Laid up with a broken leg for months since last August, Bridget Schumacher got to watch a lot of television.
“Every day I used to watch Mike Woods on Fox 5,” she said. “He used to do remote reports from everywhere. I saw him do three broadcasts from Jersey City and I asked, ‘What’s wrong with Bayonne? It’s only one city away. ‘ ”
So in the beginning of April, she e-mailed the station and asked them to consider doing a broadcast from Bayonne. A week later, they called her back and said they would be in town on April 20 from 7 to 9 a.m. at the 34th Street Hudson Bergen Light Rail Station.
Until Mike Woods, weatherman and sometimes a feature reporter Fox 5 television’s Good Day New York did a remote weather report from Light Rail Station, he hadn’t actually spent any time in Bayonne.
“I had passed it several times,” he said during an interview last week.
Since coming to WNYW Fox 5 in June 2001, Woods has been a fixture in the metropolitan area, making a habit of reaching out to local communities. In addition to giving forecasts, he also worked as a feature reporter from time to time.
Although he is likely to pop up anywhere, from interviewing people at the Jersey City PATH Station to visiting area schools, Woods said the range is limited by adequate live feed from the studio, a weather screen that helps in his broadcasts.
His features could be anything from meeting up with a black belt for a live demonstration to interviewing a party planner for New Year’s Eve. He has interviewed attractive fitness gurus, pop stars, baseball promoters, girls’ singing groups and others.
A graduate from the University of California in Davis with a degree in rhetoric and communications, Woods has a strong background in meteorology. Originally from Sacramento, Calif., Woods moved around the country since 1993. He started as morning and noon weather anchor in North Carolina, where he covered several hurricanes before he moved onto Phoenix, Arizona.
Schumacher, a lifelong resident of Bayonne, said Woods arrived at the 34th Street Station prior to when she tuned in at 5:30 a.m. But she couldn’t go to see him there immediately. She had to get the kids ready for school.
“I saw him and said, ‘He’s really here,’ ” she said. “My husband rode up there to check it out and I saw him on TV.”
Then, she heard her name mentioned on TV.
“They said: ‘Bridget Schumacher, we’re waiting for you,’ and my mother said I’d better get up there, so I did,” she said.
When she arrived, she found Woods remarkably amiable.
“He was a very nice guy and very personable, very friendly,” she said. “People were riding by the station waving and calling out. It’s unbelievable how many people watched his show. He talked to everyone, poses for pictures, and signed autographs.”
E-mail lured him
Woods said he responded to the e-mail and decided to visit Bayonne to do a weather report. When not broadcasting, he spends his time chatting with the public.
“We were talking to people about Bayonne,” he said.
Woods said the remotes seem to generate their own life. People come out to see him whenever he shows up into a community. While in Bayonne, he kept looking for the cruise ships that he heard sailed from Bayonne.
“Fox 5’s Good Day New York is a really unique show,” he said. “It lets me get out there and meet the people in the streets where they live. I like people to come out say hello and shake hands.”