Mr Pope: Channel 4 has been revamping its newscasts lately. It is a true pleasure to watch them. The weather team has been especially nice to watch. My wife, who took a meteorology class from Dr Morgan (Brigham Young University) suggested to me, that your forecasts are among the most professionally done.
The Olympic Winter Games are only a bit over a week away, and some teams are already arriving to Utah. As a host for the Latvian men's ice-hockey team, I am excited for the Games, and to meet the team here in Utah this Friday. Along with all the athletes and the media, we are expecting tens of thousands of people from other countries visiting this state. The largest majority of them are not very proficient in U.S. customary units which are currently in use in this country, to say the least. They will have no idea what "28 degrees Fahrenheit" is, or what "6 to 12 inches of snow" means, or whether "15 mph wind speed" is fast or slow. In fact, the United States, unfortunately, is the only major industrialized country left in the world that uses non-metric units. Based on all of this, I kindly ask you to please consider putting metric equivalents into your media forecasts, as a courtesy to these thousands of visitors, and the teams. It will be a tremendous help to them, and it will help U.S. citizens become more familiar with the measurement language the rest of the world uses, and which, hopefully, this country will eventually use as well. Additionally, Channel 4 can take a lead among the local news stations, which is likely to be followed by others, in introducing metric unites to the public. I appreciate your consideration to our guests: athletes, and spectators. I look forward to seeing SI units in your forecasts. Thank you. Sincerely, Nikolay O. Malyarov
