Rain or Shine the News is Still Important

We can all agree that weather is important, I mean the weather decides what you wear and what you do to an extent, but do you really need to hear about the weather twice in 30 minutes? WHAS11 thinks you do!
One thing that my Tv news group has noticed is that WHAS excessively covers the weather both on the 5 o'clock news and on their website. By now our group has watched the news a total of six times, and every night WHAS11 covers the news twice. Once at the beginning of the segment typically ranging one-two minutes in length, and again towards the end. the second coverage includes national weather reports and the seven day forecast, this story usually takes around five minutes.

If we are talking extremes here that's about seven minutes every night spent on weather. If we assume that roughly ten minutes of the segment are spent on commercials, WHAS11 is spending almost half their show on weather. This would be more acceptable if the anchors didn't describe all of the newsworthy stories one could watch later that evening. because odds are if it is important enough to refer people to watch it should be reported. instead, the 5 o'clock news gets the weather twice.

This is also true for WHAS11's website, the weather is referenced 7 times on their homepage. Two of their top stories are about the weather, and at the top in a bright blue banner weather alerts are lisited, currently there are 15. The 3 day outlook and current weather are also readily available to the viewer's eye. Rain or Shine WHAS11 needs to understand that they have a duty to supply us with more than just the forecast.


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