It's Snowing, So What's New?

It's 8:45 AM, Sunday, February 25, 2007. We have experienced some nasty weather over the last thirty six hours. Friday night we were predicted to receive about 1-2 inches of snow. We got in excess or 6 inches. This snow was the garden variety fairly light fluffy winter snow. The streets became slippery, the sidewalks became skating rinks and piles of the stuff appeared at the head of the blade on the plow trucks on the street and in lesser amounts from the repeated action of thousands of individual shovelers out cleaning their steps and sidewalks.

But this we were told wasn't going to be the main event. A storm of the magnitude of 8 -12 inches of snow, (we even heard 19 from some forecasters.) was coming out of the plains with possible rain, sleet and ice. So we braced.

This morning we are looking at some icy slush and crusty snow. We are waiting for more and there is little doubt we will get it, but the worst has probably past. The smart person realizes that the best thing is to stay home, light a fire, pop some popcorn, and put a film in the DVD. It's Sunday for crying out loud! You don't need to bee anyplace unless you are an emergency worker, snowplow driver, or cop.

After I helped my neighbor clear our sidewalk, I perk my coffee, finished my blog entry and turned on my television so I could watch CBS Sunday Morning or as I call it Chuck the II. I was to be disappointed.

My major complaint and the biggest reason I don't watch local television news is their tendency to make something out of nothing. They didn't disappoint me. All four local television had preempted programing to grind out a continuous, boring, repetitive montage of reports that basically repeated the following messages.

• Look it's snowing
• It's not as bad as it could have been
• It may get worse later

Strategy: Lets see how many different people from various parts of our broadcast area can we get to repeat these messages and affirm the necessity of preempting broadcasting and bore the hell out of our viewers.
Did I mention they put the roll screen at the bottom telling me that virtually everything was closed or cancelled, as if I couldn't figure that out? Thank God, it wasn't a school day. It was bad enough that every church had to get it's fifteen minutes of fame.

How many people needed to know what was going on with the weather? What service did this massive mobilization of broadcast resources provide? I would say that the numbers of people affected and served was minimal. Sunday morning is a slow period in viewership. Is this going to appear on the record of the stations as a massive amount of public service? Probably.