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CTV Toronto weatherman steps down after 48 years.
Dave Devall's final day as a CTV Toronto weather specialist ended with a salute from a prime minister, Scottish pipes and drums -- and a day that saw a new rainfall record set.
Devall was on the go all day Friday. He got up at 5 a.m. to make some guest appearances on Canada AM and CP24's morning shows and had a Toronto roadway renamed Devall Way (it leads into the CTV complex at 9 Channel Nine Court) about about 1 p.m.
In the afternoon, the Guinness Book of Records officially honoured Dave with the world record for longest career as a weather forecaster -- 48 years, two months and 27 days.
He made his final forecast as a full-time employee before retiring, although he will make occasional appearances for special projects and to fill in when someone is absent.
Tom Brown, currently handling CTV Toronto's noon weather duties, will be taking over as the 6 p.m. forecaster.
Dave Devall came to CTV Toronto on Jan. 7, 1961, a day he remembers as being sunny and cold, although his forecasting career actually started with CHEX TV in Peterborough in 1958.
Just for perspective purposes, Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go into space -- a feat accomplished on April 12, 1961.
"I had no intention of staying 48 years," Devall confided to Canada AM on Friday, adding, "The Guinness Book of Records thing never occurred to me."
He started his career in black-and-white television and before the advent of technology such as weather satellites (Sputnik the first satellite, was launched in 1957), but delivered his final forecast in state-of-the-art, high-definition colour.
"I'm getting out at the right time," Devall joked about high-def, giving himself an impromptu facelift by pulling his cheeks tighter.
He remembers giving temperatures in Fahrenheit when he started out, with Celsius the standard temperature scale now. Weather forecasting technology has evolved, including the development of Doppler radar. Computers "have opened up the whole world," he said.
One thing that didn't change over Devall's career was his smile and cheery personality.
Since it was announced on Groundhog Day that Dave would be stepping down, there's been an outpouring of heartfelt affection for Dave from celebrities and ordinary Torontonians alike.
"Every since I came to Toronto in 1968, he's been my weatherman," one caller told CTV Toronto on Friday. "Even though he's serious about the weather, he's always delivered it with a smile and a wonderful sense of humour."
She said when she met him once in a Queen Street restaurant, he was "exactly the same in person as you see him on TV."
CTV Toronto news anchor Ken Shaw told Newsnet that Dave "learned the magic of coming through the lens as himself, not pretending to be anybody else."
During his appearance as a celebrity forecaster, Toronto Argonauts CEO Mike "Pinball" Clemons said he was wearing a cap, "not because it's cold out, but because I want to tip it to you, Dave."
A number of groups have paid tribute to Dave in a number of ways, but he got a special treat when he got to pilot a Canadian Forces C-130 Hercules over the waters of Lake Ontario.
Dave holds a pilot's licence and also served in the Air Force, which is where he learned his patented writing backwards trick (I've always found that impressive!). He is also an honorary colonel of the 432nd Transport Squadron at CFB Trenton.
"She's just like a Cessna -- if you can believe that," Devall said while behind the controls.
"This is real flying, this is really neat," he said. "For such a large aircraft, you can feel her. You can feel the weight, you can feel the power, but you feel like your always in control."
The crew hooked him to a line and allowed him to stand near the back door. "It's the thrill of a lifetime being back here. Like I said folks, this is as good as it gets," Devall said.
The Hercules' ride came to an end, and now Dave's career is at an end.
The next two days will be spent "sleeping," he joked on Friday.
High on the agenda is spending more time at his cottage country home in Bolsover, Ont. with his six grandchildren, who are growing up fast, and hitting the links. "I've got the clubs all cleaned, they're ready to go," he declared.
After getting his Guinness honour, Dave admitted it was a bittersweet day.
"Up until now, it's been busy and exciting, but now I'm getting to be a little bit afraid,' he said. "I've got plans for down the road, but now I've got to sit down and organize those plans and carry them out."
