Guessing the Weather
/It's no secret that the TV Weather Anchors get the forecast wrong.
A lot.
It seems like it would be nice to have a job, where you could be wrong much of the time and still not have to worry about getting fired.
The NY Daily News let's the regular folks in on a secret that us in TV News have known for years.
A study found that the station managers pay almost no attention to their accuracy and usually base their decisions on personality and on-camera skills.
In short, a cute, bubbly woman who predicts sunshine on Tuesday but gets rain instead has as much chance of getting fired as Miami has of having a blizzard.
But, it's not all fun and games for the Weather folks. The daily grind of predicting the weather wears on weathercasters, too.
Domenica Davis, an ex-forecaster for WNBC/Ch. 4, told FishBowlNY that she got tired of doing the same stuff day in and out.
“I love being a meteorologist, but it was getting to be too much of the same thing every day, and I feel I have a lot more to offer,” Davis told the media website Thursday.
What was she expecting? Volcanic ash in Times Square?
The idea that weather reports are wrong half the time is a constant irritant for broadcasters, because when the real deal arrives — as it did with Sandy — meteorologists like “Good Morning America’s” Sam Champion worry that their warnings will be ignored.
“Ultimately, all we ever want to do is prepare people for the worst-case scenario,” Champion recently said.
In other words "Scare the Viewers" and that's what TV News and Weather have been doing for years.