Bill Welychka, weather anchor for A-News in Ottawa, admits that hosting the weather has been the highlight of his lengthy career in television.
It all started when Bill Welychka was in his last year of high school. For a presentation, he rented a video camera from the library and instantly realized he’d love to work in radio and television.
“I wanted to be a camera man initially, but I fell in love with editing,” Welychka says from his A- News desk an hour before the six o’clock broadcast.
Welychka, a Centretown resident who lives close to Chinatown, is the weather anchor on A- News in Ottawa.
But the host has had a lengthy and diverse career in broadcasting, from working as a morning show host in Edmonton, to getting Madonna to admit she’s had regrets when he was a video jockey on MuchMusic in Toronto.
Welychka’s career has also included work in editing and producing shows.
He started at MuchMusic in the late 1980s.
“It was a matter of having one foot in both worlds,” he says.
“To the point where I would fly to Switzerland to interview Shania Twain and come back with the interview, and I would edit and produce that hour special.”
After being hired as an editor at MuchMusic, Welychka went in front of the cameras in 1992, and says that hosting on air is something he just fell into.
While interviewing famous music artists, Welychka says he never walked away with a bad interview. He says he learned how to conduct good interviews while observing as an editor.
Welychka says he left MuchMusic to go to MuchMoreMusic in 2000 because he wanted to work in music journalism.
“Just dressing up like an elf for the Christmas shift wasn’t that cool,” he says.
“And there was Spice Girls day and I had to be Posh Spice or something.”
But Welychka says he also quickly noticed the entertainment industry beginning to change, and he no longer wanted to host music shows.
“We could go from doing a really intelligent hour special with R.E.M or David Bowie, but you don’t see that now,” Welychka says.
“It’s all about Paris Hilton, and who’s screwing who, and who’s in rehab and who has cellulite. To me, that’s not anything to do with entertainment.”
Welychka says he’s noticed the way music has been presented has changed on MuchMusic, and that very few music videos are being shown.
He says that he’s starting to notice that channels like MuchMusic have nothing to do with actual music any more.
Instead, he says they feature reality shows or commentaries making fun of videos and artists.
Welychka says he wanted to separate himself from the music business because of this and do something he knew he could do for the rest of his life.
“When I was there and a video was great, we’d put it on the air. The radio would latch onto it. Now, it’s the other way around,” Welychka says.
“What’s entertaining now is seeing celebrities fail. It’s just a part of the industry I don’t embrace.”
Welychka left MuchMoreMusic to host Breakfast Television in Edmonton in 2005.
But he jumped at the chance to come back to Ontario to host the weather on A-Channel News in 2006.
He says he felt too far from home and admits to not being a morning person.
“I like what I do. I like where I’m doing it is the key thing, too. I can’t see myself interviewing rock stars when I’m 50,” Welychka says.
“[But] I could certainly see myself doing this.”
He says the transition from entertainment to news has also been a change because there’s a different type of audience approaching him on the street now.
“Before I had kids always coming up and asking about rock stars, or wanting an autograph or whatever,” Welychka says.
“But now I have older people coming up and asking about the weather.”
Although the age group of his fans has moved to an older crowd, there are still some people from a younger generation who enjoy watching Welychka on A-Channel News.
Lacey Thoms, a publishing student at Algonquin College, enjoys watching him because of his charisma on camera.
“He makes the news more interesting and community-oriented,” says Thoms.
“And he’s always joking around with the news anchors. It’s so much better to watch than other newscasts.”
It’s easy to see how well Welychka fits in at the A-Channel news room.
Sandra Blaikie, colleague and A-Channel news anchor, is one of Welychka’s closest friends at the station.
She says when he’s not bringing food for everyone in the newsroom, commonly called “office treats for the office,” he is one of the most organized people working at the station.
She adds that he is a truly talented editor.
“He’s just a delight. He’s very thoughtful,” says Blaikie.
“He comes in and he’s fun, he gets everybody laughing, and he creates a great mood in the news room.”
In addition to hosting the weather, Welychka also hosts a show called Bill’s Excellent Adventures.
The show features Welychka visiting different venues in the city such as restaurants and gives the audience a behind-the-scenes look at how things operate.
Welychka says the show started when he had been working at A-Channel for two months and joked on the air about not going home for Thanksgiving.
He says his e-mail started flooding with invitations from people who wanted him over for dinner.
When he talked to his boss about bringing a camera with him to somebody’s house, the show was born.
Welychka says his time at A-Channel has definitely been the highlight of his career.
He says he enjoys the feel of the newsroom and also loves living in Ottawa, particularly the Centretown area.
“I love where I live. Everything you need is right there,” he says.
“There’s enough pubs, that’s for sure. I can walk to work in 15 minutes. Hartman’s grocery store has everything. And you’re close enough to downtown that you don’t need a car.”
Welychka also likes the fact that there are many take-out restaurants to choose from in Centretown.
“I’m a bachelor and I don’t eat in a lot,” he says.
While Welychka says that working at A-Channel is certainly his favourite place to work out of his entire career, he says it only happened because of his past experience.
“I thought I’d work in television the rest of my life, I just didn’t know where," he says.
"It took me years later to realize there’s a path that’s laid out for us, I know it sounds all mystical and stuff,” Welcyhka says.