Will Tornado Chasing Eventually Become Passé?

[Hannah.Taylor]

2025 has been a banner year for tornado coverage. Live streams, images and video footage is off the scale. What use to be a "once a decade intercept" is now a weekly event. I'm just wondering if the overload is going to eventually desensitize and overload the public and chasers to point where we lose interest. I've noticed the media has already become bored with major and/or graphic events -- or the attention span is just a few hours. For me, I'm certainly not aggressive as I use to be partially because almost every shot or video scenario I can think of has been done. How many times can we watch live video of someone driving on the fringes of a huge wedge? I sometimes think people are just watching to see if someone gets killed -- as often indicated by their chat comments.

A fellow chaser on here [he can weigh in if he chooses] recently told me about how he had footage of a tornado on the Plains and none of the media companies were interested. Then one day he gets really good footage of a tornado that destroyed people's homes and causes casualties and all of a sudden a media company wanted this certain footage. He said it dawned on him the media only sells death and negativity to its viewers.

After thinking about it, it made sense to me. They want events that are "sensational". Which I fear will prompt chasers to do more reckless, brash things in regards to intercepts and getting "inside the tornado".

 

[William Monfredo]

...the media only sells death and negativity to its viewers...

The movie Nightcrawler...about that very thing. Bill Paxton is one, but
Jake Gyllenhaal's also a sociopath collecting extreme video for the news.

 

[Blake Naftel]

The movie Nightcrawler...about that very thing. Bill Paxton is one, but
Jake Gyllenhaal's also a sociopath collecting extreme video for the news.

This veers slightly off topic yet relates. The "bleeds it leads" mantra of which has translated over to "extreme video" has been around since the "Eyewitness News" and "Action News" formats of the late 1970's through the 1990's. Blood, guts and orgasms are nothing new to the local or national news media industry nor the "extreme weather" set post 1999.

Here are a series of true stories, part of a documentary that I started in 2017 but shelved; one of which involves a former TV news colleague being assaulted by Prince and The Revolution in 1984 and how the news industry favored certain stories over others in the early to mid 1980's at WEWS Channel 3 in Cleveland. Some on this thread may find this humerously interesting!

Blake


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[Tony Laubach]

A fellow chaser on here [he can weigh in if he chooses] recently told me about how he had footage of a tornado on the Plains and none of the media companies were interested. Then one day he gets really good footage of a tornado that destroyed people's homes and causes casualties and all of a sudden a media company wanted this certain footage. He said it dawned on him the media only sells death and negativity to its viewers.

After thinking about it, it made sense to me. They want events that are "sensational". Which I fear will prompt chasers to do more reckless, brash things in regards to intercepts and getting "inside the tornado".

I think there is some truth to that... Akron 2023, arguably one of the most visually stunning tornado sequences in recent memory, barely made a dent in national media. Myself along with a couple other well-known chasers were the only ones to get really good footage of that, and while there was some exposure at the National level, it certainly was nowhere near what one could argue it should've been. There's no story, other than 'wow, look at this'.

Having worked in news media as long as I have, I can tell you there's usually got to be a hefty story behind the visuals for it to 'sell'. Unfortunately that's the way of the beast. I have an entire library of video, and its amazing how much of the 'visually awesome' stuff never saw the light of day with sales cause it had zero impact to speak of. Meanwhile, some crappy, low-contrast shaky video I shot through a potato over my shoulder at 70mph ends up leading the national news on every network because it was part of an outbreak that caused all sorts of issues.

It's not new... I know it sounds awful, but it's how it goes. They're not going to pay for eye-candy video unless they can somehow cash in on the viralness of it. If there's no story, there are no eyes. It's how it works.

 

[Blake Naftel]

I think there is some truth to that... Akron 2023, arguably one of the most visually stunning tornado sequences in recent memory, barely made a dent in national media. Myself along with a couple other well-known chasers were the only ones to get really good footage of that, and while there was some exposure at the National level, it certainly was nowhere near what one could argue it should've been. There's no story, other than 'wow, look at this'.

Having worked in news media as long as I have, I can tell you there's usually got to be a hefty story behind the visuals for it to 'sell'. Unfortunately that's the way of the beast. I have an entire library of video, and its amazing how much of the 'visually awesome' stuff never saw the light of day with sales cause it had zero impact to speak of. Meanwhile, some crappy, low-contrast shaky video I shot through a potato over my shoulder at 70mph ends up leading the national news on every network because it was part of an outbreak that caused all sorts of issues.

It's not new... I know it sounds awful, but it's how it goes. They're not going to pay for eye-candy video unless they can somehow cash in on the viralness of it. If there's no story, there are no eyes. It's how it works.

I will segue onto a slightly new topic, although it relates to what Tony mentioned above.

It will be interesting to see how and when both legacy and privately funded media content groups adopt artificial intelligence in terms of selective video aggregation verses having overpaid field meteorologists, reporters, producers or in house production groups. The entire paradigm is going to shift, and everyone will need to adapt or sink. Period. This just happened at all TEGNA owned TV stations nationwide. It also is in direct relation to pushing past the old mindset of "no lead, no story, no eyeballs" to "push whats popular", a similar trend but slightly different in a way. Ai systems already showcase how selective trends, including weather or natural disaster videos, push and pay out via algorithmic ad revenue on leading platforms such as YouTube/Google, Instagram/Meta and TikTok. While the national TV "network model" still is around, nothing lasts forever and I could foresee digital hub organizations such as Storyful, AP, UPI, etc really making the push to clinch viewers, users and desperate content producers jumping at those elements to generate revenue for their respective companies. Yes, that is a direct knock at AccuWeather, The Weather Channel and WeatherNation.

The simple fact is that there is too much severe weather multimedia, new and old, out there in the multiverse and often readily available for free. This too is nothing new. While I still get requests and have producers pay a minimal usage fee for more impactful weather newsmakers or old stock film/video for documentary productions, a close up of a tornado displaying dynamic and mesmerizing vortex structure such as what is floating around TikTok via certain sky watchers is a mere 10-second "vlurb" aka a video blurb for the social media scroller. How does this equate to profits in a media world beyond 2025? We shall see.

By the way, I don't expect any comments on this at all for obvious reasons. We all have voices, but until we are deported, can still use them!

I agree that eye candy, aka "sex" or immediately gratifying imagery sells. Proof is in the pudding post 1999 to now. How artificial intelligence capitalizes on that as humans continue to be removed from the equation, remains to be seen.

Blake


BLAKE WILLIAM NAFTEL

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blakenaftel.com
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