Troubled Weather Anchor Returns Tonight, Becuase it's Sweeps
/Call us cynical, but this shit happens every sweeps period in TV news.
As FTVLive has pointed out countless times, when it's ratings times, stations will stoop as low as they need to in an effort to get viewers.
Most often the only time you will hear about an Anchor's cancer battle, alcoholism, drug addiction or battle with depression is during a sweeps month.
Because let's be honest, no job is more important than those that deliver the news, so when ratings hit, it should be all about them. Excuse me....I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
So for the latest, it's all about us, let's head out to KOLD in Tucson.
After being off the air for nearly four weeks, KOLD Channel 13 chief meteorologist Chuck George is returning to the air Friday, a day after disclosing publicly that he has been diagnosed with depression.
George last appeared on KOLD April 5. The station revealed in a brief post today that George would appear on a 4 p.m. broadcast today and to share why he had been on leave.
In a story the station posted online today, anchor Barbara Grijalva quotes George as saying he's been diagnosed with depression and that disclosing his struggle to the public is part of his healing process (oh... and of course it's also the May book).
"I want to share the story for two reasons," Grijalva's story quotes the popular meteorologist as saying. "One is because I really need to heal myself. It's kind of a final process in what I'm going through. And another is because I want people to know that they're not alone. I thought I was alone for a long time. And I know I'm not now."
George goes on to say that he hopes making his story public helps others and that depression, suicide and addiction.
"My family tree is full of suicide, of depression, of addiction. They're all interrelated and my family tree is just packed with it, and I never thought it would happen to me," he says in the KOLD story.
The latest leave was George's third since 2010. He also took unexplained leaves from Sept. 9, 2011 to Oct. 24 of that year, as well as a five-week break in March and April 2010.
Here's the station's story, that was only done to help Chuck heal and it had nothing to do with ratings.
