Friday, May 26, 2006

We now interrupt weather with weather

Tim Cuprisin seems to miss the point when discussing weather coverage by local television stations. On his blog he says:

There are only two stories that suck in viewers in this market: The Packers and
the weather. Channel 4 and Channel 12 both have consistently been playing up the
weather because it's clear that when there's bad weather, viewership goes up.


The difference between the Packers and the weather is that people typically actually tune in hoping to watch the Packer game. I would argue the true reason behind viewership going up during bad weather is that people simply have to stay inside. To keep themselves entertained, they turn on the ol' boob tube. That they do so in hopes of watching the weather that's keeping them inside in the first place is doubtful.

But where Cuprisin misses the point is in how he responds to a reader's comment that the local station took over so much of the screen to track a storm. As I asked in this post, is it really necessary to take up 1/5th of a television screen to let viewers know there's a thunderstorm warning, especially when a quarter of that is the station's logo?

Nobody's saying the stations shouldn't provide the information, just that maybe they should be more considerate of why viewers are tuning in in the first place.

Sorry, Tim, it ain't the weather.

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