Today's forecast calls for a little light jazz, or perhaps some classic rock. It's all up to Steve Hurst, the Weather Channel's music man.
By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published August 25, 2003
[Times photos: Jeff Klinkenberg]
Steve Hurst, the music programmer for the Weather Channel, is surprised listeners take his choices so seriously. So far, he has resisted the temptation to play music from his favorite band, the Sex Pistols.
ATLANTA - Steve Hurst pops a compact disc into his computer, punches a button and listens through headphones. He doesn't sing aloud, dance on his tippy-toes or strum air guitar. He bobs his head. He is very good at head bobbing.
A man of eclectic tastes and exceedingly thick skin, Hurst is probably the most famous discjockey you have never heard of. As music programmer for cable television's the Weather Channel, he chooses the songs that accompany the forecasts that daily go into millions of homes.
Six times an hour, every hour of the day, two-minute offerings of edited music are played in the background during a segment called "Local Weather."
Some listeners automatically reach for the mute button as the first notes are tolled. "Elevator music," they complain. But others are obsessed by the music. They make lists of songs Hurst has played on the air, seek out the numbers at record stores and discuss their favorites with other fans on Internet sites. They wear out Hurst's e-mail address and his telephone ear.
"Sometimes I'm a little surprised by all the interest," says Hurst, who started choosing music for the Atlanta-based station in 2000. "It's background music, after all - it's not intended to compete with information about the weather. But it really matters to a lot of people."
Some want their music airy and New Age - a few squeaks from a whale would not be unwelcome. Some despise New-Age airy and want music with an edge. "What happened to the light jazz?" some listeners ask Hurst. "Too much light jazz," other callers declare. "How about rock 'n' roll?"
Some might bristle if the fusion band Weather Report shows up on Hurst's playlists more often than, say, Pat Metheny or Spyro Gyra. When Hurst throws his audience for a loop by selecting something unexpected - recently he played a segment of the rock-jam band Phish's The Squirming Coil - you would have thought the Martians had landed.
"I'm trying to replace some of the Muzak with music," says Hurst, 35. "Most people seem fine with it, some aren't. Sometimes listeners track me down at home."
Weather Channel groupies
The Weather Channel first went on the air in 1982. By the mid 1980s some listeners were paying as much attention to the music as the humidity.
Russ Korins, for example. A New Yorker, he wanted to be a meteorologist when he was kid. Friends who wondered whether the Yankee game on Saturday might be rained out automatically asked him. Later, at Yale, he started the college's first online weather service.
He didn't become a meteorologist. He became an attorney who specializes in corporate law. When he watches one of those Weather Channel meteorologists matching wits with a hurricane in the middle of August, he has regrets even now.
He is 31 and lives in Manhattan. He doesn't watch the Weather Channel as much as he once did, but he still watches. He still listens, too. He remembers the first time he heard the dreamy New-Age music from Windham Hill, on the Weather Channel, in the 1980s.
Soon he was compiling song lists and scouring record stores. He'd make tapes of "Weather Channel Music" and give them to friends who could be appreciative or puzzled about his gift.
"My interest in the music of the Weather Channel was seen as something entirely different, like an interest in mosquito farming."
He was relieved to learn he wasn't alone.
In Nebraska, a college student named Matt Marron started following Weather Channel music when he was in high school.
"They were playing a song - Fiesta Sol by Max Groove - that I thought was rather catchy," says the 23-year-old computer science major by e-mail. "For some reason, I couldn't get that song out of my head. About a year and several other catchy songs later, I become somewhat obsessed with The Weather Channel."
Six years ago he started an Internet Web site, Matt's Guide to the Weather Channel (www.mattsguide.com) From time to time he telephones Steve Hurst in Atlanta to share his thoughts about music.
"He is nice enough to answer a lot of questions," Marron says. "I sent him a list of requests a while back, hoping to mix up the playlist a bit. Unfortunately, he hasn't played any of them yet."
Not the Sex Pistols
Steve Hurst does not have purple hair or wear safety pins in his cheek. He is going bald and stands about 6 inches short of 6 feet.
His wife, Lara, is going to have their first child in two months. Hurst will have to resist the temptation to play his favorite music album of all time, Never Mind the Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols, until after the baby is asleep. The British punk band peaked in the late 1970s when its gravel-voiced singer, Johnny Rotten, warbled "God save the Queen. She ain't no human being." As much as he'd like to, Hurst has not played the Sex Pistols on the Weather Channel. After all, he doesn't want to give anyone a heart attack.
The Weather Channel is housed in an eight-story building on the outskirts of north Atlanta. A battalion of guards waits at the door. Even if you have an appointment, somebody acts as escort. To go from room to room, department to department, floor to floor, the escort needs to open doors with a security card.
Why the security? The Weather Channel attracts a lot of fans. Nuts, too. Some want to propose marriage to the perky blond prime-time weather forecaster or the macho get-in-the-path-of-the-worst-hurricane-in-a-century meteorologist. Some, of course, would love to meet Steve Hurst face to face.
