OMG!!!

[woods1110 0]

Hilarious Weatherman

This is the weatherman from the Fox station in Charlotte. In a way he is funny, in a way he is annoying, but goodness...

How does he keep his JOB?

You have to watch it!

[channonc 466]

Pretty funny.

He seems like the kind of guy, either you love him or hate him.

[jared52 4,354]

Looks like he DIDN'T keep his job:

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/ent...10220216.htm?1c

[AuNuma1 1]

Completely unprofessional...surely most of that wasn't live? That or absolutely NO ONE watches that channel.

Jared, have to be registered to read that link...

[jared52 4,354]

Wow, the first two times I went there I didn't have to register! Now I do...

[jared52 4,354]

Here you go:

Posted on Fri, Nov. 19, 2004

Weather forecaster Mathis fired

'They cut me loose. No severance, no nothing.'

MARK WASHBURN

TV/Radio Writer

Mark Mathis -- whose unpredictable, improvisational weather forecasts on Charlotte's Fox affiliate amused some viewers and infuriated others over the last two years was fired this week by WCCB-TV, two weeks after checking into rehabilitation for alcohol and substance abuse problems.

"They called me here at the hospital and basically said they're `terminating your employment with Fox,' " said Mathis, 38, in a telephone interview Thursday from a Texas rehabilitation facility. "And I said, `Why?'

"Because in the contract, that says you've publicly humiliated the television station by announcing you're going into treatment for alcoholism.

"They cut me loose. No severance, no nothing."

Despite the clowning during some of his performances, Mathis had said he's never been under the influence while on the air, but had fallen into a late-night, after-work partying habit.

Morality clauses are common in contracts in the broadcast industry, particularly those involving on-air talent, the public faces of stations and networks. Such clauses generally cover a variety of possible indiscretions, ranging from behavior at public appearances to legal matters.

"Mark agreed to a contract," said John Hutchinson, vice president and general manager of WCCB (Fox Charlotte, Channel 18), who hired Mathis in 2002 to bring the station a more distinctive, provocative image.

"He knows full well that he failed to fulfill a number of commitments he made to us in that contract. And he also knows that the company has gone the extra mile more than once."

Mathis, who made more than $90,000 a year, said Hutchinson told him Wednesday that he was being fired.

"I harbor no ill feelings whatsoever toward John Hutchinson," Mathis said. "He's the finest boss I have ever had. Period."

On-set buffoonery

Mathis cut an unusual course through the polite-and-proper universe of Charlotte television news. While his forecasting competitors projected an image of studious meteorology built on up-to-the-raindrop technological wizardry, Mathis bounded onto the set of WCCB's 10 p.m. newscast with clownish abandon.Once he poked fun at the theatrics of TV reporters who stand out in hurricanes for live shots: Pretending to be reporting amid lashing gales, he leaned awkwardly in front of a studio screen showing a film clip of bending palms and blowing debris.

Another time he sang the forecast, using a medley of Broadway show tunes, beginning with "It's Too Darn Hot" and ending with "(The Sun'll Come Out) Tomorrow.''

His antics brought in viewers who welcomed a little comedy relief in the news and others who detested his performances but couldn't help but tune in to see what he'd do next.

"Whatever I did, I would hear things like, `I can't stand you,' " Mathis said Thursday. "One lady told me to double up on my medication or stop taking what I was taking. Some people said I was loud, obnoxious and rude, but it was like a car wreck. They couldn't turn away.

"But I'd always return their phone calls and explain that I just didn't want to keep on doing weather the way I'd done it for 15 years, and they'd be very nice ...

"The people who loved it, absolutely loved it, and the ones who hated it, absolutely hated it. I think overall we were on the side of love or I'd have been gone a long time ago."

Mathis' departure came at the start of the November ratings sweeps, a critical time for stations because audience is measured with an eye toward setting advertising rates. In the first 10 days of the rating period, WCCB's 10 p.m. news ratings are off 27 percent from last November and the station is trailing the other two local newscasts in that time period on WAXN (Channel 64) and WJZY (Channel 46).

Previous treatment

In March 2003, Mathis disappeared from the air for a month after making a joke at the expense of Gastonia. The station did little to set straight reports that he'd been suspended for the remark or to dispel the mystery over his sabbatical.