Congratulations on a great career Dave Devall... Sure there will be others reporting the weather now, But there's only ONE Dave Devall.... Irreplaceable... Enjoy retirement...
What are your memories of Dave Devall?
Watching television does not make babies smarter, according to a study released this week in the journal Pediatrics, adding to existing research that challenges the usefulness of baby educational videos and DVDs.
Researchers from Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and Harvard Medical School reached this conclusion after monitoring more than 800 children from birth to 3 years of age.
"Contrary to parents' perceptions that TV viewing is beneficial to their children's brain development, we found no evidence of cognitive benefit from watching TV during the first two years of life," the authors wrote.
Educational DVD and videos geared towards enriching babies and toddlers, such as "BabyGenius," "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," which proclaim to "encourage discovery and inspire," have no benefits, researchers said.
This echoes a similar finding published in the August issue of Pediatrics. Researchers from the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute found no evidence of benefit from baby DVDs and videos and suggested that it in fact may be harmful. Infants who watched the videos understood fewer words than those who did not watch them.
Pediatrician Dr. Michael Rich, a co-author of the latest study from Boston, calls baby educational DVDs and videos "just wasted time."
"At the very best, they steal time from much more productive cognitive developmental activities," he said. "Ultimately, what it's about is to make parents not feel guilty about an electronic baby sitter."
The parents of the 872 children in the Boston study estimated the number of hours their toddlers spent in front of the television, including TV programs and DVDs. Researchers did not have data on what kinds of programs the toddlers were watching.
On average, babies at 6 months watched approximately 0.9 hours of TV per day. That number increased as the child aged: 1.2 hours at 1 year and 1.4 hours at 2 years.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media for children under the age of 2 years. Educational DVDs are tailored for babies as young as 3 months.
In the Harvard study, two I.Q.-related tests were administered to the children: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III, which indicates how many words the child understands and uses, and the Wide-Range Assessment of Visual Motor Ability test, which presents puzzles and peg boards to test cognitive abilities.
Babies who spent more time watching TV had lower language and visual motor skills at age 3. But when results were adjusted for household income and education levels, the association did not appear.
Lead author Marie Evans Schmidt and her colleagues "did not find evidence of harm or benefit of TV viewing."
Based on the existing body of research, Schmidt, a developmental psychologist instructor at Harvard Medical School, said, "there's still more evidence of harm than benefit as far as TV viewing in infancy is concerned."
Studies exploring the relationship between TV viewing and the effects on children are just beginning, she said.
"My hope is that when this information is made available to the general public, that it won't be perceived as study that means there are no harmful effects of TV viewing on infants, because other studies have shown TV viewing at high levels can put kids at risk for some things like obesity, sleep disturbances and possibly attention problems," Schmidt said.
Rich, a pediatrician who directs the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston, said TV watching during infancy instills habits that promote obesity.
"You're teaching 4- or 5- or 6-month-olds how to watch TV," he said. "They're learning to watch TV. The more they watch as they get older, they're snacking in front of TV, they're exposed to snack-food commercials, which inspire them to eat even more and sit even more. It is a cumulative effect of many, many factors."
But Karen Hill Scott, a senior fellow at UCLA who works in the field of child development, said the criticism ignores real life. "To me, as a scientist and parent, we can't hold on to completely demonizing screen time when parents are really very determined to use it."
Modern parents "want kids to be literate on computers. They don't see the screen media as evil," said Scott, a consultant for Baby Einstein."The net effect that it's not harmful is a relief to many families who have been made to feel guilty or awful that they use screen time."
Scott said the material in educational baby DVDs is similar to what is in books.
Baby Einstein products were designed by Julie Clark, a teacher and mother, and were not devised through scientific research. Susan McLain, general manager of Baby Einstein, said the company receives thousands of letters from satisfied parents.
"We've basically stayed true to the philosophy to what [Clark] created. That was exposure to real-world imagery," she said. "The core themes are art, music and nature; that's the core essence of what we've created."
She said the Harvard study indicated that "screen time is not harmful for baby and infants."
