Speech-challenged speakers

I drove up to Winston-Salem last week to visit family. On the way home, I was listening to a local radio station in Greensboro, and there was a weatherman on the morning show. He gave the forecast, and it made me terribly uncomfortable.

Why? He had a rattle in his voice so pronounced that it sounded like maybe he was gargling and forgot to spit. His voice was annoying, and to make it worse, he repeated himself three times. You know how a comic singer does that underwater gargle while singing the lyrics? It was kind of like that, but it was only about once every three words.

I kept hoping he would at least clear his throat, even if he did it on air. That rattle was a real turn off.

We had a local weatherman (I guess we’re supposed to refer to them as meteorologists) who recently retired, and he also had an annoying voice. It was what I would call a gravel voice. Again, I was always wishing he would clear his throat. Apparently, he has a permanent raspy voice. Whew, it was a relief when he retired!

On a recent trip up through West Virginia, my wife and I listened to a local guy who did refer to himself as a meteorologist, except he couldn’t pronounce the word correctly. It came out as “meteorlologist,” or maybe it was “meteolrologist.” It was so funny that we laughed every time he said the word.

It occurs to me that we probably don’t even pay attention to the forecast when the person reading it has a speech impediment. The focus changes from the speech to the speaker when that is the case.

Is there some equal opportunity law that requires weather forecasters with less-than-perfect speech have to be given priority? There certainly seem to be a lot of them out there.

Come to think of it, has any weatherman ever been promoted to, or even substituted for one of the news anchors? I cannot recall a single instance when that has happened, but then, I can’t remember a sportscaster ever doing it either.

Maybe there is a difference in the type of person who does those broadcasting jobs, and they don’t want to fill the other guy’s (or gal’s) shoes. They are perfectly happy pointing at green walls or reading the sports scores. At least those speech-challenged weather and sports geeks don’t opine for us in addition to reading their scripts.

One other word—actually a letter—that seems to get mispronounced frequently is “W” in station call letters. The letter “w” sometimes gets a weird middle syllable, so that the letter comes out sounding like “doubwolyou.”

Do you notice these things too, or is it just me?