He Thought Plug Was Pulled on Career

Met with Bill Weir, Channel 7’s new sportscaster, the other day to learn a little more about him, and a routine question about an internship he did at Channel 4 while he was attending Pepperdine got anything but a routine response.

Weir, 30, explained he had transferred from Oklahoma to Pepperdine after his freshman year in 1987, planning to become a sportswriter. He wrote for the Graphic, Pepperdine’s school paper, making then-basketball coach Jim Harrick one of his favorite targets. He also covered high school sports while working as a copy clerk for the old Herald Examiner in 1988.

“I’d put what I thought was a clever lead on a story, I’d sweat blood as if I were the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, but what would come out in the paper the next day would be entirely different,” he said. “I decided television might be more for me because it would allow me to be more creative--there’s no editor between you and the viewer.”

His critics might say he could still use an editor.

Anyway, after Weir changed his focus to broadcasting, he called Keith Olbermann, who was then at Channel 5, to ask if he could come down to watch him do the news one night. Olbermann said that would be OK, and they set a date and time.

But Weir said when he went to the station he sat in the lobby for an hour and a half and Olbermann never showed. So he left.

Not long afterward, Weir ended up sitting next to Channel 4’s Fred Roggin at a function in Long Beach. He told Roggin his Olbermann story and asked about visiting his station. Roggin suggested he interview for a college internship.

“When I went in for the interview, Fred was totally different than he had been before,” Weir said. “He had seemed unfazed by the Olbermann story, but now he was a lot looser, kidding around and stuff, and he was telling the story to everyone in his office.

“After he interviewed me, he told me to call Olbermann’s office, identify myself and leave a [nasty] message. If I did, the job was mine.

“Me being young and naive and not knowing any better, I did it.

“A few minutes later I get a call at Channel 4. No one knows I’m there, so I can’t imagine who it is. Well, it’s the head of the communications department at Pepperdine. Olbermann had called him and told him what I’d done.

“I wasn’t even supposed to be interviewing for an internship in the first place. You do an internship when you’re a senior, and I was a junior. I had forged my advisor’s name on my application.

“So you can imagine what is going on in my head. I’m thinking my broadcasting career is over before it has started.

“Well, Fred got on the phone, explained everything, said it was just a joke and apologized. I got the internship and everything worked out.”

Not exactly the way they teach you to do it in Broadcasting 101.

MORE WEIR(D) STORIES

We’d like to report that Weir’s internship at Channel 4 served as a springboard to landing a job as an L.A. sports anchor at a network station. But that isn’t exactly the way it happened.

“My father lives in Colorado, so I went there after I graduated from Pepperdine and began sending audition tapes to TV stations around the country,” Weir said. “In the meantime, one part-time job I got was as a driver for the prince of Saudi Arabia. I’d drive his friends around the Aspen area.

“After nine months, I got my first job offer. It came from Austin. When I first got the call, I thought, ‘Wow, Austin, a good place to start.’ But I soon learned it wasn’t Austin, Texas. It was Austin, Minn. The job paid $13,500.”

Still, it was a start. So he took it.

That job led to one in Green Bay, where he met his wife, a prosecuting attorney, and from there it was on to the big time at WGN in Chicago, where he did sports and later became an anchor on the morning news show.

His agent, Henry Reisch, knew Arnold Kleiner, the general manager of Channel 7, and knew he was thinking of making a change. He sent Kleiner an audition tape.

“We liked his creativeness,” Kleiner said. “We still do. We’re very glad we hired him.”

SHORT WAVES

Big day in college football Saturday, highlighted by ESPN’s coverage of the UCLA-Miami game at 11 a.m., with Ron Franklin and Mike Gottfried. Originally, this game was to be televised on CBS, with Terry Donahue doing the commentary. Donahue and partner Sean McDonough are doing Saturday’s Army-Navy game. . . . It’s a big weekend for college basketball too, highlighted by the John Wooden Classic from the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim on Channel 9. It’s a local production that is being syndicated to a dozen or so other markets. The announcers will be Bob Neal of TNT and Bill Walton.

