Not Everyone Knows It's Windy   

Prerecorded weather reports and long-distance forecasts don't do the job.

Thunderstorms, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and blizzards can kill. And timely local television weather reports can save lives. For example, Bryan Norcross of WTVJ in Miami won several awards for the warnings he gave South Floridians during Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

But in some markets television weather reports are not timely or reliable. A number of stations and cable channels regularly run prerecorded reports for hours without updating them. In some other cases the weatherperson on the screen is actually broadcasting from hundreds of miles away from the area the station serves.

"That's a little bit dangerous if there's severe weather and people are relying on something out of date," says Bob Ryan, longtime weatherman for Washington, D.C.'s WRC-TV and immediate past president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

Weather information is used by most stations to boost ratings. "Whenever we do content surveys, weather and emergency weather is always at the top," says Jim Willi, executive vice president of Audience Research & Development, a consulting firm. "In markeÄ after market, viewers say they are concerned about the weather, even more so than crime and health. And the most important element of that is local weather and particularly emergency weather."

Research suggests the local weatherperson frequently is the prime reason viewers watch a particular station's newscast. Many are trained meteorologists, some with undergraduate degrees in the subject. Others may go through rigorous reviews to be certified by the AMS. Many TV weatherpersons also have access to sophisticated equipment, including Doppler radar, which can detect deadly wind shear. Furthermore, they are all backed up by dependable data from the National Weather Service.

But to make the most of the public's insatiable desire for weather information, stations sometimes cut corners. Because most stations don't have a weather staffer on duty around-the-clock, it's not uncommon for them to prerecord forecasts.

"There may be nothing wrong with that much of the time," says Willi. "But you get a fast-moving thunderstorm system approaching and you've got trouble. It's very frustrating as a viewer to turn on a TV station or cable channel and get weather that is three or four hours old."

Some stations that have no weather staff subscribe to the National Weather Network, a small, three-year-old company based in Jackson, Mississippi. The network provides weather feeds via satellite twice a day and has clients in market sizes ranging from Lima, Ohio, to Minneapolis. At times the presentation by the network's four-person staff is made to appear as if it were being fed live, complete with local references and banter with the station's news anchors.

"Our primary market is stations without a news infrastructure already in place," says Edward St. Pé, a former TV weatherman who founded and owns the service, which he says has about 65 clients. "We have a niche product. We provide weather information mostly to stations that might not otherwise do weather."

Competitors – and TV news purists – say that the service may be dishonest and inaccurate. In Austin, Texas, the service is now carried on KBVO, a Fox station whose news programming consists of airing news headlines a few times a day.

"They perpetuate the illusion that they are originating from a local studio in Austin," says Mark Murray, the meteorologist at one of KBVO's rivals, KVUE. "You would not believe how many people I run into who think they hired their own staff of meteorologists. I just think they should be more up front about that."

Murray's boss, News Director Carole Kneeland, believes the public may be misled by KBVO forecasts.

"Their generic forecast looks as legitimate as what we all do," Kneeland says. "But part of our job is to warn people of any danger with the weather and I just don't believe that type of service can respond properly."

St. Pé says there is no intention to deceive but concedes his service has some shortcomings. "Weather is a serious business and some of the criticism we've had is valid, particularly when we interface with the anchors," he says. "But we're all looking at the same computer screen for our weather information. We just have different ways of looking at the same situation. Stations have to be prepared to adjust if the weather changes severely."

News consultant Willi thinks St. Pé and his clients are being a little disingenuous. "With four people he can't possibly provide the type of 24-hour service that seems to be needed," he says. "All TV stations have a prime responsibility to warn people immediately of life-threatening and dangerous weather. A service one hundred or one thousand miles away can't adequately provide that service."

Unfortunately, local stations airing prerecorded weather reports can't do it either. l