Your Worst/Most Obnoxious Local TV Personality

[Wheelz]

@Cheryl44

Hawk Harrelson. He’s the color guy for the White Sox. I’m a Sox fan, but he’s so bad it’s no longer funny. He’s got 7 or 8 catch phrases–including now that’s what gets you a 16,000 square foot house in Arizona! Really! He has started saying that every time Paul Konerko does something well on the field. OMG I wish he’d retire, but I’ll bet they carry him out of the booth feet first.

But there’s this http://www.heavethehawk.com/

Even reading through all the zombie posts, I was wondering if somebody was going to mention the Hawk. Harry Caray and Ron Santo continued to be entertaining in their declining years. Harrelson just keeps getting worse and worse. I’m convinced that he could be replaced with a sound board and a dozen buttons to play his catch-phrases, and nobody would ever notice.

As for obnoxious car dealers in Chicago, you can’t beat Bob Rohrman. I can’t find his age anywhere, but he’s definitely getting on in years. Still, he insists on trotting his weird misshapen nose in front of the camera to do his own commercials, which he undoubtedly thinks are very witty. He’s one of those guys with one volume setting: loud. “There’s only one Bob Roooohhhhhhrrrrrman!” Thank god.

[Uncle_Jocko]

@Cheryl44

Hawk Harrelson. He’s the color guy for the White Sox. I’m a Sox fan, but he’s so bad it’s no longer funny. He’s got 7 or 8 catch phrases–including now that’s what gets you a 16,000 square foot house in Arizona! Really! He has started saying that every time Paul Konerko does something well on the field. OMG I wish he’d retire, but I’ll bet they carry him out of the booth feet first.

But there’s this http://www.heavethehawk.com/

“He gone!” “You can put it on the boooooooaaaaaaard … yes!” If I only had a nickel for every time I groaned at one of these … and I don’t even watch the White Sox much. Plus, I’ve never heard a TV crew gripe about the umpires more often and more consistently than the White Sox guys.

[Sigmagirl]

@vanilla

Alright, Clevelanders, lets hear it.
There are too many for me to pick just one, but as for advertisers, no one beats Mikie from regency windows.

I knew this had to be a zombie thread because obviously no one beats Mike D’Amato unless it’s Bob Serpentini (car dealers).

Also, there is a woman named Natalie who does occasional radio advertising work, sometimes for Coit Drapery Cleaning. I want to kill her voice.

[aruvqan]

@radar_ralf

Cal Worthington has been an institution in Anchorage for longer than I have been a resident here. He also has dealerships all over the West Coast, I believe. Cal is really obnoxious at all, but his commercials have always been… well, unusual. Some of his classic lines: “I’ll stand on my head to sell you a car!” “I’ll eat a bug to sell you a new car!” and “Here’s Cal Worthingtion and his dog Spot!” Each of these voice-overs was accompanied by footage of Cal performing the stunt. When the “dog Spot” thing runs, the animal shown is anything but a dog; usually it was lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my!) He also showed stunts like being strapped to the top wing of a biplane doing loops. I gotta give him credit though - when you think of Fords in Anchorage, you think of Cal Worthington. And his dog Spot. And now for the really scary news: Cal Jr. is gonna take over! I met Cal Jr. at a social function, and he has all the salesmanship skill of his dad. A scary thought, indeed.

My husbands father knew the owner of many of the animals used as ‘Spot’.

My local asshole is Scott Haney of WFSB. He has toned it down in the last couple of years, but the state government had to come out and tell the station to tone him down. Now all he does is stupid jokes, sing, and be dumb. What he used to do was have panic attacks about the weather on camera.. Nothing like there being a half inch of snowfall over night and have him panicing about the terribly dangerous driving conditions, and getting the traffic to essentially gridlock in the center of the state [the area around Hartford is essentially dead center in the middle of the state and you have to go through it more or less to get anywhere that is not the I95 corridor or the I395 corridor.] He was notorious for coming on and blathering about the dangers of black ice, and how horrible the weather conditions were mainly because he lives in the northwest corner of the state which admittedly gets nasty weather conditions when the rest of the state has sunshine and unicorns.

He was the one that triggered a midwestern/Buffalo weather zone blizzard nesting instinct in mrAru and I when we first moved up… he was screeching about the horrible blizzard we were going to be getting starting later that night, so we headed to the grocery with everybody else. We stocked up on about 10 gallons of bottled water, the makings for my vegan minestrone and chili for that evening/next day and candles and snacks. We had 2 inches of snow. Sorry, to someone from the snow belt of NY, you say blizzard we think in feet, not inches. It takes at least 6 inches in the overnight for us to consider possibly having a snow day. Here if they have half an inch they have a snow day.:smack:

[bahia_hombre]

@Innanna

And Leon Bibb RHYMES. During newstories. I keep shouting things like “Dear God, make it stop. Please make it stop.” My mother actually has to change the channel because I hate the man so much. And that intonation thing drives me batty, too. He will be talking about baby ducks in the park with this slow plodding voice. Gah.

But you missed Ted Henry. He said recently, to a story about depression “Gray is a color?” Brightest bulb in the box, is Ted Henry. Honestly, I think reading out loud is truly beyond his talents–and 2nd graders can manage that one. I really don’t know why he is still employed.

Hey, lay off my homeboy Ted…he and Wilma Smith were the greatest and Cleveland had the best local newscasts in the country back in the day, launching Al Roker, Vince Cellini, Liz Claman… A couple that annoyed me a wee bit tho’ were Gib Shanley and Joel Rose…both seemed a bit smug.