Hearne: Why the Star Dropped Gary Lezak for Katie Horner

For four long years KSHB TV weather wonk Gary Lezak laid down the daily local weather in the pages of the Kansas City Star.

No mas.

The newspaper recently handed the keys to its weather casting kingdom to Lezak’s controversial rival Katie Horner on KCTV. Lezak’s take on the switcheroo?

"It was a great honor for me being in the Kansas City Star every day for the last four years," he says. "Providing the most accurate forecast. But I don’t think providing an accurate forecast was good enough for them."

But why hop in the sack with the most controversial weather person on local telelvision?

Horner has no less than five Facebook pages devoted to bagging on her for sensationalizing weathercasts.

There’s "Katie Horner is full of it!!" with 31 members, Katie Horner Frightens Me Unnecessarily" with 3,828 members, "Katie Horner Needs Help!" with 60 members, "People who Hate Katie Horner!!!!!!!" with 171 members and "Tell that Stupid B*tch Katie Horner to shut the hell up!" with 99 "people who like this"

To be fair, there’s a "Chief Meteorologist Katie Horner" page ( with 4 fans) and a "We Love Katie Horner" with 64 members.

Lezak has 5 positive Facebooks with over 3,000 friends or fans and only two pages with a grand total of 34 haters.

All that said, while nobody’s perfect, clearly Lezak is the big weather dog in Kansas City.

So again, why the switch?

"Every year the Star has gone to every TV station and asked for this and that and last year they (even) came to KSHB and (they) almost lost it," says a source familiary with the selection process. "But this year, obviously, KCTV gave them what they wanted."

Lezak’s take on that:

"I don’t even know what the details are. Let’s just say they wanted $100 and we were only going to give them $50. That’s what happened."