Easiest way to break bad weather news to viewers? Make it cute.
A meteorologist from CBS Milwaukee affiliate WDJT brought her 13-week-old daughter, Fiona, on air last week as she delivered her forecast for a winter storm.
“She’s prepared. She’s got one of her good thick blankies here for that cold weather that’s coming up tonight,” Rebecca Schuld said, holding Fiona. “I thought she could help me with tonight’s first weather that’s going to be plenty unpleasant, right?”
Schuld, who had just returned to work from maternity leave, told Yahoo Life it was an unplanned appearance.
“I was just minutes away from having my next weather broadcast, and my baby had just woken up,” she said.
“I go over to my greenwall. I’m holding her and our producer is like, ‘Oh, your baby, is she gonna make an appearance?’ I was very confident she was going to behave because she just took a long nap so I knew she’d be happy. I said, ‘sure!’”
After the broadcast, Schuld said in a tweet that they were “shining a light on what real life actually looks like, trying to do it all & how Covid has changed the way we conduct work.”
Viewers and colleagues loved it.
Since then, the station has aired a segment on pandemic parenting and how their meteorologists balance parenting and work while broadcasting from home.