Mike Caplan Biography
Mike Caplan is the meteorologist for Fox 32’s Good Day Chicago. He joined the WFLD team in December 2015.
His first job after college was in Champaign-Urbana, IL at WCIA. While there, he reported the news before being promoted to weekend and noon weather anchor.
He also co-hosted the station’s PM Magazine show and earned a one-on-one interview with President Ronald Reagan at the White House—one of the very first reporters granted such access.
In 1987, he was hired by WTVD in Raleigh-Durham, NC as a chief weather anchor. Two years later, Mike was selected to also co-anchor the station’s early evening newscast in addition to his weather duties. While there, Mike covered everything from tornadoes to hurricanes to snowstorms.
In 1994 Caplan came back home to Chicago to work for WLS-TV. He earned his meteorologist credentials from Mississippi State University and became the 4 p.m. weekday meteorologist. Mike is also an adjunct instructor at the College of Lake County where he teaches photography.
Mike Caplan Age | How Old Is Mike Caplan Meteorologist
Mike Caplan is a veteran when it comes to anchoring and reporting. He was born and raised in the northern suburbs and has called Chicago home for most of his life.
Mike Caplan celebrates his birthday on the 22nd of September. Caplan actual age is still under review where it will be updated soon.
Mike Caplan Family
After graduating from Warren Township High School in Gurnee, Mike earned an Associate’s degree from the College of Lake County. Later, he went on to earn his Bachelor’s in Mass Communications from Illinois State University.
He has not shared details regarding his mother, father, brothers, and sisters. The information is under review and update will be done soon.
Mike Caplan Wife | Mike Caplan Son
Mike is married to his longtime partner Laura. From his numerous social media posts, it can be seen that the two are enjoying a happy married life as husband and wife.
the couple has a son one son, whose name will be updated soon. Caplan has never shied away from expressing his love towards his son as evident from his social media posts.
Mike Caplan Image
Mike Caplan Career
For over more than 30 years, Mike has been working as a reporter, anchor, and a meteorologist. His countless years of experience has gained him immense fame as well as fortune.
Caplan first began his journalism career in 1987 when he started a job as a chief weather anchor at WTDV. He later added to his duties when he was selected for the role of co-anchor for the stations early evening newscast.
After which in 1994, he started his role as the meteorologist for the WLS-TV in Chicago. Later in 1994, he joined ABC 7 where he served as a weather anchor.
In December of 2015, Mike Caplan joined Fox 32 and started his new role as the meteorologist for the networks morning show Good Day Chicago.
Mike Caplan Salary | Mike Caplan Net Worth
Mike Caplan is the weather Anchor for Fox 32 Chicago and Fox 32 News. He has an estimated salary of $54,045 thousand dollars as of 2019.
Besides his income from Fox 32, he also runs a photography and web design business along with his wife. Caplan estimated net worth is in Millions, but the actual amount as of 2019 is under review.
Mike Caplan ABC 7
Mike Caplan blew out of ABC 7 weather front
WLS-Channel 7 parted company Thursday with Mike Caplan after 21 years as a meteorologist in a move that came just five weeks after the ABC-owned station added Cheryl Scott to its full-time weather staff.
Jennifer Graves, vice president, and news director of ABC 7 is expected to announce new assignments Friday for the weather staff that includes Scott, chief meteorologist Jerry Taft, Tracy Butler, and Phil Schwarz. Taft recently extended his contract through July 2016.
“The powers that be have decided to take the weather department in a direction that no longer includes me,” Caplan wrote on Facebook, announcing that Thursday was his last day at the station. “It has been a thrill for me to be on tv in the area in which I grew up.
I look forward to carving out a new chapter in my professional life, and with the support of friends and my wonderful family, I am confident wonderful challenges and opportunities lay ahead.”
ABC 7 officials did not respond to requests for comment on Caplan’s release.
Caplan, a north suburban native and graduate of Illinois State University, joined ABC 7 in 1994 from WTVD-TV, the ABC-owned station in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina.