The hottest topic in the NFL is the officiating, and CBS, Fox and ESPN will all address the issue on their pregame shows on Sunday. Fox is also doing a feature on the 1972 Miami Dolphins. . . . Chris Myers’ first day on Fox Sports News will be Wednesday.

Radio notes: XTRA (690) is farming out Saturday’s USC-UC Santa Barbara basketball game to KCTD (1540)--it’s one of seven Trojan games on KCTD this season--and the station is farming out Sunday’s Mighty Duck-San Jose game to KOGO (600). XTRA has to carry Spanish-language programming on Sunday nights because its transmitter is located in Tijuana. . . . John Ireland will fill in for Chris Roberts on Saturday’s UCLA-Oklahoma State broadcast on KXTA (1150).

IN CLOSING

Heard one of the funniest bits ever on talk radio the other day. KXTA (1150) will broadcast from Lenny Dykstra’s new car wash in Simi Valley on Saturday, so the station’s morning show replayed what it did from Dykstra’s car wash in Corona three years ago. Producer David “What’s His Name” Singer, prodded by host Steve Mason, went through the car wash with his car. Only Singer wasn’t in the car, he was on the hood. And he took a cordless phone with him, giving play-by-play along the way. A dumb thing, but also very funny. “My biggest worry was that they would forget to turn off the hot wax,” Singer said.

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What Los Angeles Is Watching

A sampling of L.A. Nielsen ratings for Nov. 28-29, including sports on cable networks:

SATURDAY

*--*

Over-the-air Channel Rating Share College football: Notre Dame at USC 7 14.7 25 Golf: Skins Game 7 4.3 10 College football: Miami at Syracuse 2 4.1 9 College football: Michigan State at Penn State 7 2.9 7 College football: Grambling State vs. Southern 4 2.5 6

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Cable Network Rating Share Boxing: Diobelys Hurtado vs. Kostya Tszyu HBO 1.9 4 College football: Virginia at Virginia Tech ESPN 1.5 4 Hockey: Phoenix at Kings FSW 1.0 2 Tennis: ATP Tour World Championship ESPN 0.7 2 College basketball: Cincinnati-Duke ESPN 0.6 1 College football: Tennessee at Vanderbilt ESPN2 0.6 1 College basketball: Maryland-Pittsburgh ESPN 0.3 1 College football: Michigan at Hawaii ESPN2 0.3 1

*--*

SUNDAY

*--*

Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Pro football: Atlanta at St. Louis 11 12.1 28 Pro football: Washington at Oakland 11 9.6 20 Pro football: Buffalo at New England 2 8.1 17 Golf: Skins Game 7 3.4 7 Golf: Gillette Tour Challenge 7 1.6 4

*--*

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Cable Network Rating Share Pro football: Denver at San Diego ESPN 10.6 17 Tennis: ATP Tour World Championship ESPN 0.1 0

*--*

WEEKDAY RATINGS: Thursday, Nov. 26--Pro football, Minnesota at Dallas, Ch. 11, 15.3, 39; Pittsburgh at Detroit, Ch. 2, 12.6, 28. College football, Mississippi State at Mississippi, ESPN, 1.0, 3. Golf, Sun Microsystems Par 3 Challenge, Ch. 11, 1.5, 3. Friday, Nov. 27--College football, Colorado at Nebraska, Ch. 7, 5.6, 15; Texas A&M; at Texas, Ch. 7, 4.7, 12; Louisiana State at Arkansas, Ch. 2, 1.6, 4. College basketball, Stanford-North Carolina, ESPN, 1.1, 2; UCLA-Maryland, ESPN2, 0.9, 2. Monday--Pro football, New York Giants at San Francisco, Ch. 7, 15.3, 24.

Note: Each rating point represents 50,092 L.A. households. Cable ratings reflect the entire market, even though cable is in only 63% of L.A. households.