THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601180054
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
MEMO TO Duane Harding, former WTKR meteorologist, from Carol Novotny Horton, former WTKR anchor and weather reporter: It will take a long time to recover from the shock of being fired.
``Five months have passed since it happened to me, and there are some nights I wake up in a cold sweat dreaming about it,'' said Novotny, who didn't stay out of work for very long. She's hitched up with WFOG-FM.
On Tuesday, the day after Harding was told that his contract would not be renewed in July, he was, indeed, in a state of shock and wondering how to go about finding another job in television. Harding's departure from Channel 3 happened so quickly that he didn't have time to put together a resume tape - a sampling of his on-camera weather reporting.
His style is solid and thorough, but not flashy.
A resume tape is the calling card that all job seekers need in broadcasting. Your taped resume is everything.
``I have no idea how to start,'' the fortysomething Harding said Tuesday when asked if he would try to
find work at another station.
Harding said he showed up at work as usual around 3 p.m. Monday and was called into a meeting with news director Barbara Hamm, who told him that he was out.
``Then I was escorted from the building,'' Harding said. Escorted from the building?
Did they think this guy was going to steal paper clips? Re-program the weather computer? Punch general manager Eldin Hale in the schnoz?
This isn't the first time Harding, a former college professor with a doctorate in meteorology, has had the rug pulled out from under him since coming to this market in the 1980s.
Before Channel 3 signed him to do the weather on the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts, he worked for WVEC. Harding and Channel 13 couldn't get together on a new contract, so he went to work for WTKR at about the time Andy Roberts was preparing to retire.
That was two owners ago. The CBS affiliate was sold last year for a third time, to The New York Times Co.
Since then, the station's new general manager has made wholesale changes. He brought in LeAnne Rains to co-anchor at 6 and 11. He started early-morning newscasts on the weekends and put in a new show about the outdoors.
He gave longtime No. 1 anchors Ed Hughes and Jane Gardner lesser assignments. He let Novotny go, and now comes the firing of Harding.
The seismic effect of this approaches that of the Night of the Long Knives when WTKR dismissed co-anchor Sandra Kelly and sports reporters Stan Garfin and Michael Rasnick. (My Infoline voice mail, 640-5555, Category 3333, is overflowing with calls from readers who are upset with Channel 3 for tossing Harding off the roof, so to speak).
So why was Harding dropped as the new year got rolling? Was it because he griped about being asked to do the weather reports outside on the station's roof in this harsh winter? Was it because he wasn't on the air two Sundays ago when the Blizzard of '96 had viewers watching hour after hour?
Hale and Hamm give vague reasons for letting Harding go. Hale said he wants to change the look of WTKR's weather reports - and then added something about him and Harding not sharing the same philosophy of TV forecasting. Hale said Harding was a bright, classy guy and a terrific meteorologist.
But there is no place for him on the Channel 3 team.
Hamm put it this way: ``We're taking our weather reporting in a different direction.''
She didn't say which way the new arrows will point. Hale told reporters that Harding will consult at WTKR until July, but Harding wonders how that is possible now that he's been told to clean out his desk.
Harding said he never fussed about being asked to forecast the weather from the rooftop. In fact, he said he liked it. ``I had hoped to build a garden up there one day so that I could compare tomato plants with the viewers,'' he said.
That's now a vanished dream.
The rooftop is left to two relative newcomers to the WTKR forecast center, Greg Padgett and Pete Grigsby. Hale and Hamm expect to bring others aboard. Harding speculated that he will be replaced by somebody in their 20s or 30s.
At half his salary, perhaps.
Harding wonders if he came across as too old on camera for Hale's tastes. He wonders, speculates, supposes why he, as competent a weather forecaster as there is in this rather large TV market, was dumped.
``I have been left with doubts about myself,'' Harding said. He is deeply shaken. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo
Duane Harding
by CNB