Originally hired as weekday morning weatherman, Caplan proved a bad fit for the morning show and soon shifted to weekends and later to weekday afternoons and fill-in duties.
Scott, who joined ABC 7 last month after three years at NBC-owned WMAQ-Channel 5, initially was assigned to the new 7 p.m. weekday newscast produced for Weigel Broadcasting WCIU-Channel 26 and fill-in duties at ABC 7.
Mike Caplan Post Tribune
Quickly: ‘I don’t like the way Cheryl Scott says the words’
I don’t think the state should be able to lease public properties to multimillionaire businesspeople. I think if developers want to start a convention center, they should buy the private property and build it there. I don’t think it’s right that they can use a public entity to make a profit.
I was going south on Wisconsin Street in Hobart and here came this guy riding a golf cart with a big old flag of the United States hanging on the back, showing he’s proud to be an American.
He rode face on into traffic on the opposite side of the road. You’re supposed to ride with traffic, not against traffic. Same thing with bicycles. Come on.
I always say to outlaw cigarettes. They do stink, but if they did outlaw cigarettes, I’d probably be paying 30 percent taxes.
We need Portage to patrol on Boulder Avenue between Oakwood Street and Willowdale Road. It seems like a freeway. All the city trucks, even the police and everybody else come through here at 40 mph-plus, and it’s only a 25-mph zone.
They should have a stop sign at least halfway up that block. I live right here in the middle of the block, and it’s really getting out of hand. It’s scary.
Bring back meteorologist Mike Caplan. I don’t like the way Cheryl Scott says the words.
For the family on 4th Street in Hobart that found our chocolate Labrador-boxer mix and returned her home: Words can never thank you enough for returning a family member back to its home. Thank you very much.
It’s incredible. Whoever thought that comedian Bill Cosby’s name and the word “rape” would fit into one sentence? It’s incredible.
Why is it that a kid can go to school, make himself better, go through apprenticeship training, better his education, go to college and get insurance, and it’s entitled to everybody who doesn’t even work hard? You can go to McDonald’s and work for $15 an hour and you want insurance for that? What is that?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump may be a clown, but what’s the difference? We have a clown in the White House now.
ABC’s Cheryl Scott is not only one of the most competent meteorologists on Chicago television since WGN’s Tom Skilling, but she’s extremely easy on the eyes, so back off and leaves her alone.
I read where the Republican elite say that presidential candidate Donald Trump doesn’t represent mainstream Republicans. They’re absolutely right. All he does is represent mainstream America. I think he’ll make a great president.
Indiana passed a law that drivers using cellphones are to be ticketed. Well, if the cops would start ticketing whoever it is on cellphones, they could probably pave the streets in gold, not only blacktop.
It would be billions of dollars. There are so many driving and texting. They almost hit you all the time. Its amazing people aren’t getting killed more often.
I think meteorologist Cheryl Scott on Channel 7 stinks. Because of her, Mike Caplan lost his job and he was a way better weatherperson than she’ll ever dream of being.
Mike Caplan Q & A
What prompted you to enroll at CLC?
I attended Northwestern University for my first semester of college, but I just wasn’t ready for the experience. So I withdrew at the end of the first semester and enrolled at CLC.
It was close to Gurnee, my home, and it had small class sizes and offered students individual attention. CLC became a wonderful place to regroup, and it certainly changed my life for the better. With the help of caring instructors, I later narrowed my choice of careers to meteorology and television news.
Which courses did you find especially helpful?
In a journalism course taught by Jerry Pinkham, he handed out a list of common grammatical mistakes that some reporters make, such as incorrect subject/verb agreement.
One example is incorrectly using a plural verb after the word “neither,” instead of a singular verb. Most of Jerry’s grammatical pointers were intended for print journalists, but I found the tips to be eye-opening, and I use them to this day.
