Forecast

What does the Weather Man look like? Most people curse him; few visualize him. Last week, on the Du Mont Network (Mon.-Fri., 6:05 p.m.), televiewers got a good look at the Weather Man.

He turned out to be James Fidler,* a squarish, stocky young fellow with pleasantly twinkling eyes, carefully combed wavy hair and a professorial pointer in his hand. After a flourish of music and an announcer's explanation of the program, Fidler appeared on the telescreen, briskly went to work on the six maps that surrounded him.

Then the camera's eye fixed itself on Fidler's wand, as it pointed to the asterisks (snow), dots (rain), commas (drizzle) and other symbols on the maps. Fidler, the U.S. Weather Bureau's one-man radio and television department, was launching a show that he hopes to keep simple and uncluttered. His forecasts will ignore such weather map standbys as isobars ("too confusing").

The bureau, delighted with the beginning, offered the show to any other television station or network that wanted it. "It's just our sort of medium," said Chief Forecaster Francis W. Reichelderfer. "Our problem has always been to paint the weather picture in words, and . . . they don't convey enough."

*Not to be confused with Hollywood's Radiora-cle Jimmy Fidler, no kin.

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