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

[Andy Wehrle]

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.

 

[Blake Naftel]

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.

 

[John Farley]

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!

 

[Blake Naftel]

I certainly hope most of them in West Michigan did today!

What an event NOT to be working in a media capacity. All reports were passed onto a few friends at the National Weather Service in GR and various affiliates.

 

[Steve Holmes]

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.

 

[Blake Naftel]

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.