Have Never Seen The Weather Channel Perform Worse

[Mike Johnston]

I stayed up late this past Saturday night and into Sunday morning to follow the deepening storm system over the MS and OH valleys. There was a truly significant and widespread severe weather event ongoing from southern Michigan all the way down to Mississippi. At one time, I think about 22 counties in Indiana alone were under a "blanket" severe thunderstorm warning. There was an obvious widespread bow echo, with some individual cells forward speed at 70, 80+ mph, and one even showing at 122mph! The nocturnal jet was over 60 kts, and the surface low deepening by the hour. All the while, The Weather Channel programming was totally asleep to this event! Even as a new tornado warning covering 3 counties in Indiana was issued - the OCM was talking about a "decreasing" threat of any tornado overnight. TWC was re-playing a bunch of needless tropical weather updates, showing footage of skiiers in the western mountains, playing up the NYC marathon. In short -- everything but covering the significant severe weather event then in progress under their very nose. I realize this is commercial television, but also supposed to be 24-hour weather coverage? What a joke!

 

[Anthony Silver]

Those are the reasons why I never watch them anymore. Over the past couple of years, I've noticed they have a tendancy to downplay or turn their back on severe weather events. Now it seems they are more focused on travel discussions and gardening tips.

 

[Nick Smith]

TWC was showing taped programming from 2-4 AM EST. They taped the 1-2 AM period and replayed it for the next two hours. Now, The Weather Classroom is on (4 AM).

 

[B Ozanne]

As of 8am EST all the major news networks are in breaking news mode....TWC is still in morning talk show mode, actually they are talking about Dora the Explorer.

 

[rdale]

People always tune to local TV when severe weather strikes, so expecting them to ramp up coverage with no ratings results doesn't make sense. This isn't a big market getting hit...

 

[Jay McCoy]

Its easy and obvious. They just need to rename themselves "The Travel and Gardening weather Channel" since the only weather they cover is to travle destinations and to tell if it will be sunny enough to garden and even tell you how to garden. When it comes to actual wx they are the joke of the industry. I doubt 10% of their staff has ever seen a tornado or baseball hail. And if they did it was as a kid or something. Ofcourse if there is a tropical depression within 5000 miles of the us they cover it 24/7. Even as an f-4 rips through some city. I rememeber back in 98 (i think) when Oklahoma City was being hit with a tornado on the North side right through Frontier Land and they said 1 line about a tornado warning and then spent 5 minutes talking about how quiet the tropics were. And that was at 50 after. The supposed "severe wx update".

 

[Robert Dewey]

Originally posted by Jay McCoy
Its easy and obvious. They just need to rename themselves \"The Travel and Gardening weather Channel\" since the only weather they cover is to travle destinations and to tell if it will be sunny enough to garden and even tell you how to garden.

And their ratings would stay the same - That's who their target audience and their largest market share is...

If you want play by play of events then either get online and follow along, or tune into the local station for the affected area... A business guy in southern CA traveling to NY probably doesn't care about severe thunderstorms elsewhere...

 

[Angie Norris]

Nothing new for them...remember Nov 10, 2002? Reruns of Storm Stories on while an F3 was killing people about 20 miles from my house in TN and not one word while we had an F1 about 10 miles away. The local news is so much better for local severe coverage. If it's not happening in Atlanta, it's not important to TWC.
Angie

 

[j_scheerer]

I doubt your weather network is nearly as bad as Canada's.

 

[Jay McCoy]

Originally posted by j_scheerer
I doubt your weather network is nearly as bad as Canada's.

Thats just it. it isnt a weather network.. it is now a home and garden network. they talk more about gardening than they do storms. If I want that kind of info i will turn it to HGTV!! They are a waste of airwaves!!

 

[j_scheerer]

Originally posted by Jay McCoy
Thats just it. it isnt a weather network.. it is now a home and garden network. they talk more about gardening than they do storms. If I want that kind of info i will turn it to HGTV!! They are a waste of airwaves!!

Ours is pretty much an infomercial for the Kyoto accord.

 

[Jay McCoy]

Originally posted by j_scheerer+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(j_scheerer)</div>

<!--QuoteBegin-Jay McCoy

Thats just it. it isnt a weather network.. it is now a home and garden network. they talk more about gardening than they do storms. If I want that kind of info i will turn it to HGTV!! They are a waste of airwaves!!

Ours is pretty much an infomercial for the Kyoto accord.[/b]

OK you win!! :lol:

 

[Aric Cylkowski]

I figure if HGTV gets a weather ticker, TWC will suffer from actual competition .

 

[Ronnie Bradley]

The only thing I like about TWC is the local forecasts, if I'm away from home and catch it somewhere else, like at the airport or at work, for example. Fox news was reporting on the Indiana killer tornado. I didn't check to see if TWC said anything about it (I doubt if they said anything much...).
Anyways, I have GR 2 and 3, access to satellites and extended forecasts. So at my place, TWC has been made redundant!!!

IMHO, The Weather Channel needs to be forked. One branch can focus on gardening tips, and whatnot and the other branch can focus on the hardcore crowd (like that is going to happen!!) with wind barbs, isobars with millibar numbers, upper and mid level wind charts and so on... and when severe weather strikes or is imminant, by all means REPORT the bloody stuff!!
TWC had good intentions when it started out but alas, marketing took over

 

[Karen Politte]

I know this is a TWC thread.....but rather than post fodder I thought I'd just use this space for my morning rant.....

So - what is everybody else's count on the amount of tornado-hurricane blunders by FOX?

I've been watching for about an hour so far.......and I have counted no less than about five separate occasions on which FOX have totally confused tornadoes with hurricanes. It's really pretty sad that the lowest common denomination of basic media researching and accuracy no longer applies in today's media. Every one of them have truly been brainwashed by spending all their time this year on reporting hurricanes.....not that that's any excuse.

Their last blunder on this front was what spurred me on to post about this......."All this occurring well east of where you normally think of Hurricane Alley, of course....". Arrrggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's really quite painful to watch.....

Was nice to see Paul Sirvatka being interviewed as one of the only intelligible guests this morning, though.

KR