I'm starting to wonder what Meg Alexander puts in her coffee mug each morning.
Yesterday afternoon, I received a text message from an Ogle Mole asking if I watched, or DVRed, that morning's episode of Oklahoma Living. It's the pay-to-play "news" program that airs each weekday morning on KOKH Fox 25. It's hosted by longtime OKC news anchor Meg Alexander and former Max Headroom actor Mitch English.
My response was something like...
"Why would I do something like that to myself? Do you think I'm a psychopath?"
Their reply was something like...
"You got to watch! Meg Alexander is slurring words and it's a mess!"
I'm not going to lie. That got my attention, so I hopped over to the Living Oklahoma website to see if they had any videos of the episode. They did.
Check out this interview Meg conducted with some guy with The Oklahoma County Spring Livestock Show. It was like watching a cougar hit on a waiter at Flip's after a few too many vodka martinis.
See what I mean? I think my favorite question was:
“I recently did a story on a 4H... uh... gentlemen... err... high schooler... who... uh... does goats... and... I mean.. he blows them dry... he... uhm... I mean... it is... WOW!!!”
I'm not making that up. That's a real quote from a real segment on a real not-really-news program.
Here's another video where Meg and Mitch interview a florist about how to care for Valentine's Day flowers. Because it was likely on her mind, or breath, Meg asks the person if it's okay to put vodka in the water to kill bacteria...
Yikes. By the end of the segment, I thought Meg was going to go full Gabby Johnson and call the florist a "sidewindin' bushwackin', hornswagglin' cracker croaker."
I, admittedly, don't watch a lot of morning news, but I do know Meg was let go from Channel 4 in 2015, and one of the reasons was for displaying similar on-air behavior. Here's what we wrote back then:
I guess KFOR made the call because management, staff and some viewers were growing tired of Meg’s loopy, intense, lost-in-space style and demeanor. Basically, they got rid of Meg Alexander for being Meg Alexander. That sucks, because I always thought that was part of Meg’s charm. It’s what made her more fun to watch than Robin Marsh. She anchored the news like an Edmond housewife who had one too many Bud Light Limes at happy hour. You never know what you might see, and even more importantly, hear.
Out of curiosity, I checked the clips from today's show to see how Meg was doing, and if there were any that I could use for this post. I was greeted by this:
Hmmn. Apparently Meg wasn't on today's show. Considering we're in the middle of sweeps, that's a bit unusual. Also, notice how they didn't do the whole "Meg Alexander is off" thing that a channel typically does whenever a regularly scheduled anchor is missing from that day's broadcast?
Anyway, I don't know if Meg had a scheduled day off, was too hungover to work, or was simply enrolling in rehab, but I called the station to see what the deal is. I was sent to the news director's voicemail. If they want to email us with an answer, they can do so here. In the meantime, I hope everything is alright and okay with Meg. As I mentioned in the past, her slurry, goofy demeanor is part of her charm, and in a strange way, makes morning news tolerable. Also, I'd like to try some of whatever is in that coffee mug. I bet it's delicious.
