Veteran weatherman Bob Ryan is set to premiere on WJLA/ABC7 during the 11 p.m. newscast tonight, his first broadcast on a channel other than WRC/NBC4 in about three decades.

Ryan signed off from Channel 4 in March, and in an interview with the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi today, finally dishes on why he made the move. In addition to being able to share duties with existing Channel 7 weatherman Doug Hill, which will apparently mean shorter work days for both men, Ryan told Farhi he felt a little stymied by the NBC Universal machine. At WJLA, he’ll work for a station that has more local autonomy, and will also be able to contribute to the original online weather coverage being planned for Allbritton start-up TBD.com.

In addition to getting back on the air after a two-month layoff, Ryan, 67, says he can’t wait to develop the weather pages for WJLA owner Allbritton Communications’ forthcoming local news Web site, called TBD.com. Ryan is a pioneer in digital weather forecasting, having started one of the first local weather sites, Weathernet4.com, in 1996.

But when WRC’s owner, NBC Universal, bought the Weather Channel and Weather.com two years ago and standardized weather reporting on all its stations’ Web sites, Ryan’s digital progeny was smothered. That’s when he began thinking about life after News4.

“I’ve got a lot of fondness for the people at NBC, but this is an opportunity to do something really exciting,” Ryan said Sunday. “There are a lot of interesting new ways of utilizing local people, people you trust, to deliver information on the Internet.

Ryan will also contribute to WTOP radio as part of his new gig.