ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150029
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANTHONY R. WOOD KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The first thing you notice about Al Roker is that you can't help but notice him.
This has nothing to do with his legendary girth, which is becoming less legendary by the day. (He has trimmed most of the red meat from his life and shed 60 pounds.) It's just that the guy is everywhere. Here he is on NBC mixing it up with the window-set on the ``Today'' show in the morning; there he is giving the local weather on WNBC-TV in New York in the evening; here he is on MSNBC, the NBC-Microsoft venture, and in case you can't get enough, there he is on the Internet at roker.com.
This week, Roker shows up on PBS.
For the next eight weeks, he is lending his face, name and voice to ``Going Places,'' a PBS travel series produced by William Grant out of WNET in New York. The series starts in London and, in subsequent weeks, moves from Las Vegas to Sydney.
For Roker, it's a return trip, so to speak. In the summer, he narrated another Grant production, ``Savage Skies,'' a PBS documentary about something near and dear to his career: weather.
Roker, while not a meteorologist, has been doing TV weather for over 20 years; rather astonishing, given that he's only 42.He is reminded of the duration of his career any number of times, he said in a phone interview. He'll hear someone in the Rockefeller Center crowd outside the ``Today'' studio say something like, ``I grew up watching you.'' Flattering?
``You just want to haul off and slug them,'' Roker said.
Which is something he hasn't done - at least not yet.
Over the years, Roker has carefully cultivated the image of the genial, balding, funny, normal-looking guy. ``I look like most people,'' he said.
Well, not quite. You may have noticed that Roker isn't white, which makes him somewhat unusual in the weather business.It wasn't all that long ago that the world of weather was whiter than a polar-bear support group. For that matter, so was television.
That's changing now, but when Roker broke into the TV weather business back in 1974 in Syracuse, he was the station's only black on the air. At the time, Roker was majoring in radio, television and film at the State University of New York in Oswego. One of his teachers worked at the station and told Roker to apply for the weekend weather slot.
It wasn't as though Roker, with all of one meteorology class under his belt, would be fulfilling a lifetime ambition. ``I had zero interest in being on camera, or doing TV weather,'' Roker said. But his instructor, Lou O'Donnell, told him: ``Do whatever it takes to get your foot in the door.''
So, when he was offered the job at WTVH-TV, he took it.
Roker said the station management was so concerned about the public's reaction to a black face on the air that it hired a guard to fend off trouble. The response to Roker's debut?
``There was not one phone call,'' he said. ``Nothing happened.''
Roker eventually slipped into the weekday spot on WTVH, and then moved on to WTTG-TV, Channel 5, in Washington. He recalled being told, ``You're going to get experience on the No. 1 newscast at 10 o'clock.'' That was indisputable, since it was Washington's only 10 o'clock newscast.
``They didn't really care about the news,'' Roker said, ``and they just wanted something to surround the commercials with.''
He eventually moved on to NBC affiliates in Cleveland and New York, but he made an invaluable friend in Washington, another hair-challenged gentleman at a rival station named Willard Scott.
Scott became his mentor and role model. ``Willard was the poster boy for normal-looking people,'' Roker said.
Scott had seen Roker dress up as a groundhog and pop out of a manhole cover on Groundhog Day, and he had seen enough.
He contacted Roker and met with him. He told him to stuff the groundhog schtick and left him with three words of advice: ``Always be yourself.'' From all appearances, Roker has ridden that credo to fame and riches.
Any man on his third wife is assuredly more complex than the public persona of Al Roker would suggest, but Roker says he leaves behind any personal problems when he shows up for work.
Roker, who has a 9-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, has been married to Deborah Roberts, a correspondent on ABC's ``20/20,'' for a year and a half. (``It's a great institution,'' he says of marriage, ``and I think I've finally gotten it right now.'')
He is picking up some pocket change from PBS for his work on ``Going Places.'' He wouldn't say how much.
The first installment of ``Going Places'' is essentially a well-made infomercial, spliced with some useful tips. For example, Michael Caine advises visitors not to eat at restaurants near tourist attractions. (Of course, he gets a plug in for the restaurant he owns.)
Stage actor Calvin Rowe tells viewers not to bother taking ``the tube'' (aka subway) because London is so small you can walk anywhere.
On upcoming installments, the series moves on to Las Vegas, New Orleans, the Caribbean, the Rockies, the Black Hills, Tuscany and Sydney.
Roker insists that the PBS venture by no means signals a change in career direction.
He said Scott gave him another piece of advice that he has accepted religiously. That was: ``Never give up your day job.'' As in weather.
``My bread and butter is weather,'' Roker said. ``I'm never going to give up the weather, that's the gig.''
LENGTH: Medium: 97 linesby CNB