Outside Broascast Weather

I’ve been asking myself the question for ages what is the point in outside broadcast weather forecasts and I’ve yet to find an answer so I will discuss them here and see if anyone reading this can find a reason.

Weather forecasts are supposed to have a person standing in front of a weather map explaining to us what the weather is going to do. With that in mind what does having one outside add to the forecast? The answer is absolutely nothing of any use. TV bosses send forecasters out because they think it looks good plain and simple they serve no practical purpose and reduce the quality of the forecast.

Firstly the information presented won’t be very up to date as is has to be prepared in the studio before the presenter heads out or an additional forecaster has to prepare the forecast to keep it up to date which is a waste of time and money. When a presenter has to go to the studio first would it not make sense for them to do the weather there as well? Secondly there’s a technical problem how do presenters point to the map when they are outside with a graphics overlay on the screen. The answer is they can’t this is a fundamental basic of studio forecasting pointing to what you are talking about illustrating the point you are making.

Why go out for the fancy background aren’t we supposed to be looking at the weather map? Surely that’s the whole point of the forecast.

The saddest thing with them is they don’t even happen for any reason to do with the weather most of the time as some programs send their forecasters out almost every day to some location or another for no apparent reason. BBC London for example often have their forecasts from the middle of a bridge across the Thames. Is there any special weather event happing there? Of course there isn’t its all to look good. The forecasts also come live from Wimbledon for the entire Tennis Championships I thought they were weather presenters not sports reporters but given that they spend more time telling us the travel than the weather in the mornings I don’t think BBC London have a clue what they are any more.

I think there must be a competition between the programs to see who can come up with the stupidest location for a forecast. Recently I have seen weather from a Steam Railway, a Tennis Championship (see above), barefoot presenter in some water with partially clothed children (presumably to keep the child sex offenders watching happy) A man on a tennis court even holding a racket! And probably the winner so far a woman out in a small sailing boat (a forecast requiring a life jacket).

I’ve recently seen 2 outside broadcast forecasts for my local area telling me bad thunderstorms were expected overnight only to have clear skies most of the night with a couple of very small showers passing through. The weather for my area was predicted correctly for my area but by a presenter 200 miles away (Kaye Forster on BBC North West Tonight) who wasn’t even doing a forecast for my area but had a national chart at the start of her forecast with the minor showers on. While my local forecasters were out on a company jolly trying to look good she was in the studio being a good professional and doing her job properly and producing an up to date accurate forecast.

Enough with the gimmick forecasts why can’t TV channels have their forecasters indoors putting some more effort in to their work perhaps they might actually get their forecasts right then.