Last week, Mike McGuff informed that former KTRK-13 meteorologist Gene Norman appeared to be headed back to Houston for a top job.
Today, the Chronicle‘s David Barron confirms that Norman has been tapped as the replacement for none other than a retiring Neil Frank on KHOU-11:
Neil Frank, KHOU’s (Channel 11) chief meteorologist since 1987 and the former director of the National Hurricane Center, will retire from the station in 2008 and will be succeeded by former KTRK (Channel 13) meteorologist Gene Norman, Channel 11 officials said this afternoon.
Norman, who recently resigned as chief meteorologist at WGCL in Atlanta, that city’s CBS affiliate, will join Channel 11 on Jan. 28, president and general manager Susan McEldoon said.
“Gene is being hired to eventually replace Doc (Frank), who will be retiring later in 2008,” McEldoon said. “We don’t have a specific date yet, but we want this overlapping time so there can be a smooth transition.”
Norman, a former NASA scientist who worked at Channel 13 in the middle to late 1990s before going to Atlanta in 2000, has won four local Emmys and three awards from the Associated Press broadcasters for his weather coverage in Georgia.
Frank, who came to Channel 11 in 1987 from the hurricane center in Miami, will be remembered for ushering in a new era for Houston TV forecasters, said Ann Hodges, the retired longtime television critic for the Chronicle.
“He had such a high profile from his job in Florida, and he was the authority on hurricanes, so goodness knows there was no better place for him to be,” Hodges said. “After he arrived, you never again saw weathermen coming out in funny costumes and dong [sic] silly things as they used to do. They had to have credentials. So he changed things in Houston for the better.”
Will Neil Frank stick around for one more hurricane season? If not, who will inspire Ken Hoffman’s meteorologist commentary?
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