Former Spectrum News NY1 meteorologist Erick Adame left X, formerly Twitter, this week after telling his followers that his firing from the station last year had a profound impact on him “emotionally and financially.”
Adame was fired from the New York broadcaster in September last year after nude screenshots of him were leaked on an adult website.
“The toll this has taken on me mentally and financially is difficult to describe,” Adame wrote on X-Friday, according to the New York Post. He deleted his account shortly after the post. “I’m still making progress and doing my best to stay positive, but I need to take a break from social media.”
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Adame admitted that it was “something I had done before but had not been caught in this way before. Months later, someone sent these pictures to my mother, my boyfriend and my work.”
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Erick Adame said he still hasn’t found work in the news industry since his firing. (Erick Adame / Instagram)
He said more than a year after his firing he had been unable to find work in front of or behind the camera.
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The 40-year-old launched a direct email weather subscription service called “Weather with Erick” last spring, which he said he plans to keep running for now.
In an interview with Deadline in September, Howard Bragman, Adame’s crisis management officer, suggested that Adame could still find work despite this scandal.
“I think it’s a different generation out there,” Bragman said. “I think younger people just aren’t interested in that kind of stuff; that’s no problem. I think when you talk about people under 40, virtual sex and nude photos are pretty much a fact of life.”
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In a September interview with The Advocate, the meteorologist said he intended to view the adult webcam as a “private space” for him.
“Once I did it a few times and no one recognized me, I felt comfortable,” he told the outlet. “I thought it would be these people in this little bubble who would ever see or hear this.”
Meteorologist Erick Adame was fired from Spectrum News NY1 in New York City in 2022. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images/File)
Adame said the night he was recognized – his last webcam session – he had hundreds of viewers and, at the request of one of them, he wrote “NY1” on his chest.
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He also revealed his name, address and job, saying: “It would be hot if my boss saw me. I would love it if my boss fucked me on camera.”
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He told The Advocate: “While I was doing it, I knew it was a mistake.”
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“What people don’t know other than those close to me is that I cried afterward,” he revealed. “I didn’t really understand why I did what I did. Sometimes sex is super complicated and you immediately regret it. I literally cried because I felt the really big risk that came with what I did.”
He said months of “so much anxiety” passed as he tried to find and remove images of him from social media before he was finally brought into NY1’s human resources department and told to remove all remaining photos . After more graphic images were sent to his superiors, he was eventually fired.
“It’s been over a year and I still get emotional talking about it. “I loved my job so much,” he said, explaining that while he has not yet received a job offer in the news industry and is currently working as a restaurant host, he has had “some great conversations” with stations in the Deep South.
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“This gives me hope that the right position will be found and someone will give me the second chance I have been asking for,” he added. “I’m still very quiet about it, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s way down there, but I can see it.”