[ It's Wally Kinnan the Weather Man! ]

Broadcast Pioneers include "Wally Kinnan the Weather Man" who I remember from Philadelphia television in the early 1960s. This "Weatherman Travel Bug" wants to visit caches in or near the cities where Wally Kinnan was known as a weatherman: Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Largo Florida. Your "Eyewitness Report" of the weather conditions when you found or dropped off the TB would be a nice gesture in remembrance of "Wally Kinnan the Weather Man!"

Wally Kinnan left the Air Force in 1953, and became one of the nation's earliest TV weathermen at WKY-TV in Oklahoma City where he stayed until coming to Philly. Of course, Broadcast Pioneers member Dr. Francis Davis pioneered that here in Philadelphia in 1948 on WFIL-TV, Channel 6.

Wally came to Philly in 1958. He was teamed up with a mid-west journalist by the name of Vince Leonard. Wally's first weathercast was at 6:40 pm on Monday, November 3, 1958. Kinnan stayed in Philadelphia until the Federal Communications Commission ordered the reverse of a 1956 trade of TV and radio stations between NBC and Westinghouse Broadcasting. It was 1965 when Group W (Westinghouse) took control of Channel 3. Since Wally Kinnan's contract was with NBC and not Channel 3, he could not remain in Philadelphia, as NBC would have no position for him. He was transferred to the network's Cleveland station. At the same time, Westinghouse had to transfer Mike Douglas to Philadelphia, as the show could no longer originate from Ohio because Group W no longer had any facilities there. In the mid-seventies, Wally stepped down from his post at WKYC-TV and moved to Largo, Florida where he practiced his craft on a Tampa TV station.

Wally Kinnan had a great impact on the weather broadcast market. In 1960, he was the first meteorologist to use a five-day forecast. This drew criticism from his fellow meteorologists who didn't believe that such forecasts were possible. Today, it is commonplace. Wally Kinnan led the way. In 1963, he set up the Weather Service at the Franklin Institute on the Parkway in Center City Philadelphia. While Dr. Francis Davis was the first in the area to be certified by the American Meteorological Society, the AMS, Wally was second. Then there were few. Today, there are over 1200 nationwide.