This week has been a crazy, exciting week, full of
changes. One of the most exciting, and
notable accomplishments of the week was my husband, JC, being named the “Best
Weathercaster” in Illinois for 2012 by the Illinois Broadcaster Association. This is an outstanding award for him to
get. It took hard work and a lot of
effort to bring home this title.
Around the first of the year he submitted a tape to the
Illinois Broadcaster Association filled with his live weather reports. Once IBA gets the entries, the organizations
sends the tapes to a selected market to judge the entries. This year the entries were judged by
television station representatives in Kansas City. These representatives choose who they believe
is the best entry from each category and that entry is given the top award.
We found out this spring that JC was a finalist for the
award. He was competing against a
weather person at WSIL in Southern Illinois and another weather person in
Peoria. He had scoped out the competition
and was a little nervous about who would take home the award. Last night, retelling the moments before
receiving the title, he said he was full of nerves as the names were announced
for the finalists. He then saw and heard
himself on the screen, indicating he had won!
Of course, he was ecstatic. JC
and Tom Skilling, the weather legend in Chicago, were given the awards last
night for “Best Weathercasters” in Illinois.
Tom Skilling won for the Chicago-land area. He is JC’s idol, so this just made the award
that much better.
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| JC's IBA Award |
I do have to give myself some credit for the award. I won an IBA-University award when I was in
school for Reporting and have encouraged JC every year since then to
apply. He is so talented and I knew that
he would have a great chance of winning, but he kept ignoring my prompts,
saying an award wasn’t that big of a deal.
Finally this year, after nearly 5 years of nagged him, he finally
decided to apply. After telling me he had
won last night he thanked me for finally making him enter into the
contest.
Working in television is an extremely stressful – and many
times thankless job (especially for the people behind the scenes, the heart of
the news). Everything the on-air talent
does is up for scrutiny. In no other job
are flaws the main thing that are pointed out.
JC sacrifices missing out on family holidays and events and having a “normal”
schedule and life. It is something we
both have had to learn to adjust to once I got out of television news and now
have a “normal”schedule – and still have a hard time dealing with at times after
two years. I believe this award helped
reassure JC that all of those 48 hour work days during severe weather, holidays
missed, weeks working six days straight, criticisms from viewers about your
hair or how you said a word, and not having a “normal” schedule was worth the
sacrifice for himself and our family.
Congrats James, you’ve always been “Best Weathercaster” in
my book! Continue to follow your life
passion and dreams – this is just the beginning!
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