I also enjoyed physical and cultural geography courses taught by Noel Stirrat. Geography plays a big role in meteorology, and Noel had a combination of unbridled enthusiasm for the subject matter and a refreshing way of conveying the information.
The geographical terms and concepts stayed with me 20 years later, when I was enrolled in an oceanography course at Mississippi State University.
If you have an instructor who has a passion for the subject, you have a more successful learning environment. Just about all of my CLC instructors had that passion, and the small class sizes allowed me to get to know the instructor and ask questions before or after class.
What did your CLC broadcasting experience consist of, and how did it help you?
I was a disc jockey for the campus radio station, WCLC, and I was “on the air” for an hour or two, three days a week. Our audience was those in Lancer’s cafeteria, where the studio consisted of a small closet with a couple of “record” turntables and a microphone.
I was able to parlay that experience into DJ gigs at local nightclubs and a Zion radio station. Those broadcasting experiences, beginning at CLC, gave me a foundation and were stepping stones for later work in television.
How valuable was your experience as a reporter for the Chronicle, CLC’s student newspaper?
I was a reporter who did enterprise stories, which are not based on press releases or news conferences, but stories that I uncovered on my own.
It was another great experience, and I later discovered that writing for the eye (print journalism) is different from writing for the ear. In a newspaper story, sentences can be longer with many clauses. The audience can re-read at its discretion.
For TV, points must be made concisely and in a manner that holds the audience’s attention. When visuals are added, the TV news writer must take care to match the picture with the words.
If I’m writing about rescue crews arriving on the scene, I don’t want to show video of people playing in the nearby park. With both forms of reporting, you learn to boil down your information to what’s pith, or essential. When I moved into television news, it was a fairly natural transition from print.
In addition to your work as a meteorologist at Fox 32 Chicago, you now teach part-time at CLC, correct?
Yes. For two years, I have been co-teaching at least two personal enrichment courses in photography each semester. This spring, one course focuses on iPhone photography and the other covers portrait lighting. I enjoy being in a creative setting and sharing with others what I’ve mastered in photography.
How important is it to keep building one’s skills to stay employable, especially in mid-life?
It’s really important. In fact, deepening my knowledge of social media played a big part in my return to TV. Research has shown that the number one source of news in the U.S. is Facebook, and at Fox 32, there is a high priority placed on social media to augment the audience.
When ABC7 Chicago released me in 2014, my wife, Laura, and I embarked on a campaign to reconnect with viewers, and we decided that we’d amp up our Facebook presence. So we created a social media weather space unique to this market. Competitors who had social media outlets amounted to using video forecast replays from their TV news programs.
In April 2015, when there was a notable severe outbreak in the Chicago area, Laura and I set up a studio in our basement. All that day and night, we recorded one- to three-minute video updates, showing radar, and we posted these on our Facebook page.
We had thousands of engaged viewers. It demonstrated the success of social media, in that it is an immediate, two-way, interactive communication—compared to television, which is unidirectional.
When a tornado went through the Chicago area in August 2015, I was updating our Facebook and Twitter page all afternoon. A friend who is a weather geek and a regular contributor to my page was in the Round Lake/Grayslake area that evening and saw flashes of sparks coming from transformers.
That’s almost a telltale sign of a tornado touching down. He and I were in almost constant contact during the height of the storm, enabling me to warn my followers of the tornado one minute before the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning.
I give my wife, Laura, a tremendous amount of credit for doing the research on social media and providing a great deal of assistance in enhancing my Facebook page and the level of engagement from viewers. She also has given presentations to area business groups on how to build a social media presence and build customer engagement.
What advice do you have for a new or incoming student at CLC?
Don’t just show up for courses. Do everything you can to maximize your experience at the college. Get involved in extracurricular activities.
Besides working on the campus newspaper and radio station, I played trombone in the jazz band and was a member of the Phi Theta Kappa honor society.
Today, there are so many more student clubs and things to do outside of class than in the early 1980s, when I was on campus. You want to learn and pass your courses to earn credits, but at the same time, the college has a social component that is important.