What happened to a Sports Anchor in Waterloo before the Great Outbursts of October 17th, 1939, 1954?
The massive storm system pushed Mr. Woodley, a sports anchor and reporter for KWWL, into service as it moved across the plains. The temperature plunged to 12 degrees in the morning, and it was snowing a lot as Mr. Woodley broadcast live from the streets of Waterloo for more than three hours.
“What better time to ask the sports guy to come in about five hours earlier than he would normally wake up, go stand out in the wind and the snow and the cold and tell other people not to do the same?” Mr. Woodley was in the studio with Ryan Witry. “I didn’t realize that there was a 3:30 also in the morning until today.”
He said that the show was a long one. “Watch me get crankier and crankier over the next couple hours.”
Can I go back to my regular job? He was grasping at something at a certain point. “I’m pretty sure you guys added an extra hour to this hour just because somebody likes torturing me.”
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Woodley said that he “didn’t even realize” the channel had a 3:30 a.m. slot – and he didn’t find out he’d be covering that slot until the night before.
He said that sometimes viewers do not pay attention to the things he covers, but if he brings a little attitude to it, viewers would pay attention. “It’s a very serious storm,” he said, and emphasized the importance of “making sure people know what they need to do to be safe.”
“It was my sister-in-law who said ‘you gotta tweet this,’” he said. “I put it on twitter, thinking 20-30 people are gonna see this, my managers aren’t gonna care, it’s not gonna go anywhere. Within hours I’m getting these text messages that say ” you’re going viral”, Judd aApatow retweeted you.
Fans want him to pivot from sports to weather. “That is my absolute nightmare,” he said. We are a bit shorthanded, like every newsroom is, that is why I was in this situation.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/weather/iowa-sports-reporter-weather-trnd/index.html
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“I’m a team player,” he went on. “If asked, sure, I’ll do it, but that would be my absolute nightmare. I hope they do not ask me to do that again.
“Can I go back to my regular job? I’m pretty sure, Ryan, you guys added an extra hour to the show just because somebody likes torturing me,” he said. “Compared to two and a half hours ago it is just getting colder and colder.”
Mr. Woodley said the previous 24 hours had been insanity and that the response from his employer had been overwhelmingly positive.
He said the whole thing was incredible and he doesn’t understand how celebrities do anything. It is exhausting. I am new to this and I didn’t know anything like this was coming.
Woodley filmed most of his live shots before the manager got in to work. He was on the street and only had the camera in his hand.
Huff explained that he and the station’s news director, Andrew Altenbern, considered asking Woodley to report more conventionally, but decided that the humor gave the coverage a unique element.
Mr. Woodley was going to do a second round of coverage on Friday, but decided to head back to his normal time slot to preview the MusicCity Bowl between the University of Iowa and the University of Kentucky.
“I was excited to not be that guy again, and if the good Lord is willing I will never do it again,” he said. He would step in, even though his team was short-handed this week.
Mark Woodley woke to 2:30 am in the morning to report for his first hit air show on the radio, covering Iowa’s winter storm
“I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news,” television sports anchor Mark Woodley said while reporting on eastern Iowa’s winter storm on Thursday. He said the good news was that he could still feel his face. “The bad news is I kind of wish I couldn’t.”
A recent video of Woodley cracking jokes while reporting on the weather from outside theKWWL building is part of a collection of satire posted by him. It has been seen 25 million times since it was posted.
He brought the humor that he usually uses in his show to cover the storm, like when he joked, “Can I go back to my regular job?”
He said he woke at 2:30 am to report for his first hit on air. He said in a discussion with Ryan that he did not know how you guys get up at this time of day. I hadn’t even realized that there was a 3:30 also in the morning.
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“I know there are people out there working hard. Making sure people can get to work. I know that this is a serious storm. “The rest of these reports, you know, reflected these things. Is that true? I want people to know that I did not believe it to be a real joke.
He said that many industries across the country have had trouble getting people back to work. “So people are pitching in in areas where they wouldn’t normally.”
Huff told NPR that he first focused on getting Mark inside the building after his reports. He wasn’t outside for 3 and a half hours, contrary to what people thought.
Despite Woodley’s viral success, KWWL hasn’t asked him to cover the weather again — which, because of the shift’s early call time, Woodley said is a relief.