Rich, the study co-author, recommended relying on what has been proved to benefit children.
"The best thing for our kids is to provide them with stimulus that we know is positive for their brain development," Rich said. He suggesting activities like reading, singing, interacting and stacking blocks to help children.
Parents’ group horrified by ‘Nip/Tuck’ self-mutilation scene
OK, I’ll give ‘em this one. In the past, when the Parents Television Council (or PTC) has objections to a show, I’ve shrugged off their moral outrage, like a few weeks ago when the group was horrified that NBC had accidentally showed a raised middle finger during an acceptance speech at the Golden Globes (oops!)
But the PTC may actually have a point this time around.
Nip/Tuck, which has seen its share of complaints from the PTC, recently aired a scene that featured a woman cutting off her own breast with an electric carving knife.
“Not content with depictions or descriptions of bestiality, incestuous necrophilia, or blood-soaked stabbings, the narcissistic sociopaths behind the production and distribution of Nip/Tuck have chosen to establish yet another low point in the history of television,” said PTC president Tim Winter in a press release.
“Tuesday’s episode [which aired this week on FX in the U.S.] portrayed sickening and bloody images of a woman who takes a mastectomy into her own hands in the crowded lobby of a doctor’s office.”
Daaamn.
OK, Even though I love the SAW movies, admittedly, the scene was revolting, I’m not going to lie about that. Usually the PTC objects to nudity, sex or language, so their fight against violence is a nice change.
The PTC plans to contact Nip/Tuck’s advertisers and ask “whether bloody self-mutilation with an electric carving knife is in alignment with the corporate image they wish to portray,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
But I’m sure advertisers are already aware of the shocking, gory scenes of the show, so will it really make that much of a difference?
Programs for infants overstimulate and raise risk of Attention Deficit Disorder
It took just a few hours of watching CNN while cradling his colicky son to make Dr. Dimitri Christakis suspect parents should severely limit the time infants watch TV.
Now he hopes 25 years worth of research will finally prove it.
In one of the most extensive reviews of its kind, the Seattle pediatrician says infant-aimed DVDs such as Baby Einstein, and even award-winning kids' shows like Sesame Street, can do more harm than good to children under the age of 2.
In fact, the sensory overload of all those colours, sounds and sights – be it Big Bird or Baby Mozart – may be at least partly to blame for the tenfold increase in cases of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the past 20 years. It now affects between 5 and 20 per cent of American children.
He even accepts some of the blame. He believes scientists such as him have helped create the trend.
"There is now an obsession with having smart kids," Christakis said in a telephone interview yesterday.
"I think we scientists have managed to convince people, rightly, that these early years are really important. But the problem is we've created a neurosis around optimizing them and that's spawned industries that essentially now prey on people's obsession and fear."
Nine out of 10 children under the age of two watch TV regularly – some spend up to 40 per cent of the daytime in front of the tube – "despite ongoing warnings" from the American Academy of Pediatrics that they shouldn't, he says in his review of 78 studies done over 25 years – including his own survey of 1,000 U.S. families – in the January issue of Acta Paediatrica, a monthly pediatrics journal. In his survey, published in 2007, he found 29 per cent of families let infants watch TV because "it's good for their brain," while 24 per cent use it as a "babysitter."
In 1971, the average age that children started watching TV was 4 years old. Today, it's four to five months, he says. Now that there's so much scientific evidence that too much, too early, is "rewiring" infants' tiny brains he's calling for tough regulation. France, for instance, recently moved to curtail the broadcasting of shows aimed at children under 3, which has affected 24-hour channels such as Baby TV.
The sale of "baby DVDs" in the U.S. alone is now a $500 million industry. Millions of dollars in marketing by such giants as Disney-owned Baby Einstein and Georgia-based Brainy Baby, whose officials couldn't be reached for comment, have helped persuade too many parents – with no proof – that they're doing a good thing for their children, says Christakis. Studies have shown the opposite is true, that baby programs can actually delay language development (infants learn better from "live presentations") and harm attention spans.
