Weatherman Rejects Nexstar's Lowball Offer
Back in June, FTVLive told you that WTNH had rehired popular Weather Anchor Geoff Fox at the station.
The twist was Fox would no longer report to work at the New Haven station. Fox does his weather reports remotely from his garage in California.
He does work for other stations, but going back to WTNH was something that he really looked forward to.
The deal with his old station was just for a couple of months, but he was hoping it would become a full-time gig.
The Nexstar station did make him an offer, but Fox turned it down.
He wrote on his Facebook, “Though our agreement was just for the summer,” Fox wrote, “early on I made it clear to Channel 8 I was interested in a full-time position. On Friday (Sept. 8) they made an offer for a part-time job. It was for less than I made when I first arrived in 1984. I had no choice but to reject that offer.” But he added, “It was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made.”
When asked for comment by the New Haven Register, WTNH News Director Keith Connors said in an email that the station is “building the best weather team in Connecticut” and has hired Joe Furey to be a part of that. “We hoped Geoff would be a part of our team,” Connors said. “But as he said on Facebook, we offered him an opportunity to stay with Channel 8 and he declined.”
Connors concluded: “We are grateful for all Geoff did for WTNH this summer and we wish him nothing but the best in the future.”
Fox spent 27 years with WTNH while living in the New Haven area. He was shocked in 2011 when his contract was not renewed. He then worked for WTIC (FOX CT, Channel 61) for 19 months but lost that job because of inappropriate use of social media, which then became public.
Fox became a sympathetic figure last year when he revealed on his blog (www.geofffox.com) he was combatting pancreatic cancer. When asked during a phone interview Tuesday how he is doing on that front, he said, “All my treatment is over. The chemotherapy left me extremely weak. It turned out I had an iron deficiency, so I got an iron infusion. And now I seem to be great.”