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.