LET IT SNOW
Just lay off the hype and give it to us straight
by Deborah Potter

It's getting to be that time of year. When television forecasters start talking about "the white stuff." When every approaching storm could be "the storm of the century." When the newly arrived local anchor, dressed in a spiffy station-issued parka, offers helpful hints on how to drive in snow to viewers who already know.

Herewith: a plea to spare us this winter.

It won't be easy to change the status quo. Weather, as every local news director knows, is a magnet for listeners and viewers, especially bad weather. In July, when stations in San Antonio, Texas, went wall-to-wall with live flood coverage, their Nielsen numbers spiked.

Of course, coverage of weather emergencies isn't designed just to win ratings. Bryan Norcross, meteorologist at Miami's WFOR, was on duty for Hurricane Andrew 10 years ago and says bluntly, "People's lives are saved by information."

The trouble is that even a hint of severe weather often sends stations into overdrive, with team reports, special graphics, and dire warnings of what's to come. In March a year ago, stations in Philadelphia, New York and Boston had the audience in a swivet over an approaching "winter blast of historic proportions" that TV forecasters said was threatening to dump more than two feet of snow. As it turned out, the blizzard missed the East Coast almost entirely, leaving lots of people with an unneeded stockpile of milk and batteries, and a feeling they'd been deceived.

Viewers are fed up. In Portland, Oregon, recently, a focus group of listeners and viewers recruited by the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation told an audience of local TV and radio journalists to please back off. "They go live when there's one snowflake," said one participant. "It's ridiculous."

Paradoxically, the hype quotient on the air seems to have increased as predictions have improved. Computer models, satellites, and top-of-the-line radars have made forecasts much more accurate than they were even ten years ago. And stations now hire certified meteorologists to deliver the forecast, not wasp-waisted weather gals or chummy announcers.

All that expertise has come at a price, however. A super-Doppler radar system capable of zooming in on specific neighborhoods and broadcasting conditions live, can cost more than $1 million. More than 100 stations have Dopplers in use, all of them branded--Stormtracker, Skywatch, Pinpoint, you name it--and promoted on billboards, Web sites and on the air as the most accurate weather source going.

So when the technology suggests that something might be coming, newsrooms deploy the troops to keep watch and babble about it. The result: breathless live reports and non-stop weather teases, some of which are downright misleading.

To be fair, it's not always the meteorologist's fault when stations go overboard. As chief forecaster Sue Palka at WTTG in Washington told the Washington Times, "There have been times that they want to tease that we are going to have snow, and I have to say, 'I'm not putting that in my forecast."

When they do get it wrong, TV forecasters tend to become defensive. "Which would you prefer, 10 feet of ice, sleet and snow that you didn't know about?" Mark McEwen of the CBS Early Show asked USA Today. "Or occasionally we forecasters erring on the side of caution? Just let us know; we'll tailor it for you."

Let's be honest. It's not out of an abundance of caution that stations send reporters to a salt-truck depot when snow is in the forecast, or to a fishing pier when a tropical storm is churning offshore. Most of the time, there's nothing happening and little to report. But that doesn't stop the would-be Rathers from pumping up their reports, hoping to make their name the way Dan did back in 1961 when he strapped himself to a tree to cover Hurricane Carla for Houston's CBS affiliate, and quickly was hired by the network.

Ambition, deadlines, competition, and ratings all play a part in weather coverage. What's needed is some judgment. No matter how good the technology has become, there's still plenty of uncertainty in forecasting. "We're getting better," says Bill Hooke of the American Meteorological Society, "but not as fast as the hype."

Broadcasters should play it straight and tell what they don't know as well as what they do. Avoid launching "storm team coverage" until there's actually a storm. Swear off "the white stuff" and other silly weather phrases for the season. That would be refreshingly different.

But don't hold your breath. Because there's one weather prediction that comes with a guarantee: given half a chance, television will overdo it.

This article was originally published by American Journalism Review, November 2002.