Gordon Keen writes:
> Hi Martin
>
> We have had a "normal" British summer so far, so far it's been
> unpredictable and continues to defy the multi million pounds of spending
> on technological hardware that our meteorological office throws at it
> trying to forecast five days ahead - frankly they often get the overnight
> wrong, they would be better off using a strip of seaweed hung up out of
> the window!
That's a familiar concept, here. If you want to see what
over-the-top looks and sounds like, however, you should look to
our local television stations. Each one is a private business
that can spend what it wants when it wants to and the management
knows full well that if their weather department should miss the
storm of the millennium, the public will never watch them again
so it is an arms race between huge deep pockets from Channel 4,
5 or 9 in Oklahoma City or 2, 6 or 8 in Tulsa as the biggest
players in the game. As with TV in all developed areas, we've
got many more local and national sources of television, but for
generations, every major city in the US had 3 main channels, one
for each of the 3 national television networks so stations
carrying one of those networks got huge viewership/money from
advertisers and so they rolled in cash.
They spent unimaginable sums of dough on local news
technology, sports and of course, weather coverage.
People live here by the millions, but they all have a
certain bit of anxiety when tornados are hopping around, yanking
up a house here or a block of businesses and schools, there so
they want to know if twisters are headed their way so most
television stations in the middle part of the United States
lavish tons of cash on their weather departments, buying the
latest and greatest radars and computers plus hiring the
brightest meteorologists they can find or steal from other
television stations.
I think some of this is fine as it augments our National
Weather Service and we truly do need accurate warnings and
advisories but it has long since passed that and turned in to a
circus.
The chief meteorologist at each station is treated like a
god and one will see advertising with thankful people saying how
this or that person "saved my life."
You will hear those testimonials along with ominous
music, peels of thunder and the earnest voice of whoever this
station's resident weather guru happens to be. If those same
grateful folks had been listening to Channel 9 instead of 4, a
different voice would have given them the head's up to put their
heads down.
When a couple of rain clouds show up, every local TV
station kills off the normal programming and goes in to adlib
chaos in which the chief meterologist calls on field spotters
who call in on cell phones that are engineered to work
intermittently. They tell us through static and digital hick ups
that nothing much is happening yet. They almost sound wistful
that there is nothing terrible to report.
We need to keep everybody informed but whipping up
hist eria for commercial gain not only does no good but makes
people skeptical to the point where they might ignore a true
life-saving warning.
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