Did you see the article in today’s Commercial Appeal about the outrage over new weather graphics in London?
The BBC recently installed a new weather forecast program that adds the flashy animated graphics to weather forecasters’ weather maps. From the looks of it, it’s similar to what we see on this side of the pond. If the forecast calls for rain, you see animated raindrops on the weather map.
Trouble is, the Brits don’t like it.
“I really don’t need a second-rate Playstation game telling me the weather” writes Paul Dixon who posted his complaint on the BBC website. “I want to look at my little spot of England, see a bright yellow sun or a fluffy white cloud, have a look at what the wind and pressure is doing and I’m sorted.”
Wonder if that’s an opinion shared here in America? Isn’t that all we really need to know? Put a big 70’s era sun or cloud over my city on the map for tomorrow, give us a temperature and pressure and be done with it?
Companies have made a fortune off of tv stations with these 3D packages that allow us to see what rain looks like in computer animation. Maybe all the viewers really want is a dependable forecast that tells us “rain”, “clouds”, “sun”.
And I think this thinking goes beyond the forecasts. It’s content. Tell them the news, the sports scores and highlights and any interesting people or stories and make it good. That’s all local tv viewers who have stopped watching want to see.
Who needs stories about “Pets behaving badly: caught on tape” or “where are the hookers” and “how to win at the casinos”?
Dude, give me an accurate map of fronts and pressure systems and a good map of the jet stream and I can predict weather as well as any weather guesser. Sometimes better.
How many times have you seen the morning weather doof repeating the forecast “mostly cloudy today” while the weather radar shows a storm plowing right for the city? More times than I care for.