Wacky S.D. Weatherman Shines on Channel 8 News

New KFMB-TV (Channel 8) weatherman Larry Mendte is clearly a demented egotist, a bizarre and crazed individual, a television lifer with no knowledge of meteorology.

And it is sure good to have him in town.

It’s sort of like a beer truck pulling up to a thirsty bum stranded in the middle of the desert. The arrival of anyone with the remotest sign of personality is worth a fireworks display.

Mendte reeks of personality. He’s honest and articulate, and definitely a little warped. He has no experience in weather reporting and gives the impression he could care less. He usually finds a “man on the street” to read the weather report, and spends the rest of his time ranting about whatever comes to mind.

Last week, he got his first nasty letter, from a guy named Larry Mahr. Mendte challenged Mahr to do better and actually put the critic on the air. Channel 8 staffers showed up wearing “I Hate Larry Mahr” T-shirts that Mendte had given them. Mahr read the weather report as well as many on-air professionals do, which is to say he was boring.

Mendte does a lot of things that aren’t funny--he occasionally does his reports from viewers’ back yards--but he is definitely different. The weather gig on local TV is a good showcase for off-beat personalities with bigger ambitions. Remember, David Letterman got his first break the same way.

Mendte is another discovery of Channel 8 news director Jim Holtzman, who is developing a reputation for bringing excellent on-air talent to the station and giving them freedom to run wild. He gets credit for bringing Ted Leitner, Michael Tuck and Larry Himmel to San Diego television, among others.

Holtzman wanted to hire Mendte four years ago to appear on the ill-fated 11 p.m. news show “This Day.” Holtzman spotted Mendte in Columbus, Ohio, where he was hosting a successful live half-hour program. But Mendte instead accepted an offer to anchor the weekend news for WABC-TV in New York.

But on his way to becoming the next Peter Jennings, Mendte was demoted to reporter and sent to cover New Jersey. “It was like being sent to Siberia,” Mendte says. So, he sent a new tape to Holtzman, whose tastes in weather casters doesn’t exactly lean toward trained meteorologists.

“I wanted someone who could have fun with it,” Holtzman said.

Enter Mendte.

Now the real fun is watching Leitner and Mendte battle for on-air time. Holtzman wants the weather segments to be about four minutes long, but Mendte has been rambling along at closer to eight minutes a shot. Tack on Leitner’s free-form segments, and the Channel 8 newscasts are becoming more entertaining than the “Donny and Marie Show.”

Life in the blender continues for KCST-TV (Channel 39) newsroom employees. While construction begins on a new newsroom set, station management has announced a new flurry of staff changes.

Former newspaper business writer Bill Ritter will head a new investigative “team” the station is forming, which will consist of Ritter and a producer to be named later. Although he was hired 17 months ago to do business segments, Ritter has become the station’s top news reporter, usually assigned to the most complex news stories each day. Ritter said he was seriously considering leaving television to return to newspapers when the “dream job” was offered to him.

Anchor Marty Levin will host a new monthly documentary, tentatively titled “Third Thursday,” with Steve Corman rejoining the station to serve as executive producer. Kurt Snider, winner of seven Emmy awards during his stint with KFMB-TV’s (Channel 8) “PM Magazine,” will move over to 39 to work as a producer and photographer with the documentary unit.

The station also has purchased a state-of-the-art toy, a mobile satellite van, which will allow them to do live reports from anywhere. Channel 39 is expected to premier its new name, new set, new music and the rest of its changes Sept. 16.

And just to accent the feeling of unsettlement, there was a rumor--unsubstantiated--floating through the Channel 39 newsroom on Friday that the station had been sold to Westinghouse. Never a dull moment these days at 39.

Notes and quotes: Officials at KGB-FM (101.5) couldn’t let Laura Nortman slaughter those pigs, Berger and Prescott. But they were Nortman’s pigs, even if she did name them after the KGB morning team. So when the two sows went up for auction at the Del Mar Fair, their namesakes, Berger and Prescott, were on hand. The station paid $1,015 (the station’s frequency, coincidentally) for Prescott. Berger was too fat a pig to even bid on, but Nortman threw him in for free. The pigs are now wallowing on a ranch owned by KGB’s parent company, Brown Broadcasting, and will probably be used in future KGB promotions. . . A collection of the best shorts from the past few years of the annual Festival of Animation will begin a four-weekend run on Friday at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. Among the offerings will be “Vincent,” an old short by Tim Burton, director of “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” and “Beetlejuice,” and Danny Antonucci’s “Lupo the Butcher.” There will also be some screenings not listed on the program, including films entitled “The Thing What Lurked in the Tub” and “Lee’s Press-On Limbs.” A rare short narrated by the late Lenny Bruce, “Thank You Masked Man,” will also be screened. . . KGTV-TV (Channel 10) weatherman Mike Ambrose, a.k.a. “Captain Mike,” will add his cheery demeanor to KSDO-AM (1130). He replaces Sean Boyd, who has been filing reports for KSDO for the past 10 years from Bakersfield.