The gathering storm: How to stop the insanity over local weather break-ins

Got a better idea? Leave it at the end of this story.

I have a solution to one of Kansas City's most vexing civic issues. It's a sore spot with a lot of taxpayers in our area, yet you're not going to hear either Mark Funkhouser or Alvin Brooks address it in their upcoming mayoral debates.

I'm referring, of course, to weather interruptions on TV.

Yesterday I told you about FireKatie.com, an amusingly vicious website that ripped KCTV-5 meteorologist Katie Horner for her marathon coverage of severe storms, her tendency to dramatize things, and her station's insistence on steamrolling network programs -- all to the unending exasperation of viewers.

But all news stations in Kansas City do this, as even the website's creator Derrick Smith conceded. Indeede, he and some friends launched FireKatie.com last week in part because they were peeved at KMBC for taking off “Lost” to air nonstop weather. I also heard from fans of NBC's “Medium” who were not happy to see Gary Lezak instead of Patricia Arquette Wednesday night, either. (Smith, whose identity I wasn't able to confirm when Tuesday's story went to press, got his phone service back late Monday. He said he's never done work for KCTV or any of its competitors.)

Beyond the annoyance factor, FireKatie.com raised the cry-wolf factor. If every single storm blowing through our area merits wall-to-wall coverage, viewers soon start tuning out all storm warnings?

The site linked to a blog posting by none other than Fox 4's Mike Thompson making this point rather emphatically, and complaining about an unnamed competitor. When I reached Thompson, he said he'd removed that posting and apologized to Horner. But he stood by his original point. “Once a viewer gets in his or her mind that you're just on there yakking, it takes a long time to convince them otherwise, once you've earned their mistrust,” said Thompson, whose station stepped lightly around “American Idol” Wednesday night. “That's why I think this yodeling on air is a big disservice. I really do.”

  When it comes to solutions, however, the guys at FireKatie.com are like a lot of viewers I've heard from over the years, long on grievance and short on remedy. FireKatie.com devotes a whole page to the Emergency Alert System, the radio-TV warning service that used to be known as the Emergency (“This is only a test”) Broadcast System.

  “People would die if all we used is EAS,” retorted Kirk Black, KCTV's general manager. “That's number one. Number two, we all have to provide a certain amount of coverage that goes beyond EAS -- to the point where a few years ago got in trouble because we didn't go far enough.” (He's referring to a station in another market that was fined for not giving closed-captioned alerts during its wall-to-wall storm coverage.)

  Now, you may say the GM doth protest too much. But other general managers in this market have -- quietly, less insistently -- made the same point. The reason local TV stations are subject to license reviews, indecency fines and other red tape that cable channels bypass is because, in the government's eyes, broadcasters serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”

  A more credible case could be made that we don't need to see Horner and her wavy-gravy weather screens all night long -- a simple text crawl and updates during the breaks will suffice. Except for one inconvenient truth: When local stations go wall-to-wall with storm coverage, people watch.

  At 9:30 p.m. last Wednesday, when four local stations were doing little more than showing I-35 and Southwest Boulevard under water, three out of four Kansas Citians had TVs on -- and 48 percent of them were tuned to local weather coverage (not counting the three additional options on cable).

  So if the people upset at Katie Horner and her fellow preempt-ologists are just a small if highly vocal minority, do we really have a problem here?

  The answer is yes. What other major community corporation would put up with this kind of well-organized protest from its key customer base? Sprint? Applebee's? Yellow Roadway? They'd have PR people working to smooth those ruffled feathers the next day. But all too often, I hear from viewers who turn to me because they're tired of getting the phone tree at the local affiliate, and they find the official defense of “safety first” smug and condescending.

Whether Kansas City broadcasters want to admit it or not, the virus of weather rage is now loose. But there is a cure. KMBC-9 brought out the vaccine last week.

The morning after KMBC preempted “Lost,” its schedulers were on the phone with ABC in New York. The network gave permission to reair “Lost,” and Channel 9 put it on at 10:30 p.m. Saturday. That gave the station, the newspaper and the electronic listings guides enough time to get the word out. On a weekend night, viewers without recorders could justify staying up a little later.

  Above all, it quieted the mob, which had earlier bombarded the station with hundreds of messages and, oddly enough, created an anti-KCTV website. By contrast, KSHB and KCTV simply reaired the programs as quickly as they could, which means almost no one saw them.

  Instead of adding insult to injury, all stations could follow Channel 9's lead and devise a sensible preemption plan that respects the viewers who aren't affected by severe weather.

You can't do anything about the weather, but this is a storm front broadcasters can do something about.

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What would you do?

Got a better idea than mine for Kansas City TV stations during severe storms? Post 'em here. Note: General complaints about weather coverage should go here.