[rant]
There are only three things we all need to know when watching the weather report on local TV news:
- How hot/cold did it get today
- What’s going on right now
- What’s it going to be like tomorrow and over the next couple days
That’s it. Three things. Heck, you could remove #2 from that because you can look outside and figure out what’s going on right now with the weather. (“…sun is shining, sky is blue, don’t see any cows sailing across the sky — nice day!”)
In my hometown, the weather guy/gal usually gets between three and four minutes out of the 30-minute newscast. I trust that’s the same pretty much anywhere in the U.S. On the station we watch most often, the weather guy fills his time with “tower cam” video shots that show absolutely nothing, satellite doppler-type stuff, water vapor outlook, jet stream data, cloud cover (even on sunny days), the three things I listed above, and then he ends by spending 30-45 seconds showing “weather photos” sent in by viewers and then chit-chatting about how nice the photos are (even when they’re not) with the chatty news anchors.
Oh, and he’s shown in a small box on the screen so that all this “weather plus” data (like temperatures of cities in Idaho and Oregon that I’ve never heard of) can scroll and rotate on the screen like CNN on steroids.
It sucks! For every 10 seconds of useful weather information, there’s 20 seconds of crap. And then they wrap it up with a nice smile and a corny joke.
Just give me the #%@%$# weather!!!!!!!
[/rant]
2 Comments
Wait… What’s a newscast?
I’m sure I could identify with your rant if I did watch the news. Or television. While half joking here, you’re a ‘net addict like the rest of us… Why not just add the appropriate items to your iGoogle page? 🙂
1.) I don’t use iGoogle.
2.) We watch local and national news, and read the local newspaper, because we’re trying to teach the kids to be interested in what’s happening in the world around them, and not spend their loves getting lost in video games and the Internetz.
🙂