Presenting the Weather

Communication in meteorology is very important. It is specifically important in broadcast meteorology because your job is to deliver a forecast to viewers and provide them with the most accurate information. While people may not be watching the news as much as in the past, they will always keep up to date on the weather because that is something that affects everyone in some way or another.

Nowadays people can get their news and weather from their smartphones so the question becomes, how do networks get people to tune into the TV to watch. While a weather app can provide you with quick and brief information, it can’t give you the full details that a broadcast meteorologist could provide in a full TV forecast. I have spoken and worked with many broadcast meteorologists that have struggled with getting viewers to watch the weather on TV as opposed to an app.

One technique that some of them use is not showing current conditions on air and spending more time on upcoming weather. They do this because they believe that people can get the current conditions by looking at their phones so why waste on air time talking about it if the viewers already know that. They would rather spend their time focusing on accurately forecasting the weather for the upcoming days for the viewers. Most of the meteorologists I’ve worked with say that most viewers care about the weekend more than the work week so they try to more accurately forecast that so viewers know how to plan their weekend. This puts them at an advantage over the apps because it is hard for apps to sometimes forecast for the weekend if it is only Monday. This is one way that broadcast meteorologists are getting people to tune into the TV over an app.

As technology advances and time goes on, I can see how they will make even more changes to their weather presentations as more weather technology is released to people. For the future of communication in broadcast meteorology, while TV will still be a major source of information, I think people will shy away from it more and more. I think they will find more ways to watch weather forecasts on apps or livestream as they become more accurate.

Author: Sarah E. Kleinert

Credit: Sarah Kleinert