Wall-to-Wall Coverage. A Thing of the Past?

Joined
Jan 31, 2017
Messages
111
Location
Joplin, MO & Iowa City, IA
As I write this, NWS San Angelo reports "a confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado" in Coke County, Texas, part of the San Angelo-Abilene TV market. Yet I have not found a station doing live coverage, either on-air or on Facebook. Just graphics of tornado warnings.

In the past year, I've seen this often enough, and in enough markets, to believe it's a trend: Stations either doing no coverage, or just having occasional cut-ins with tornado warnings active in their markets.

What gives?
 
As I write this, NWS San Angelo reports "a confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado" in Coke County, Texas, part of the San Angelo-Abilene TV market. Yet I have not found a station doing live coverage, either on-air or on Facebook. Just graphics of tornado warnings.

In the past year, I've seen this often enough, and in enough markets, to believe it's a trend: Stations either doing no coverage, or just having occasional cut-ins with tornado warnings active in their markets.

What gives?
I thought it was an FCC rule for public safety that a tornado warming required local TV stations to do continuous coverage as long as tornado warming was in effect in their DMA. However, it may be a regional, like where tornado warnings are less common.
 
FWIW, there was wall-to-wall coverage in OKC for many hours on the 27th (I saw over 4 hours between TV in a restaurant and in my room, and saw neither the start nor the end of it). So it is not a thing of the past everywhere. In some areas, though, it is done more when larger population centers are at risk.
 
It is wall-to-wall in Wichita.

However, there is no FCC rule that TV stations have to do wall-to-wall or even that they have to cover tornadoes at all. The FCC requirement is that radio and TV stations must be operated "in the public interest." In the history of broadcastingly, only one station (WRKO in NYC) has ever lost its license for that reason.

It is possible the ABI-SJT market doesn't even have sufficient staffing to do wall-to-wall in this era of reduced TV staffing. The Weather Channel laid off a bunch of people earlier this week, including Mike Slidel.
 
In OKC, weather is big business. I expect wall-to-wall there. Wichita, too.

Elsewhere, it could be a staffing issue, as @Mike Smith suggested. It could be, too, that the people who complained to the mets about their TV golf being interrupted took their complaints up the food chain to the station bosses, who said, "Don't interrupt TV golf!" I can't imagine this decision being made by the weather folk. I don't want to call anyone out, but last year, an Omaha station went back to regular programming with an active tornado warning in its coverage area - and not out on the fringe. There are other examples.
 
Internet coverage, like Ryan Hall provides is the future of broadcast meteorology. It only takes a few people to produce a show and the cost is a fraction of having a large operation and studio.

I'm really surprised more outlets have not gone to online coverage (as opposed to a simulcast of TV coverage). Obviously, local stations are required to cover major events, but they often skip smaller events or sneak attacks. I hope Ryan can execute a business 101 tactic and capture the Internet market ASAP. He's great on major events, but missed the last few days. To do this right, you (or a back-up person), needs to be able to go on the air immediately when something worthy hits. A large portion of his audience are people looking for thrills and near death, e.g., chasers getting too close, so there is a major audience all the time.
 
Staffing issues, as Mike noted, is indeed a causation for the lack of coverage for certain affiliates that fall within traditional local television [and radio] broadcast media, even for markets where severe weather is more prevalent and warrants W2W coverage. Some stations do excel better than others, but 100% agree with Warren that the internet steaming model such as the Ryan Hall "brand" is where broadcast meteorology is headed or in many cases, already has rooted. It's also a push away from the suit and tie and/or primary color dresses for on-air talent and leans more towards the casually dressed "at home" podcast studio look that clicks with viewers. Severe weather coverage and storm chasing is infotainment, now more so than ever before. Regardless, that coverage style requires a balanced personality, energy, quality delivery skills and a knowledgeable team behind the scenes to make it happen. Solo efforts will not cut it. Technology and staffing have become so efficient than anyone with the funds to do so can build a "home" studio, yet brand and presentation are key to that formula, already well established via RH'Y. Analytics and viewer numbers don't lie.

Station ownership groups [Nexstar, Sinclair, Scripps, Gray, etc] and most national legacy media have desperately clung to a very classic, albeit outdated style of weather presentation in terms of severe weather delivery. There is very little push or room for streaming experimentation when a format, established decades ago, still technically works. Further pushback on live streamed storm chasing was also culled by many station groups after the fatal [streamed] storm chasing events of 2017 resulted in eventual lawsuits. Live and drives, as they were frequently referred to, quickly became a big liability in an already financially unstable industry. Live storm trackers clearly are still prevalent, but the majority are not in anyway directly on station or company payrolls aside from perhaps 2%, and those who are often have other duties and obligations attached to the "job title" mix.
 
