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.

***

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.

 

Comments

[Ed Dravecky III]

Every home should have a small, portable radio for exactly these kinds of weather emergencies. Your TV is almost certainly useless once the power goes out or the cable goes down but a battery-operated or hand-cranked radio costs just a few dollars and could save your life.

If public safety is really driving these program interruptions then perhaps they could take a few minutes every month or two during a newscast or run a series of PSAs to discuss the sorts of things every home should have in the event of a weather or other emergency.

[Brian]

..."A more credible case could be made that we don’t need to see Horner and her wavy-gravy weather screens all night long..."

LOL! Oh my god, Aaron - I couldn't stop laughing! I doubt anyone born before 1960 caught the humor - but I did...it was one of your best lines ever! Keep up the good work....

.... and remember... "Don't take the Brown Acid....Stay away from the Brown Acid!"
Too funny!

[The DB]

I think it's sad that Aaron got sucked into Derrick's self promotion site. He broadcast fire Katie, wall to wall, while his forum he backpedaled worse than a circus performer. Ya know when Derrick pulls the forums off his slanderous site, you know something is wrong. The posters are not agreeing with him, his minions get on and attack (sometimes with obscene comments) people with differing viewpoints, and try to explain his point without disclosing his agenda, his hidden agenda, whatever it is. He claims to have all the media outlets (internet, radio, etc) clamoring for his voice, yet when I check on the sources, I find very few posts. I find more self promotion. Derrick is exposed, as they say, the self proclaimed emperor has no clothes.

[Magic_Al]

Where I am, in the Sioux Falls, SD market, even text crawls are annoying to HDTV viewers because the local stations are incapable of originating HD digital programming. They can pass along the digital network signal, but their own programming is analog that is converted to digital at the transmitter. If they alter network programming in any way, such as by adding a text crawl, the entire picture is reduced to analog-quality standard definition. During a winter storm a list of the next morning's closing announcements runs at the bottom of the screen continuously, deactivating HDTV for the evening. Just to rub it in, the stations also operate 24-hour local weather channels on the digital sideband where people who want that information could go instead.

[Dave]

Same problem in the Detroit market. Drives me nuts. When you stew it all down, there really isn't any substance to the vast majority of the reports. if it gets bad enough I'm turning the TV off . . .

[wiksia]

Every station these days uses servers to air most, if not all, of their non-network content (syndicated shows, commercials, promotions, etc.). A simple have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too solution would be for the weather folk to break into a program when they have to (severe weather ONLY, please!) and when they've finished their update, resume the program at the point of the interruption. All they have to do, in effect, is to TiVo their network feed and pause it when needed. If the current agreements between networks and affiliates don't allow this, then stations need to get their lawyers on the phone and work it out. It has the potential to make meteorologists, networks, advertisers and even the lowly viewers relatively happy with the situation under very trying circumstances.

In response to an earlier post, I have seen weather & school closing crawls continue during commercials. They usually squeeze back the program a little, running the crawls underneath with a promotional banner on one side with their "first in storm coverage" or "community concern" logos. Just because they care. About your dollars.

[Fred Houston]

Aaron, if you do a followup to this story, here's some things to consider....

After going over the firekatie.com forums for several days (it's not up anymore), I find a few key points that those who support Katie never bother to refute and just simply ignore...

1. I think the key to one reason TV stations do this is to "one-up" the other stations. For a few weeks after a major storm, the TV stations run "pat-me-on-the-back" commercials about how great they are during weather interruptions. If they did it solely for the public, why look for the glory and advertise how great one's weather forecasting is?

2. Why are weather radios so bad compared to someone on TV using the latest techno-do-thingy to show us how they can let us see into a storm? (And why do we care to see what's in the middle of the storm? Shouldn't we be taking cover?) Weather radios have come a long way and can even sound an alert when they're off as opposed to TV which can't turn itself on during bad weather.

2a. Even the weather service has said one of the reasons they started using the SAME technology is because the old alerts would turn off those who were not in the alert area but got the alert signal because it was too general. The same is true with weather interruptions - for the only affected area is a town 50 miles to the southeast, does the whole metro need to know?

3. Who is this Derek Smith? Some say it's a competitor. Is it really a competitor or a really ticked off viewer? Even if it's just a viewer, the other stations seem to be having a hayday with it too. Mike Thompson has been interviewed in the past in which he seems concerned about how Katie reports the weather coverage, and now I found something on wikipedia's site about KCTV...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KCTV-Tower#Controversial_programming

The person who edited the site goes by the name Amnewsboy. (Click the History tab at the top of the wikipedia article to see all edits to the article) Amnewsboy's bio reads:

"Well, hello. I'm Troy Diggs (18Sep1976 - Current), a television news producer."

and continues...

"I currently live in Kansas City, Missouri and work for KMBC."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Amnewsboy

So where most of the weather folks who blog about how bad firekatie.com is are folks from the TV business themselves, it seems they are taking this opportunity to help heap the coals on Katie too in their own interests.

It's really about the ratings, right? If the TV folks are really standing firm with one another then why does a TV producer from the local competitor decide to add it to the Controversial Programming section of the wikipedia page for KCTV? Hmmm... the enemy of my enemy is my friend?

Slowly, one thing will emerge from this firekatie.com site: the true purpose for why we need wall-to-wall coverage of the weather...

...public safety or ratings?

Fred Houston
Kansas City, MO