Alan Pergament: Hot takes on a weather gimmick, motherhood and an annoying ad (2024)

This is what I’m thinking about some hot TV topics:

One of the reasons for WGRZ-TV’s (Channel 2) success in local news over the years has been the exceptional promos created by the team led by Dan Meyers.

He has done a terrific job lately in promos emphasizing all the talent left in the news department after the high-profile departures of Kate Welshofer, Maria Genero, Michael Wooten and Heather Ly.

But the latest Channel 2 promo almost seems worthy of a “Saturday Night Live” parody about the extremes that stations go to emphasize their weather coverage.

In the promo for the latest gimmick, meteorologists Patrick Hammer, Kevin O’Neill, Jennifer Stanonis and their new teammate, Dan Russell (formerly of Spectrum News), are promoting “Weather Impact Alert" days.

Hammer starts the promo by telling viewers they’ve been told “the most important thing we can do for you” is advice about the severe emergency weather events coming.

“We hear you loud and clear,” says O’Neill, loud and clear.

After Stanonis announced the start of "Weather Alert Days,” Hammer adds: “We will alert you when severe weather is at its worst.”

“We’ll explain the storm’s impact,” says O’Neill.

“We’ll let you know what you need to do to be safe,” adds Stanonis.

Now I might see the need for alerts during Buffalo winters when covering weather is more important. But I think Western New Yorkers are pretty lucky in the summer not to endure extreme weather events such as tornadoes and hurricanes like much of the country. You could even say extremely lucky.

You’d have to live in a cave not to realize it is going to be very hot this week and may smash some temperature records, even without relying on “Weather Impact Alert Days.”

If Western New York gets a few unusual days in mid-June in the low- to high-90s this week, I think we will survive.

The “most important thing” meteorologists can do for Western New Yorkers is to avoid severely scaring viewers.

This next hot topic is personal to me.

During Hunter Biden’s recent trial, some TV reporters and anchors said first lady Jill Biden is his stepmother as she attended the court sessions that ended with the younger Biden being found guilty of lying on paperwork for purchasing a gun and unlawfully possessing the firearm.

The identification of Jill Biden was technically correct, but it still bothered me. It felt unnecessary and misleading.

President Biden married Jill Biden about five years after the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Hunter was 2 years old when his biological mother and his 1-year-old sister Naomi died in a car crash. He was 7 when his father married Jill.

Jill Biden didn’t give birth to Hunter, but she raised him. She is his mother.

There are some similarities with how I was raised.

My mother died when I was 2. My dad Joe remarried when I was about 7 to a wonderful woman, Val, who raised me.

Since I was 2 when my biological mother died, I don’t really remember much, if anything, about her. Val gave me a picture of my biological mother, who was called Sue and Sadie, to remember her by. It hangs up on a wall in my home.

Val, who is deceased, always had me call her by her first name rather than mom or mother. But I always refer to her as my mother because she was my mother in every way but birth.

When I was very ill as a child, she took care of me. She previously lived in the Syracuse area and was largely the reason I chose to attend Syracuse University. That, of course, led to my career in journalism.

Stepmother just didn’t do Val justice. Nor does it do Jill Biden justice.

My daughter and one of my granddaughters have Val as their middle names.

That does my mother justice.

On a lighter note, a few days ago on X, formerly known as Twitter, I asked: “Am I the only one tired of the Jennifer Coolidge commercials?”

The answer was loud and clear: I am not the only one.

Coolidge, a character actress who appeared in the “American Pie” movie franchise and saw her popularity explode after winning two Emmys playing the rich, clueless Tanya in the HBO limited series “The White Lotus,” is seen and heard continuously in an advertisem*nt for a credit card company.

Her voice, which made Tanya and almost all the characters she plays memorable, is even more annoying in 30-second ads that are carried around the clock on TV and on radio.

It doesn’t help that the script about earning double points by using the credit card is doubly annoying when Coolidge remarks that she is doubling down on everything else in her life.

Puh-lease make it stop.

The only thing worse than the ad might be if Coolidge became a meteorologist who specialized in giving us severe weather alerts.