. Live storm trackers clearly are still prevalent, but the majority are not in anyway directly on station or company payrolls aside from perhaps 2%, and those who are often have other duties and obligations attached to the "job title" mix.

Good morning, everyone,

In Wichita, each station has a meteorologist who goes out with a photographer to chase. These are full-time station employees. It is encouraging that, even in this day of reduced staffing, the ICT stations still have as many as 4.5 or even 5 full-time meteorologists. How long that will last is anyone's guess, but their audience research tells them that, in the Great Plains, weather is --- by far -- the number one reason people watch TV news.
 
My station here in Madison, WI (where we get a decent amount of severe weather; but large, long-tracked E/F3+ tornadoes are an about one every 10-15 years phenomenon in our DMA) has a policy of being wall-to-wall on air any time a tornado warning is active in our viewing area. That did run into a staffing issue once in my memory, on a day when no severe weather was expected and someone at the NWS Milwaukee got trigger-happy and issued what was effectively a bogus warning while our meteorologist on duty was on his dinner break. I was watching from home (I work mornings) and we had our evening anchor voice over the "Sky Tracker" (basically a wide shot radar loop), repeating the NWS warning text verbatim, until the meteorologist got back.
 
Station ownership groups [Nexstar, Sinclair, Scripps, Gray, etc] and most national legacy media have desperately clung to a very classic, albeit outdated style of weather presentation in terms of severe weather delivery. There is very little push or room for streaming experimentation when a format, established decades ago, still technically works. Further pushback on live streamed storm chasing was also culled by many station groups after the fatal [streamed] storm chasing events of 2017 resulted in eventual lawsuits. Live and drives, as they were frequently referred to, quickly became a big liability in an already financially unstable industry. Live storm trackers clearly are still prevalent, but the majority are not in anyway directly on station or company payrolls aside from perhaps 2%, and those who are often have other duties and obligations attached to the "job title" mix.

There are some changes emerging here. Decision makers are recognizing that the future of television as we know it does not lie in the over-the-air legacy broadcasts of the past as increasing segments of the populace have "cut the cord" and obtain news either from digital streaming platforms or other Internet-related sources that may or may not be coterminous with legacy titans (e.g., NYT, WSJ, ABC, NBC, CNN, etc.). I cannot speak for all of those corporate entities, but at least for Gray, stations (at least ours) live stream wall-to-wall coverage via their social media pages (usually FB, maybe X too) and also provide a live stream feed via the website and the news and/or weather apps. I'm pretty sure there is a push for synchronicity here market-wide but individual variances may be allowed as staffing or production needs so permit. There is also a gradual emergence of a 24-hour live weather stream concept that, depending on staffing, may or may not have one of the mets actually producing content solely for that stream throughout their shift. We recently launched something like this in a market size 178. I suppose time will tell if ad revenues push weather content in this direction long-term or not, but that's where things seem to be headed.
 
It's actually sad how many people my age ("old millennial," 38) and younger don't know that even after "cutting the cord," you can still get over-the-air television for free with a cheap antenna; with all the major network programming (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, and the multiple subchannels all those stations have now, mine has five in addition to our primary affiliate programming) and local news including live severe weather coverage.

We don't employ "storm trackers" as such (probably due in part to staffing/liability constraints and partly due to the extreme rarity of high-end tornado situations in our area); but since I chase on my own time, if I'm going out locally I will send an e-mail note to our newsroom and weather department to watch for my feed on the app I have that allows me to stream video from my phone back to the station using the same system our photographers/MMJs use out in the field.
 
It's good to read from someone still "within" the local TV news/weather scene, as my last "local" experience was 2017 and dated back to 1998. Prior to seven years ago, there were many attempts to have a paid staffer, such as myself, who occupied a MMJ/reporter/weather roll to go out and provide live reports to accompany W2W coverage when needed. I noticed a big jump in the paid/staffed storm tracker trend, outside of tried and true OKC, ITC and Dallas DMA's when bonded cellular tech such as LiveU, TVU, and streaming services became more available/reliable around 2010/onward. In West Michigan where I spent the bulk of a broadcast weather/news career, W2W days were/are rare, but did happen. Typically only one or two of the four remaining ABC-NBC-CBS-FOX affiliates go into W2W mode, but it really takes a substantial severe weather threat to make that happen. All stations in this DMA and most other medium/smaller markets such as Madison face staffing and personnel shortages from reporters/MMJ's, desk ops to producers, and fewer still actually pick up or have a solid meteorological thought process on the significance of specific events until something [such as a tornado threat] is already occurring [a trend I've noticed over the last 10 years].

