The only truly local weatherman in the Salt Lake market is KTVX, Channel 4's Dan Pope, a youthful and enthusiastic protege of Mark Eubank.
Pope, who grew up in Davis County, wanted to be a weather guy from the time he was in the first grade. He even remembers taking a weather map for show-and- tell to class at Adalaide Elementary School."The map showed Fairbanks, Alaska, at 60 below zero. I understood how cold that was, and I wanted to tell all my friends. I was not only interested in the weather but in telling about it."
Pope's friends thought him a bit odd because he constantly looked out the window, but they kept encouraging him by asking for a forecast. He kept a telephone number handy for current forecasts, and he usually stayed up late enough to get the latest weather on TV.
By the time he was in the sixth grade, he knew he wanted to do the weather on television. In the seventh grade his science teacher at South Davis Junior High encouraged him and steered him toward math and science classes.
By the eighth grade, Pope discovered that Brigham Young University had a good television department while the University of Utah had a good meteorology program. "The problem was how do you do them both? You either go into TV and then somehow get the science background, or you get the science background and try to get into TV."
When Pope reached his senior year in high school, he toured the U.'s meteorology department and liked it, so he decided to go for that degree and worry about how to break into TV later.
A very determined young man, Pope began knocking on television station doors during his sophomore year at the U. "Channel 2 hired me to sweep the floors," he recalls. Once in the door, he did radio on weekends and worked as a producer for Mark Eubank from 1981-85.
Behind the scenes, he fooled around with the chromo-key after the Noon News, learning how to do the weather and how to read TV graphics. He was unsuccessful in persuading the news director to put him on TV.
Finally, he got a chance to fill in during the morning newscast when forecaster Barry Nielson was on vacation. Later, he unsuccessfully applied for a weekend opening. While executives thought he was too young, Pope refused to give up.
He thought Channel 4 was his best bet, because he believed its news ratings would rise if it hired a meteorologist instead of a weather guy to give Mark Eubank some competition.
After he earned his degree in meteorology, he accepted a job in Medford, Ore., doing evening weathercasts for a small channel. From there he went to the Weather Channel in Atlanta. There he refined his approach and got a great deal of on-air experience.
Frequently, Pope stopped in at Channel 4 and bugged the news director about his desire to work there. He told them they needed someone local. "I have a lot of relatives. Hire me and they'll watch!"
While he was at the Weather Channel, Channel 4 had an opening but hired someone else. So Pope took a job in a bigger market in Milwaukee doing weekends to get more experience, and three years later, in 1992, Channel 4 was looking again. "This time they hired me, but it took seven years," Pope says.
Pope, at 33, began a highly successful stint as the host of Channel 4's new "Weather Porch," a concept requiring that he broadcast the weather outside every day.
"I came into it with all the energy and excitement in the world," says Pope, and he is looking at 20 more years at Channel 4. Now a seven-year veteran, Pope is the longest-running weather man in KTVX history.
The Weather Porch was the brainchild of Pope and the general manager at the time, Peter Mathis. Pope had been doing a lot of weather broadcasting outside in Milwaukee, and those tapes intrigued the Channel 4 management.
He dresses appropriately for the weather and doesn't mind the cold "unless the wind blows and it rains horizontally." He recalls one windy day when his umbrella "exploded right out of my hand just as I came on."
Pope says Channel 4 considers the Weather Porch "the defining news change of the '90s" and has included one on the roof of the station's new building being constructed.
"What's the difference in me being out there and construction workers all day long? Besides, I'm never going to get the weather wrong RIGHT NOW. If it's raining, it's raining!"
Pope puts about four times as much information into his head as he needs, organizes his graphics, heads to the porch and ad libs for 3 1/2 minutes.
He is often expected to know a lot about things other than weather, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and avalanches. He's glad that he is naturally interested in astronomy and geography. He reads many journals and newspapers, but not books.
He gets up at 6:30 each morning to do four live radio feeds from his house in Bountiful. He prepares the first forecast for the day at that time. A family man, Pope spends time with his kids -- ages 6, 12, and 13 -- and helps them get off to school, then runs errands with his wife or works in the yard.
Sometimes he exercises or plays basketball before rolling into the TV station for the afternoon forecast at 3. He always runs home to have dinner with his family.
His wife, Diane Hermansen, whom he met at the U., is a very big support, but sometimes gets frustrated at running the "family bus" alone in the evenings.
Pope devotes his weekends to his family, fishing, hiking or camping in the high Uintas or working on computers. He is an Eagle Scout and his wife is the local Cubmaster.
At 40, Pope is clearly on a fast track. Slim, eloquent and endowed with infectious energy, he reminds some people of Eubank, which delights him.
"Maybe it's because we both like what we do. Mark has established the standard of credibility here. I have a lot of respect for him. To be talked about on the same plane as Mark is a compliment. Some day he'll retire, and maybe after that I'll have my time. In the meantime, I give everybody a choice."