But his absence had been scheduled. Mathis planned to go to rehab for a drinking problem.

A month later he returned to Channel 18 with trademark flair at the beginning of "Fox News Edge," a magazine-style show he co-hosted with Ashley Anderson.

The show opened with video of a limo pulling up to the studios and a bound-and-gagged Mathis being deposited on the station's front steps. A moment later, he hopped into camera range.

"I was in Texas," he told the audience with mock seriousness, "visiting my folks. That's all!"

On Thursday, Mathis said that he doesn't think he did enough after that hospitalization to maintain his sobriety, but this time he will overcome his disease.

"I realize that what I have is truly an illness, and you treat it and you get better...

"Via this illness I have, I've made some mistakes and I blame no one. I take full responsibility. It stings. And I'll miss the folks over at Fox. I loved and adored them ...

"I am excited about what God has in store for me next."

[jared52 4,354]

Then I found this:

Forecasting brighter days ahead

For years often lost in an alcoholic haze, Mark Mathis works to reclaim his life

MARK WASHBURN

TV/Radio Writer

Fans of his wacky weatherman act on WCCB (Channel 18) wouldn't have known him.

Even Mark Mathis wasn't sure who the man in the mirror was -- drunken, disheveled, solitary, hunkered down in a $99 room at a Doubletree hotel, a weekend destination he had chosen because he knew he could get vodka from room service if the bottle he'd brought along didn't do the trick.

"I saw a man that I didn't recognize," says Mathis, 38.

"It was almost like I saw the devil himself, a man who had been given so much and had made the decision to ruin his life.

"I knew that if I didn't get help, I was going to die."

Mathis joined Fox Charlotte's 10 p.m. newscast in March 2002, bringing a bombastic approach to forecasting.

He sang, he danced, he came dressed as a snowflake, he swung the microphone like a lariat. Sometimes he'd never even get around to the weather in his 90-second solos.

Viewers would call the station to complain about his clowning, vowing never to watch again. But they would, if only so they could call the station the next day to complain some more.

Mathis became the foundation of the personality-driven matrix WCCB built to overcome the fact it had the smallest TV newsroom in town. Before long, its ratings topped competing newscasts produced by newsrooms four times its size.

Fox Charlotte became competitive, drawing more than 100,000 viewers for the first time, and a young audience at that, the kind coveted by advertisers. And Mathis was the station's best-known personality, a nightly splash of unpredictable bonhomie.

Drawn to the limelight

Mathis admits craving the limelight all his life.He was born in Austin, Texas, a hyperactive middle child. In fourth grade, he got a solo in a Mary Poppins skit before a crowd of 3,000 for a family-night show sponsored by First Baptist Church of Dallas. He vividly remembers the thrill he got from the applause.

At Baylor University in Waco, Texas, he majored in broadcasting and after graduation went on to a series of forecasting jobs at local TV stations, including in Dallas, Austin and Charleston.

Through the years, his after-work partying grew more intense, a tonic to tame a gnawing restlessness, he says.

He spun through money, buying drinks for everyone in the bar, taking spur-of-the-moment weekend trips to San Francisco or South Beach.

"It was not uncommon for me to spend $1,500 on a Saturday night in my Dallas and Austin days," Mathis recalls.

In 2000, he was arrested for drunken driving near San Diego and vowed to curb his ways.

Things were OK for a while. Then in 2003, a year after he joined Fox Charlotte, he made a joke at the expense of Gastonia and disappeared for a month. WCCB did little to dispel the notion he'd been suspended for the remark.

In fact, Mathis had decided his drinking was unmanageable, and he scheduled himself for rehabilitation at a Texas treatment facility.

A memorable first date

Rebecca Branner remembers their first date about 18 months ago. He took her to Latorre's and didn't order a drink.

"I thought, wow, that's cool. A guy who doesn't drink," said Branner, 34, a Charlotte artist.

"Then I asked him, is that by choice or do you have a problem? He said by choice."

Darting into the darkness

But the illness exerted itself again late in the summer.After about six months of sobriety, Mathis let his 12-step program slip and started having the occasional drink. Then a bottle of wine at one sitting. And then more.

"I got the thought I could drink like a normal human being," he recalls. "It was a self-deception phase."

