Photo: Ernie Sapiro And that’s a wrap!
We recently bid a fond farewell to our longtime operations manager, Curt Weiss, who wrapped up a 21-year run with the Seattle Channel. We think that makes him Employee No. 2!
Over two decades, Curt managed station and production budgets, on-air scheduling, vendor contracts and agreements, and copyright compliance—not always the most exciting work, but absolutely some of the most essential!
“Curt had this life-sized Liberace cutout looming over the office. And like Liberace, Curt was a whole vibe. He was a brain trust when it came to cutting through government talk, always with his signature New York humor,” said Tyler Sipe, a multimedia producer at the channel.
Born in Brooklyn (and damn proud of it), Curt brought serious East Coast energy: direct, funny, and just the right amount of quirky. “I connected with my boss Curt from the moment we met at my interview nine years ago,” said Pam Dotson, interim operations manager for the channel. “He’d never be accused of Seattle’s passive-aggressive freeze! I so appreciated his East Coast directness and humor. We shared a lot of laughs, and he was always a very patient teacher, showing me the ropes of government TV programming.”
Curt kicked off his television career in 1992 at KCTS, Seattle’s PBS affiliate, swapping his New York shirt and tie for Pacific Northwest flannel. For a decade, he wrangled national and international productions, including documentaries featured on American Experience and American Masters.
“Curt always had a great story to tell,” said multimedia producer Jennifer Nerad, who shared a cubicle wall with him for years. “He’d emerge from his financial spreadsheets, and there he was — this other Curt with all the quirky stories you’d expect from a New Yorker who’d drummed his way through the ’80s.”
That’s right, when he wasn’t deep in budgets, Curt was rocking out. In 1981, under the name “Lewis King,” he joined the Anglo-American neo-Rockabilly band The Rockats as their drummer. He went on to perform with other groups and reunited with his Rockats bandmates for reunion shows in the 2010s. Music remains one of his great loves, right up there with his wife Karen, daughter Emma, and pup Dylan (yes, named after the Bob Dylan).
Curt also wrote “Stranded in the Jungle,” a biography of Jerry Nolan, drummer for the New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers. See, we told you rock ’n’ roll runs in his veins!
In retirement, we expect Curt to be rocking his signature hair at punk rock concerts at The Crocodile in Belltown; or riding the 2, 3, 4, 5, and A lines back in Brooklyn where he is known as the original hipster.
Congrats, Curt!
