The
icy rain that covered the city almost two weeks ago (January 13) brought the bizarre state of
TV weather reporting into sharp relief as almost everybody but emergency crews
and reporters avoided the cold light of day. On the face of it, the local
weathercasters and their colleagues at all four stations did a terrific job,
anticipating the conditions precisely and moving information on school and work
cancelations with remarkable speed. This was TV news at its most useful,
staying on top of a breaking story with unflagging energy. Despite plentiful
footage of Texas Department of Transportation personnel trying to de-ice the
major thoroughfares, it was obvious very early that morning that, as per usual,
the city could not handle a serious freeze, and there was nothing for it but to
stay home and bake cookies. (By the way, couldn’t the police, EMS, and other
essential services simply buy tire chains and tell the state crews to stay
home, saving a small fortune in overtime and road salt?)
At the same time the coverage had a quality of a climactic event, and later on
it was easy to imagine the weathercasters lying around exhausted, perhaps
indulging in a furtive cigarette as they savored the afterglow. Weathercasting
is a frenzied affair nowadays, touched by an aura of impending apocalypse. The
forecasters seem to be in continuous rehearsal for catastrophes that are always
hours away from threatening life and limb before fizzling out. Good, soaking
summer rains are awarded the status of raging thunderstorms as they head into
town. Insomniacs and graveyard shift workers wonder whether KXAN’s Jim Spencer
is ever allowed to sleep, and everyone is so grateful for rain that the
constant warnings flashed across their television screens end up looking silly.
A penchant for hyping the weather often works against the improved accuracy
afforded by satellite images and computer projections, and sometimes the
projections misfire. Following this month’s ice event, every station in town
warned that a reprise of Monday the 13th would hit on Friday the 17th, and it
didn’t happen.
Decade after decade, market surveys in every part of the country have
demonstrated that a majority of viewers tune into their local news mainly to
see what the weather will be like the next day. The very existence of the
Weather Channel underscores the field’s unwavering popularity. Given such a
reliable audience magnet, news directors all over the country behaved like
archetypal Americans when economic pressures ratcheted up to intense levels:
They more or less went crazy. Faced with competition from cable and the
expansion of the Fox Network into local markets, they succumbed to a technology
fetish, investing in arsenals of imaging systems where one or two satellite
pictures would do. Broadcast consultants made a pile pushing the deployment of
snazzy computers and dramatic presentations, leading inevitably to the
overhyping of ordinary weather events. Twice-a-night weather reports multiplied
like loaves and fishes into spot coverage barrages morning, noon, and night,
and the time allotted to the weather segment on the six- and 10-o’clock news
shrank from three-and-half minutes to as little as two-and-a-half, or less.
Five and seven-day forecasts became common, flying in the face of common sense
about the changeable nature of weather. Once a relatively straightforward job,
being an on-air meteorologist now involves running a battery of computers,
plowing through reams of downloaded data, appearing before the cameras many
times a day, and generally working harder for less money.
These trends are as evident in Austin as anywhere else. Except for the market
underdog, Fox’s KTBC, which still puts on a relatively low-tech and
unpretentious weathercast, all of the Austin affiliates are heavily invested in
the electronic paraphernalia, various combinations of the Earthwatch 3-D gizmo,
Doppler radar, standard satellite images, and linked weather stations at
regional schools. Their weather segments are frenetic and overdone even though
the general quality of forecasting remains high. Money is visibly being spent
in yet another instance of superfluous marketing mania.
As a rule, media professionals do not gripe about their jobs for attribution,
employment opportunities not falling like the gentle rain as in decades past.
At the American Meteorological Society’s annual Weathercasting Conference,
however, members are given the chance to ventilate their frustrations
anonymously, and several dozen pages of comments from 1993 and 1994 are posted
on the Internet. They are revelatory. Weathercasters complain of all the trends
cited two paragraphs ago, and more: weather wannabes with mail-order degrees in
meteorology, know-nothing broadcast majors hired for looks, and fearsome job
insecurity (it’s worth noting that the predictable litany about lack of
advancement opportunities for white males is outweighed by criticism of
underqualified hirees, though the two complaints are sometimed linked).
One comment from the 1994 conference in Dallas was especially eloquent: “I
grew up in New Orleans, watching a guy named Nash Roberts do weeknight weather
on the local news. He was not attractive, he was not funny, and he had no
colorful whistles or bells… but he was interesting, accurate, and respected.
Thirty years later I find myself in the same business as Nash Roberts. And yet,
in many ways, it is not the same business. I see two conflicting trends in
broadcast meteorology today. As the National Weather Service expands and
improves, more and more information becomes available to broadcasters. New
generation satellite imagery and Doppler radar data are two primary examples.
Quickly, private weather vendors respond with ever more animated and detailed
graphical products requiring more and more knowledgeable on-air
interpretations. Meanwhile, however, the broadcast news industry seems headed
in the opposite direction — what one might call the `dumbing-down’ of the
news. Knowledgeable journalists are out — attractive `broadcast majors’ are
in. Gathering news is out — gathering profits is in. For the local weather
segment, this means, among other things, less meteorology (`the viewers don’t
want a science lesson, they want to know what to wear’) and less emphasis on
anything but local weather (`nobody cares what’s going on in other parts of the
country.’) So weathercasters are on the one hand expected to keep up with the
latest 3-D satellite loops and Doppler radar displays, and on the other hand
warned to keep it short, simple, and entertaining. As these conflicting trends
continue, I suspect you’ll find television stations hiring fewer people that
actually know what they’re talking about, and more people that merely sound
like they know what they’re talking about. Hopefully, there will always be
exceptions — television stations in especially weather-sensitive markets like
tornado alley or the corn belt, or perhaps the odd station managed by
especially professional people. And perhaps one day consultants and
broadcasters will decide that television news can be both intelligent and
profitable. But I’m not holding my breath.”
Well, he or she is right. People do want to know what to wear tomorrow, and
they’re not all that interested in other parts of the country. Trained
meteorologists have always known a lot more than they can tell in their
allotted time. Still, that training acted as a breaker on weathercasting style.
The strength of the old-fashioned weathercasting resided in its prudence. Since
they were not frazzled from running an electronic light show and responding to
absurd market pressures, the old breed of weathercasters knew when to raise the
alarm and when to call a shower a shower.
OOPS
In the 1996 Top Ten column that ran two issues ago, I mistakenly reported thatKEYE’s news operation had taken the lead in the ratings. This was not true, and
I apologize to my readers. For the quarterly ratings period that ended in
November of last year, the local news rankings are as follows:
6pm broadcast: KVUE (26% share of viewers); KXAN (17%); KEYE (15%); KTBC
(15%).
10pm broadcast: KVUE (29%); KEYE (15%); KXAN (14%); KTBC (14%).
This article appears in January 24 • 1997 and January 24 • 1997 (Cover).