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It's going to be a hot one

By Terry Connelly

From “Open Forum: Women’s Clothing,” a presentation given by Terry Connelly, senior vice president of Programming and Productivity, to female on-camera meteorologists (OCMs) at The Weather Channel in August 2003. The presentation was cited as evidence in an age-discrimination complaint filed last December.

We have—really and truly, and I think you can be objective even though you are bound to be subjective—we have the best-looking female weather talent in the country. When you compare The Weather Channel women on camera to the weather women on camera around the country, we got the best. I mean, that’s what we set out to do. And damn it, we’ve done a good job.

So, okay, what have we done wrong? We dressed you wrong probably, or we dressed you appropriately. We said: We don’t want to be faddish, we want the Brooks Brothers look, very buttoned-down and classic.

Well, we think now we’ve got to change. In a couple of research projects, we had people draw The Weather Channel men and women. At the end we made these groups of twelve people agree on a picture that represents the female OCM or the male OCM, and the picture for both was almost the same. I mean, it was genderless. They had you all wearing glasses. Nobody wears glasses, I don’t think. They had you all buttoned up to here.

And that’s why we’ve stressed to you, you need to smile. Because unlike a news network—a news network is gloom, it has to be, too often, gloom and doom—The Weather Channel is kind of a safe haven for viewers. They can come here and just take a deep breath and watch the weather and get a nice, pleasant personality and a pleasant presentation from a pleasant personality, and they want you to smile.

The other piece of it is what looks good on camera. The shiny, the different types of stripes. For example, you are standing in front of a map with a bunch of lines and a bunch of fronts and a bunch of temperatures and numbers. If you’re standing in front of that map with stripes, I mean, it’s like, holy cow, what do I pay attention to?

So, for example, CNN’s Daryn Kagan, this morning with Bill Hemmer—there’s a section here where she’s sitting on the couch that I really want you to see. She is wearing a short black skirt with a slit up the side, gang. Okay? They ain’t bland, they ain’t dowdy, they ain’t matronly. The boundaries that we’ve set for ourselves shouldn’t be there.

Heidi Collins, CNN. Now, Heidi Collins has a kind of jacket, but it’s more contemporary and it’s not really a jacket. I don’t know what you call that. I guess it’s a jacket. But you get the picture? It’s got lines to it. It’s contemporary, but it’s professional. We want to be professional, smart, but have a flair. We don’t want the banker look anymore.

Now, here is what’s her name. This is a woman on Fox News Channel. And Fox News actually does a lot with their women just for sheer titillation. And yet she’s wearing a jacket, and it’s a scoop neck. Whoever this woman is, it’s more like what The Weather Channel women typically dress in. See, I mean, it’s a very nice outfit, but it’s pretty bland. You see this difference? Look, and she’s a young woman. I would bet she’s early thirties and she looks late forties. Do you want to look old? That’s what happens when you don’t smile. And have a big nose.

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SEE ALSO: Atlanta; Dress codes; Television weathercasters

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