Agree that local weather is still the #1 reason why anyone pops onto a local television newscast most of the time. As niche weather event streaming begins to take precedence in the next 5-10 years similar to present platforms/presenters, will wise station groups attempt to adopt that very successful model as already showcased as a awareness and financial driver on YouTube? That mode has already been mirrored by several national weather media groups. Time will tell, but severe weather live coverage, in some form, will always continue to exist in order to provide a public service, in whatever form modern media eventually takes.
 
In West Michigan where I spent the bulk of a broadcast weather/news career, W2W days were/are rare, but did happen. Typically only one or two of the four remaining ABC-NBC-CBS-FOX affiliates go into W2W mode, but it really takes a substantial severe weather threat to make that happen. All stations in this DMA and most other medium/smaller markets such as Madison face staffing and personnel shortages from reporters/MMJ's, desk ops to producers, and fewer still actually pick up or have a solid meteorological thought process on the significance of specific events until something [such as a tornado threat] is already occurring [a trend I've noticed over the last 10 years].
I certainly hope most of them in West Michigan did today!
 
Thanks everyone for your thoughts on this issue. @Mike Smith and @Blake Naftel, I, too, have read that weather is the main reason people watch TV news. Why, then, would stations cut back on the quality of their number-one draw. Seems like slitting their own throats.

@Warren Faidley, you are probably right that Ryan Hall and his cohorts are the future of broadcast meteorology. I am queasy about that. A met with nationwide coverage cannot know the local factors and microclimates for every market. I still believe in local experience and pattern recognition, but what I want rarely matters. In TV, we can probably expect more of the partnerships I hear on the radio side: Mets from private forecasting firms outside the region brought on to do severe-weather coverage. Outsourcing, y'know.

I wonder if any met schools have added a career track for "meteorologist entrepreneur," with classes required in Internet tech and the basics of running a business.

Last year, Denver and Colorado Springs stations skipped live coverage of some rural tornadoes. Yes, they affected far more prairie dogs than people, but there could have been the occasional person in the path, or on the roads. Professional mets sometimes get smug and dismissive of the amateurs supposedly working in their pajamas in Mom's basement. But the more dangerous weather that stations fail to cover on-air or online, the more people will turn to the web-based weather folks. And stations will deserve to lose an audience.
 
Thanks everyone for your thoughts on this issue. @Mike Smith and @Blake Naftel, I, too, have read that weather is the main reason people watch TV news. Why, then, would stations cut back on the quality of their number-one draw. Seems like slitting their own throats.

Beyond the obvious draw for broadcast weather or severe weather W2W coverage still to this day, the primary reason/s for station budget/personnel cuts within traditional mainstream legacy broadcast media, regardless of local or national market size, is primarily due to large scale group ownership consolidation of affiliates [i.e. Sinclair, Scripps, Nexstar, etc], sagging station ad revenues outside of election years, shifting audiences moving away from traditional appointment news/weathercasts to niche streamed weather news/events, a highly eroded public dissatisfaction with the overall mainstream media, poor full and part time employee salaries and overall lack of job satisfaction amongst station employees which effects overall ability to do quality coverage. This is not all stations, but broadly applies and I speak from 20 years prior experience within both local and national television weather/news operations.

It’s extremely hard to keep on producers, editors, photojournalists, reporters/MMJ's or even broadcast meteorologists for low wages. Burnout amongst many is quite a real thing. Job duties have also been consolidated into a one-stop shop [MMJ/Editor/Assistant News Director/Weathercaster/Tech] at many small/medium size and even national. That’s a lot to juggle, can be quite stressful, and leads to a lesser quality effective information/communication. TV weather and news is not what it was from 15-20 years ago, and even further removed from the prime heyday of live weather coverage from the late 1970’s through early 2000’s. Local news/weather is, more so now than previously, also a revolving-door of individuals who work for 1-3 years, leave, go elsewhere or typically change careers entirely – including broadcast meteorologists or weather producers. That causes substantial staffing issues and directly affects the public service aspect for local stations.

More people are turning to individuals such as RH’Y for real-time weather information because it’s instant, ready to stream [on phones or television], non-paywalled or [yet] regulated by Google/YouTube – regardless of being connected to a community/region or not. The later [regulation] could become a reality for many channels in time and in some respects is already happening, although if certain platforms bring $$$ and viewers in for Google, that format remains for the time being.
 
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