As weather makes up the bulk of my capping this is one that I feel very strongly about in particular the lack of quality in the latest batch of presenters to hit the screens.
It wasn’t long ago that forecasts were done by Met Office trained forecasters now it seems anyone will do regardless of training so long as they look the part. I cap the good looking ones but only where they have the required skill to do the job well. Watching the under/unqualified presenters “work” annoys the hell out of me and some of what they broadcast is so bad it’s cringe worthy
I will pick out a couple of the new ones for praise first starting with Elizabeth Austen who is probably the best new weather presenter to appear on our screens in the last 2 years. She didn’t start that well sounding like she was on helium during her early forecasts but I think that was down to nerves and over the course of a few months this went away as she improved with every forecast and can now be considered a good proper presenter. The other is Alex Dolan who while not being the most naturally talented at weather has also worked very hard to improve and now produces forecasts to a respectable standard even though it still something she obviously finds hard.
Apart from those 2 I haven’t seen anyone new with any talent to speak off. I’m going to post a bit about some of the others here I’m sure you can work out who I’m talking about in each case.
First up is a travel news presenter. Her show now combines the travel and weather to simplify the latter probably because she sucks at it. Elsewhere there is one who doesn’t appear to understand wind directions and her “forecasts” resemble an audition tape and not a very good one at that. Best of all though when it comes to being utter crap is a complete fraud. By fraud I mean with no qualifications talent or anything good going for her or to put it another way the Ali Dia of weather, look the name up if you don’t know what I mean Southampton fans will understand straight away. The problem here is that unlike in football TV Editors don’t appear to care what standard of work gets put out on their shows and stick with putting crap on each day. The final one mentioned there has a history of forecasting sunshine for winter evenings and getting things like the year wrong, has no presenting skills, bluffs her way through forecasts dropping in the term Occluded Front every now and then to make it sound like she knows what she’s talking about. In the time since she started the only thing she has managed to do is somehow get worse and doesn’t appear to care less about her work. All that got her a better job! She shouldn’t have any sort of job in weather except standing out in it waiting for the Job Centre to open.
Why do viewers have to put up with dross like this? Would it be too much to ask to have trained people doing the job who actually know what they are talking about and know how to present? Even the good presenters picked out for praise were put on TV before they were ready another that springs to mind in that category is Clemency Ives, Finally someone who is a meteorologist but by the looks of her had never worked in front of a TV camera until she appeared on South Today. It’s presenters like Clemency that need to be found and given the necessary TV training to show their skills not existing TV presenters given the job who know sod all about weather. Worst of all with some of these new presenters is that proper presenters are being kept off screen to help them with their work why would anyone with a brain do this? To use the football example again if you had 2 options Option A: have Matt Le Tissier help Ali Dia prepare to play or Option B: play Matt Le Tissier which would you do? If you picked A then you probably work running a TV show if you picked B your far to clever to do that job.
Presenters should have the required skills do the job unaided and to a suitably high standard the day they start anyone unable to do so should be sent of to be trained to the required standard or be fired on the spot or better still not hired in the first place.
what makes me laugh is the bbc and the way they do there regional weather in the morning quite recently i had the same forcaster on two different reigions at the same time talk about fake it does not help if the forcaster is telling what the weather will be like if they dont have a clue about the area that they are forcasting for
thanks for the reply herbington. I agree with you as some of these areas do require local knowledge to get the weather accurate Wales being a prime example with lots of high ground which can lead to very different conditions within a small area. Thankfully a fair chunk of this cover presenting is done by Sara Thornton who knows her stuff and has worked in some of the Areas she covers she even shows up the presenters she covers for. the problem is when weaker presenters like Lara Lewington do it where they have no knowledge of any particular area and quite frankly not much weather knowledge full stop.
over the past three to four weeks we have had for cover elizabeth austen lara lewington sara thornton and anna church present the weather down in the west of the country it was actually sara thornton who i caught presenting the weather both at the sametime i got a rather lame reply from Aunty Beeb as to why its done they even had the chhek to tag on the end of the reply that
“I stress though this does not impair the accuracy or the professionalism of the forecast.”
that is the typical sort of response the BBC offer up they never admit to anything being wrong. It obviously affects the quality of the forecast when a presenter has to prepare multiple forecasts during the time they normally spend preparing 1 it’s not so much of a problem for Sara and Elizabeth who are very good at their jobs but Lara finds getting one right hard enough. As far as I know Anna only won some weather idol competition to get her job so isn’t much good either. Some mornings Sara has done 3 regions London, North East and Scotland each one really should have it’s own presenter considering they have to provide forecasts on BBC Local Radio as well.