagine, was true of any station that had the show.
One night on the tower Tony Mihalovich, a noted Des Moines police officer was on the tower with me. He was in town to promote the Goodwill Train that stopped in CR. At the end of our short interview, Tony climbed over the door opening and walked in front of the set! Quickly, I said,
"..Tony you are on the front cat walk... the ladder is in the back." He turned around and returned to the other side to '..find the ladder, etc.
Shell sponsored the weather on Monday through Thursday and then sponsored it with Shellane, their propane product, on Fridays. I did the tower for two plus years until Shell cancelled in 1958; continued with regular weather until Conrad Johnson, who I believe was one of the first if not the first television meteorologists. He did beautifully; using 'weather radar' (actually Collins Radio avionics radar from their plant across the street.
All the best,
Ford Roberts
Phil from Dubuque adds - I also have a couple funny anecdotes former floorcrew sent about Jay Alexander's time in the Shell Weather Tower on WMT. Jay really played it up and used to get late-breaking high school football scores thrown up in film tubes. To accomplish the feat, the crew member had to lay on his back and toss it up to Jay (because the tower was only about two feet off the ground). One night Jay dropped a card and a crew member picked it up and handed it back (which of course would have been impossible in a tower). Without missing a beat, Jay adlibbed: "It is a good thing those cards are attached to rubber bands."
I got a kick out of Bud Kraehling of WCCO, Minneapolis, commenting he knew nothing of weather forecasting; neither did I! One night I drew a circle with a 'H' in it over Lake Michigan and said, "..there's a high-pressure area over a salesman's convention in Chicago." When the wire was down I made my own forecast and was fairly accurate most of the time.
Presenting Ed Zack in the WOC TV 6 Davenport, Iowa Shell Weather Tower in the 1950's.
The Shell Weather Tower shot is absolutely great!!! Both channels 4 and 6 (and probably many others around the country) did the weather like this although not necessarily at the same time. Obviously it was one big ad for Shell that also gave you the weather. Usually the segment opened with the camera panning up a camera card of a "weather tower" which looked a whole lot like a forest fire lookout tower. As the camera got up to where the cab of the tower would be, the director would dissolve to the live shot of the studio set. The weatherman was dressed as a Shell gas station attendant. In the picture it is Ed Zack, but Bob Danico was also a Shell weatherman.
Note the gauges on the back wall. As Don McGonegle pointed out, they were fake. By switching toggle switches on and off, the needles would jump like they were making up-to-the-minute readings. Also note the oil cans and the little slate areas with writing on the front of the weather tower. Those spun. Half of them were imitation oil cans and the back half were little slates where current temp, humidity, precep, etc. could be written. The camera would take a shot of the oil can, then it would spin and the current reading would be shown. A mini-commercial within a weather show within a larger commercial.
Also note the lavaliere microphone of the day. It was actually an RCA desk mike mounted on a hoop that the talent wore around his/her neck. Those who remember the Today Show with Dave Garroway saw him wear the same thing, but with a different type of microphone.
- Dave Coopman
They created the image of a weather tower. You would have been suprised at the number that would drive around and look for the tower! You can see a phone in the background. WCCO in Minneapolis also had a Shell weather tower. During the weather segment a toggle light would come on the phone and I would pick it up and have a "conversation" with that station, all to make the tower seem more real. I remember that with the weather tower, there were strict rules. One time a camera man started the shot of it by zooming in on the floor in front of it and then rising up to the tower thus destroying the image that was created. That was not a good thing! - Ed Zack
Here is the gentleman that Ed Zack was speaking with - WCCO's Bud Kraehling!
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, WCCO's weatherman Bud Kraehling delivered his forecasts from the "Shell Weather Tower." On rainy, stormy and snowy nights, special effects created the illusion that he was outside braving the elements. In reality, the camera would pan a three-foot sketch of the tower at the opening of the program. The inside of the tower was a small studio set. Picture courtesy Bud Kraehling. From the Minnesota Historical Society website.
From the Winston-Salem Journal, an interview with WSJS's Glenn Scott by Tim Clodfelter
Then he became a weather reporter, known for climbing the "Shell Weather Tower" to deliver the weather reports during the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts. This was at a time when each segment of the news had a separate sponsor - Shell Oil for the weather, Duke Power for the news, and so on.
"They had a film at the beginning showing me climbing a ladder," he said. "But I was in the studio. There was a map, and there were oil cans, and I'd turn them to show the temperature and wind direction and the barometric pressure."
When school groups came to the station, the kids were frequently disappointed with the studio. "They said, 'This is the Shell Weather Tower?'" Scott said with a laugh. "'We've been hosed.'"
From the KMIT website - Bob Clausen and his Shell Weather Tower on KGLO Mason City, Iowa!
01/12/2009 ... A couple of years ago I did interviews for a book about KGLO Radio/Television and heard from many old timers about the Shell Weather Tower.
I remember Bob Clausen resurrecting the Shell Weather tower for his last week on the job in the late 1980’s. I remember talking about The Shell Weather tower with a clerk at Hy Vee that week and the woman in front of me turning around to say “Oh I thought that rickety old thing would have fallen down by now!”
One of the cameramen told me they always kept it under a tarp that was tied down to prevent the public from seeing it in the studio, and when it was in use non-employees were forbidden from the set.
One day Bob pretended to drop a pop bottle off the tower – which was caught in a pillow – and then they played a sound effect several seconds later.
A bank president once told the farm director he and his wife had spent several Sundays driving up and down every back road in Cerro Gordo County looking for the tower but could never find it.
George Bower
Program Director
KICD-AM
Spencer, IA
No picture is available at the moment but this is from WHIO in Dayton, Ohio -
An advertisement from 1953 of The Shell Weather Tower with longtime WOC Weatherman Bob Brown followed by a mid 1950's WOC TV 6 ad!
Ted Ryan who gave the weather report "from high atop the
Shell Weather Tower."
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