One day in August, he called the station and said he couldn't work. It was clear to those at Fox Charlotte that he had relapsed.

"They knew and suspended me for a couple days," Mathis recalls. And he got back on the straight and narrow.

But by late fall, alcohol was on his mind frequently. Then he started disappearing on weekends, checking into Charlotte-area hotels and spending the time alone and drunk.

"When I'd run out of liquor, I'd just call down to room service," he says. "That's why I'd stay in nice hotels. Seedy hotels don't have room service."

Mostly he drank vodka and wine. He'd put a splash of soda on top of the vodka and drink it through a straw. He says he would down glasses of merlot like they were shots.

Three to five times over the course of the last year, he admits, he used cocaine to extend the high.

"I'm so ashamed to be even thinking about that, much less using it," Mathis says, "but when you're drunk, the first thing to go is your inhibitions."

He managed to keep the drinking away from work hours until Nov. 5. It was a Friday evening and he left the studio around dinnertime. He bought a bottle of wine and checked into the Doubletree.

Branner knew something was wrong when she couldn't reach him on his cell phone. Fearing he was out on another binge, she called the station to see where he was.

He had left for a meeting, she was told, and had not returned to prepare for the 10 p.m. newscast or the follow-up magazine show "Fox News Edge."

It was the beginning of the key autumn ratings period when news show audiences are measured with an eye to setting advertising rates.

"Then he called me from the hotel at 9:30 p.m. and said, `Come get me,' " Branner recalls.

She did. And infuriated by yet another relapse in such a short time, she took the tough love approach.

"I spent the next three hours yelling at him," she recalls. "I told him, `You're disgusting me.' I told him to get his stuff and get out."

Back to rehab

Mathis booked a flight to Dallas the next day to visit his parents and enter a second rehabilitation program.

On his way through Charlotte/Douglas International Airport to catch the flight, three people stopped him and asked to have their pictures taken with him.

Two weeks after entering a rehabilitation program at the Starlight Recovery Center in Center Point, Texas, he was told by Fox Charlotte that he was being fired.

"I loved it over there," Mathis says. "I loved all the people there. I need to make amends to them. They're not interested in `I'm sorry.' They've heard that before."

Alcoholism's toll

In the two Carolinas, there are an estimated 960,000 people who abuse alcohol or are alcoholics. Nationally, nearly 14 million Americans -- or one in every 13 adults -- are alcoholics or alcohol abusers.While there is no cure for the illness of alcoholism, there are treatment programs and even medications to help alcoholics stop drinking.

The illness cuts across lines of gender, race and nationality. Men are at higher risk, and alcohol problems are highest among young adults 18 to 29. Relapses are not uncommon, particularly for people in the early stages of rehabilitation.

Abstinence is the solution.

"I know I can never have another drink for the rest of my life, period," Mathis says.

Living a natural high

Mathis was making more than $100,000 as Fox Charlotte's forecaster, getting speaking fees for public appearances and doing commercials for an Asheville Dodge dealer that paid $800 a week. His annual income was near $160,000.

Now the money is mostly gone, squandered on trips, good times, partying.

"I've made a pretty good chunk of change over the last 10 years and I haven't got much to show for it," he says. "It hurts."

Mathis now spends his days in Charlotte working out (he's lost 20 pounds since November), attending meetings of his 12-step program, studying the Bible and saying hello to people who recognize him on the street.

Mathis met a man at the Harris Teeter on Sardis Road North after Christmas. The man confided he'd been heartbroken since his mother's death.

"He said, `I never even thought of laughing throughout the day ... But I knew every night at 10:15, I could turn you on and I knew I could laugh at least once that day," Mathis recalls.

Mathis has been thinking a lot about his purpose in life. He wonders whether his purpose isn't to put a smile on people's faces.

"I feel better, more excited and happier. There's this sense of peace and serenity, something I haven't had in 15 years. I'm so excited about the future, and I don't even know what it is."

Happy ending

When Mathis returned from rehabilitation, Branner agreed to pick him up at the airport.She didn't know what to expect of him or of her own emotions and steeled herself against the possibility their chemistry was dead.

"I'm not the kind of girl who asks guys to marry me," Branner said last week. "But I definitely see us together."

And she adds, smiling, "I just don't want him to think he's got me yet."