Weather Porn Makes Way into Network Newscasts

ABC might want to rename "World News Tonight with David Muir" to "World News Tonight with David and Ginger".

It seems that Ginger Zee, ABC’s meteorologist gets more facetime on WNT than any other correspondent at the network. 

And it's not just ABC that is reporting more on weather, NBC and CBS are as well. 

The AP's David Bauder writes that over the past five years, the newscasts have essentially doubled the amount of time spent on weather and natural disaster stories. The time has more than quadrupled since the early 1990s, said news consultant Andrew Tyndall, who monitors the content of the broadcasts. 

ABC’s “World News Tonight” leads the way, particularly since David Muir took over as anchor in September.

“The weather is part of the national conversation and it is part of the news cycle,” said Almin Karamehmedovic, executive producer of “World News Tonight.” “Increasingly, we see it that way. I’m sure the weather is the same as it was 10 years ago, but we see much more of it.”

And why have networks made the shift to covering weather a lot more?

Ratings... of course.

“Weather coverage can drive ratings,” Burkey said, but “you have to be careful that you’re not covering weather stories that aren’t real news every night. It’s an easy way to lose the trust of the audience about what is really an important weather story.”