It is time for the truth to come out. The world is full of uncredited ghost writers (such as Tom Koch, who wrote most of Bob and Ray’s long-form material), and I finally decided to come clean.
I am the only person alive who would know it, but Richard Dalton  co-wrote nearly all of the 133 reviews I delivered on Computer Chronicles between 1983 and 1992. I wrote some reviews on my own, for software I used personally, such as XyWrite and dBASE (which required me to install my first copy of Windows 2 and my first mouse). 
But throughout my run, I had full-time jobs at CMP Publishing, which did not involve personal computers until I joined Windows Magazine in 1991 (my last year). Dalton, on the other hand, was the former editor of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Software Catalog, and had a weekly subscriber  newsletter called Keep-Track, for which I briefly worked in 1988. He followed software closely, and picked the software we would review. We would look at software together. I took notes and wrote the scripts, which I then presented (adding the shtick myself). During the nine-year run, I credited Dalton on the air only a few times. He said he was fine without the credit, but we split the (small) payment I received for each episode.
We were friends for 20 years, until he moved to Falmouth, Mass. During those two decades in San Francisco, we have lunch together weekly, and shot a handful of the reviews at his house. Even though he was 76 when he died, it was too soon.
You Don’t Need A Weatherman… except
As Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan once wrote, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows…” except you need one if the evening news (broadcast live) is to last precisely 28:30, and wishes to follow the show-biz adage, “Leave ‘em laughing.” Or, if you’re a serious program like The Computer Chronicles, you need a light segment at the end. I was the Chronicles’ weatherman. Not for precision time, but for the gentle smile.
Here’s how I know. I was a summer-replacement camera operator at KGW-TV, Portland, during the summers of 1970 and 1971. I learned about the weather from the back and forth on my headset between the director and the floor manager.
What I learned was why the weather segment on local news is always last and entertaining.
For commercial television reasons, the news has to end at precisely 28 minutes and 30 seconds. No more, no less. It is difficult to predict the total length of the actual news on a live show, so you need an “accordion segment” at the end. That’s not a real term; but rather one I made up because accordions get longer and shorter. Like weather segments.
When the anchor says, “Now here’s Jack Capell with the weather,” the director looks at his stopwatch and tells the floor manager, “Give him 2:15.” The floor manager uses hand signals (the mics are hot) to display the time required. Short time: just the basics. “Clear tonight, light rain tomorrow.” You didn’t need a weatherman for that forecast in Portland, Ore., my home town. Long time: read today’s high and low temperatures reported by every town from Vancouver B.C. to Ashland, Oregon.
There is a long history of amusing weather people (To be fair, Jack was an actual meteorologist). Willard Scott, longtime Today Show weatherman, was literally a clown earlier in his career. During the early days of TV there were “weather girls,” cast for their looks and not their meteorological skills; just their ability to make a segment longer or shorter.
Phil, the weatherman played by Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, is archetypal, right down to “what kind of fool would make weekend plans based on my forecast?” There used to be several weathermen across the country that drew weather cartoons.
As I said, The Computer Chronicles was easy to time because it was taped, so I was strictly needed as a light touch and not as an accordion. All 133 reviews were one minute, plus or minus a few seconds. As with television weather forecasters, the content was real. It was just wrapped in a light package. Regulars will remember the shtick at the start of some reviews. All of them were, as best as possible, light-hearted because that’s who I am. I proud of my work as The Computer Chronicles’ weatherman