“Kevin and I have come into your homes for decades — nearly 37 years for me,” Patrece Dayton, a news anchor in Terre Haute, Indiana, told viewers on Friday in front of a box of tissues. “And more than 40 for me,” added Kevin Orpurt, the TV station’s chief meteorologist.
“For those of you who don’t know, both of our positions are being eliminated here at WTHI-TV,” Dayton continued. “The television business in general is changing nationwide and budget cuts are happening everywhere.”
CNN reports the on-air duo, who have long been household names in western Indiana, delivered a tearful farewell to viewers Friday after the station’s parent company, Allen Media Group, announced sweeping cuts that will see all local meteorologists eliminated or reassigned at its nearly two dozen stations nationwide.
In place of the local weather forecasters will be a national “hub” based in Atlanta led by Carl Parker, a veteran storm and climate specialist at The Weather Channel — which the Byron Allen-owned media group acquired for $300 million in March 2018. The plan will see the locally produced segments replaced by a feed beamed to individual stations from The Weather Channel, which could include some of the stations’ former meteorologists.The layoffs at roughly two dozen local television stations stretching from Massachusetts to Hawaii will impact at least 50 meteorologists, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person said some of the meteorologists will be offered new positions at The Weather Channel in Atlanta while others will be allowed to remain in their respective markets as part of the initiative.
Christina Burkhart, a meteorologist who recently departed Flint, Michigan-based WJRT, described how the weather reports will be handled from afar.
“Weather forecasts will be sent from the weather channel in Atlanta,” Burkhart said in a Facebook post. “These will be pre-recorded by regional meteorologists recording hits for each Allen station. Live severe weather coverage will also come from them.”
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