Weatherman Vows to ‘Humiliate’ Himself to Get Emmy Job Done

Mark Thompson, the weatherman on KTTV Channel 11’s 10 p.m. newscast, assumes one of the more thankless tasks in television Sunday, co-hosting an entertainment awards preview show, in this case the station’s “Emmy Awards Preview.”

“I’ll be humiliating myself to get celebrities to talk to me,” Thompson says. “It’s going to be embarrassing. Probably 60 minutes of me sucking up to celebrities. I’ll be kissing up to these people more than a maitre d’ in Beverly Hills.”

KABC Channel 7’s Steve Edwards and Tawny Little have long filled this role on Oscar preview telecasts, and their fawning over stars regularly gives critics easy targets. Thompson will be pared with Robin Young, billing themselves as a “Poor man’s Steve and Tawny.”

“Robin is an experienced entertainment personage to the extent that she’s had some dealings with these people,” Thompson says of Young, a reporter and producer for Fox Entertainment News. “Essentially, she’ll be carrying the show.”

Although Thompson admits the format for such shows cannot be varied much, there will be some differences. Thompson and Young will be at different places rather than together, and Thompson plans on trying to identify the person accompanying the actor interviewed.

Thompson joined KTTV last August, after spending eight years at KRON-TV, the NBC affiliate in San Francisco. He was an integral part of a news team which was last in the ratings upon his arrival, but first when he departed.

Thompson’s weather segments have included broadcasts from bedrooms and back yards throughout the Southland and climate reports from volunteer observers. He hopes to report from more community events in the coming year.

“There are pockets of our communities that I suspect are unexplored,” says Thompson, who also worked at the stations in Buffalo and Denver. “I’m not trying to get heavy, but want to do that in a very light way.”