He was was born in Smyrna, Ga., the year the Beatles released The White Album. His parents loved rock 'n' roll and blues. His mother, Martha, worshiped Elvis. Steve's dad, George, thought B.B. King was the coolest. When Steve was little, his dad let him stay up late to watch the TV program The Midnight Special on the night when King sang The Thrill Is Gone.
Music and TV were the boy's passions. He loved watching Bosom Buddies and even Moonlighting. In high school, he preferred the reruns of The Monkees to attending anatomy class. "My parents are still P.O.'ed at me for that," he says.
At the University of Georgia at Athens he majored in English and in fun. "Shakespeare was cool, and I kind of liked Chaucer, but I didn't read that much," he says.
In the 1980s, when Athens was probably the most exciting alternative-music city in the United States, Hurst saw Georgia-based R.E.M. numerous times; ditto for the B-52's. All the up-and-coming bands came through Athens. He saw Nirvana before Nirvana was famous.
After college he worked at a small television station in Athens. He ran out of money and was ashamed to be behind the wheel of the same 1978 Pontiac Firebird he'd driven in high school. He got a better job at the Weather Channel, answering telephones.
"Hey, was it raining in Philadelphia on Sept. 20 at 10 a.m. in 1991?" a caller might request.
He was happy to work his way up to producing. Several days a week he arrives early and helps the Weather Channel put together its morning news program.
In 2000, he took on the additional duty of music programming.
Several times a week, on the drive home, he stops at Borders and saunters over to the compact disc section and looks for music that may appeal to a wide audience without turning off sophisticated listeners. He usually goes home with a CD or two.
He's got a decent stereo in his Ford pickup. The floor often is littered with scraps of paper on which he has written the name of a band or a song that he might introduce to the Weather Channel audience. It might be Sly and the Family Stone or something by the easy-listening Rippingtons.
On weekends, at home, he puts his CDs through their paces on his computer, choosing and rejecting, stopwatch in hand. His weather music segments last only two minutes; songs have to be edited. Usually he chooses instrumental passages because vocals can distract from the weather information rolling across the screen. He makes exceptions. Not long ago he let bluesy Eric Clapton sing a snatch of Let It Rain when parts of the nation were enduring a wicked drought.
"I love to picture somebody watching the Weather Channel and hearing a piece of music and saying "Did I just hear what I thought I heard?' "
A break in the weather
Do you remember the scene in the movie Miracle on 34th Street when the postal carriers haul into the courtroom those huge sacks of mail for Kris Kringle?
Steve Hurst has a similar relationship with the post office. He receives more than 400 CDs in the mail from Weather Channel regulars every year. Some want to share their favorite albums with him. But others are hoping for a show business break.
One regular correspondent was Ralph Diekemper of Harrisburg, Pa. His day job was renting automobiles, but at night, he always enjoyed playing jazz on his keyboards and dreaming of the big time. He was watching the local forecast when his daughter, Danielle, piped up. "Daddy, that music they're playing sounds like the music you like to play."
It wasn't an insult. They had just heard a snatch of Miles Davis.
"I called Steve Hurst. He told me if I sent him a CD, he'd listen to it."
Diekemper, 47, made a jazzy CD in the basement and mailed it off.
"I never heard anything back. But one day I was watching the Weather Channel and suddenly they were playing Tortilla Flat. If I was in the physical shape to do cartwheels, I would have done cartwheels."
Three years later, he has his own band and several CDs on the market. His music gets regular play on the Weather Channel. He is proud to be on a list that includes the Yellowjackets and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Also on the list are Pink Floyd (Shine On You Crazy Diamond) and the Rolling Stones (Can't You Hear Me Knocking?).
Last year Hurst played a section of a tune called Guyute by the band Phish. If you are in college, or have gone to college in the last several decades, if you like improvisational music played loud, if you liked the Grateful Dead, you probably have listened to Phish. Phish fans - they are legion - are known for their dedication.
In Internet chat rooms, Phish fans began debating the significance of their two minutes on the Weather Channel. Was being played on an unhip channel a bad thing or did it mean the Weather Channel is actually cool? And what did it ultimately mean? Was Phish, through the Weather Channel, communicating by secret code with faithful fans about a future tour?
"Phish will return with a huge festival during a hurricane in southern Florida," was the conclusion drawn by Andrew Kulich of East Lansing, Mich.
Truth is, Steve Hurst simply is a Phish fan.
Lately, fans of the speed-metal band Pantera have been running a full-court press on the Weather Channel gatekeeper of music. Hurst opens his e-mail and discovers a missive from a Pantera fan. Phone rings. Should he answer? It might be another loyal Pantera fan.
Pantera's music might be characterized as in-your-face rock 'n' roll - multiplied by five. Its repertoire includes Cemetery Gates, Mouth For War, Hellbound and, of course, Death Rattle.
"Dude," Hurst hears himself telling Pantera fans, "it's not going to happen."
