General Weather/Earth Sciences Topics > Weather in TV & Movies
The Weather Channel and CBS
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K2GW:
Over the the past two weeks I was surprised to see the CBS Evening News twice use The Weather Channel's Mike Bettes to talk about storms that were happening. TWC was given credit and their logo was shown. They used that virtual studio they occasionally use.
CBS normally uses weather forecasters from one of their network owned affiilates to do weather stories. Lonnie Quinn from WCBS New York often handles it, but he's on vacation this week. They did use Vanessa Murdock from WCBS on Sunday night.
Turns out CBS is also doing this on their morning news show as well, as the article below states. Obviously, TWC only worked with NBC when it owned them, but it's five years since they severed that arrangement. I wonder if that contract had a five year non-compete clause that has now expired?
https://www.newscaststudio.com/2022/01/10/cbs-mornings-weather-channel/
DaleReid:
Wasn't the Weather Channel the ones who decided to give names to all sorts of storms, including winter ones a few years ago?
All for ratings, and ego, in my opinion.
Maybe they have a strong scientific background, but that kind of grandstanding just rubs me the wrong way.
That degrades their professionalism. If it wasn't the weather channel that did that, I apologize, but I'm pretty sure they did.
K2GW:
Actually that was started during their dark ages when NBC Universal owned them and turned them into Joking with Roker.
Since their sale to someone more attuned to their real purpose in 2018, they're regained a lot of their old pre-NBC panache in my opinion.
Of course, it's tough for any weather TV service to complete with all of the weather data now available to anyone with a phone or PC, so if adding silly names to winter storms to get the public to actually pay attention to the weather and tune in, I can overlook that.
DaleReid:
Good to know.
I used to get them off a 13' parabolic C-band downlink so very many years ago when satellite distribution was the first to carry start ups like them.
Anyway, living near Mpls/St.Paul we have several excellent OTA TV stations (also stream) and some of the subcarriers have a lot of weather on them, including the PBS station with constant loop.
All the stations have true meteorologists, and one (WCCO) has four, I think. One of them is going through a Ph.D. program right now, not sure in what, but while having to be a little glossy, they do a nice, basic science approach to the weather, and Lisa, the Ph.D. person has frequent educational pieces of a minute or so without boring the ordinary viewers.
But as you say, with all the free (and relatively low cost subscription info (WeatherTap is one I like) on line and fortunately high speed internet, the need for the constant on-camera personalities has dwindled.
thanks for the chat, and the update that the owners are trying to regain a trusted reputation.
K2GW:
Cool. In St. Paul, you have a good meteorologist in Nicole Mitchell on KTSP-TV and Minnesota Public Radio.
She used to be on the Weather Channel and is currently a Lt Colonel in the Air National Guard commanding a weather flight. Her whole ANG and AF Reserve career has ben in the Air Weather Service, and she previously was an aerial Weather reconnaissance Officer with the Hurricane Hunters.
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