The "flashing lights, scene changes, quick edits and auditory cuts" may be "overstimulating to developing brains," says Christakis, who suspected this 11 years ago when he was homebound with his colicky son and looked to CNN for relief. He noticed the baby was mesmerized by the light and sound show, and wondered why, since "he obviously didn't understand what was being conveyed."
"The truth is that we're in the midst of a large, uncontrolled experiment on the next generation of children. We're not going to know for years what the effects of all this exposure to TV will mean, in a scientific sense. But I'm concerned that we're not going to be pleased with the results."
This is, of course, an endless debate amongst parents, such as Toronto mother Naomi Lieberman, whose now two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Julie, tried the Baby Einstein DVDs and wasn't wowed, and Whitby mother Lesley Kelz, a graphic designer who works at home with two young children and considers TV "my friend."
"If there were deadlines, I've had to say, `Go watch TV.' I was in the same (family) room. But there's such guilt. That drove me crazy for so long," Kelz says.
Lieberman and her husband, on the other hand, try to stick to books, games and puzzles and are grateful for a toddler and a four-month-old baby who don't seem to care about the big screen.
"But I know they're going to watch TV eventually. It's just a question of time."
Over the past few years, we have seen an increase in the number of television shows that are being pulled from the air, many right in the middle of the season. If you are like me and many other television viewers, this may have upset you in more ways than one. There is nothing worse that being left hanging; wondering what would have or could have happened next.
While we all have our own taste in television shows that we try and tune into each night of the week, there are a number of shows that were popular and were still pulled from the air. While the ratings may not have been always been great, many of these shows had a passionate fan following. Just a few of those shows are briefly outlined below.
Aliens in America: I personally loved this show, I watched every episode of it, (even PVR'ing it if I wasn't home so I could watch later) the interaction between the characters was great in my mind. Sadly this show was suddenly pulled off the air..WHY????
Do Not Disturb: This show only came on for about 3 before being yanked, again I thought it was a great show, better then some of the other shows that are still around (I'll be getting to that in a minute) and I don't think it was given a fair chance by being taken away so soon.
Back to you: I loved this show, and it was really getting somewhere with its storyline when all of the sudden, after only 1 season, they too were told not to come back, COME ON!!!
Rules of Engagement: ANOTHER great show bites the dust.... SOMEONE tell me what was wrong with the show???
Carpoolers: Another one of the shows I made sure I never missed an episode of, This show was great, the cast was spectacular, I really thought this show would last at least a little while... and then BOOM, gone after ONE season!!!!
Joey: I loved his character on Friends, and I followed him to his own spin off, which I liked, sure there were writing problems, but the assembled cast was perfect in there roles... the storylines were developing (you can't expect them to just jump right into them, they had to be built up!) and sure, a better writing cast might have done a slightly better job in building up, BUT IT WAS STILL A GOOD SHOW!!! gone too soon...
Til Death: Was better then some of the shows they have on television these days, gave us something to watch during that time slot!
Unhitched: This was barely around for a hiccup. WHY??
Sure, shows have to be cancelled, in order for newer shows to get time slots to air, its the circle of life right? With that said...
WHY ARE THESE SHOWS STILL AROUND???
The Bachelor: Do any of the "matches" really ever end up "working out?? what's the point in having it around? it's hit or miss in the relationship anyways...
The Bachelorette: See above!
My Super Sweet 16: What the.....? why are they even wasting footage recording any of this nonsense?
Survivor: After the first season, when it was something unique...enough is enough...
American/Canadian Idol: How many of the "winners" have actually gone on to successful recording careers? now... how many of them have simply been axed by there labels?
Every reality show in general: the time has come for them to GO AWAY
America's Funniest Home Videos: They're not really all that funny, the time has come for this show to hit eject.
Beauty and the Geek: As with the other "reality" shows, this one just needs to go away.
This is just my list of shows that I miss, and show I wish were gone... I'm sure you have your own... leave me a posting and let me know what they are....
Until next time........
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