A critical look at the Wichita TV news

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Winter Weather Woody

It's been a relatively quiet Winter. Someone will surely say in the next couple of days the overused cliche, "March is going out a lion." As we have done for past storms, it's definitely time for Wichita TV News to issue a Winter Weather Woody Warning for the local stations. All the meteorologists have been touting the storm for days. It was even sad to see KWCH do a storm preparations story on Wednesday in front of a sand truck, nearly 48 hours ahead of the snow in the Wichita area. That is hype. KWCHers will say that it was less than 24 hours for those people in Western Kansas. That's what your bureaus are for. Show video of plows out there and trucks out there getting fitted for the storm. Wait at least a day before doing that angle here. In all seriousness, somewhere in the large viewing area of the local stations, is bound to get dumped on and it will be a serious situation if the snow forecasted does fall. It will be interesting to see how the local stations do mobilizing their crews, especially if the heaviest snow falls in areas of Western Kansas. -Hal
Vote in the Poll - For some fun I added a poll, and based on what you see from the local stations and your meteorological expertise, or lack there of, how much snow will the Wichita area get by Tomorrow?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Again someone with no experience in news lecturing us. Who do you think you are and that you know better?

Anonymous said...

Ah, the Twelve Troll gets defensive when the might 12 is criticized.

I LOVE IT!

Anonymous said...

KWCH seems to be going all out with their website lately when it comes to big events.

Take the current storm. There are several radars you can look at, stormshots which viewers can post, a lot of stories, links and a weather blog. I've seen this done with severe weather but for a storm like that that lasts several days, it's kinda cool.

I thought KAKE did an alright job but there's no originality or room to do fun things. It could be the Gray template but who knows.

Then there's KSN's site. Like with most stories, is severely lacking. It feels like they don't give the web the priority the other two stations do. They seem to have the old mindset that stories can't be broken online and that you should post things that have already shown up on newscasts.

I could be wrong, but they are the only station that isn't Twittering breaking news and updates. They may want to get on that. Even the Eagle is doing it.