Today in pissed-off weathermen: Guy calls out corporate overlords for their shitty storm alert system
Aux Features Meteorologists
Weathermen are sick of our bullshit. They’re sick of sports fans’ bullshit. They’re sick of Bachelorette fans’ bullshit. They’re sick of their goddamn coworkers’ bullshit. And today, they’re absolutely sick of their corporate overlords’ bullshit.
In the video above we have Joe Crain, a meteorologist from WICS-TV in Springfield, Illinois. Joe is understandably pissed-off because of the new “Code Red Day” weather alert system that his bosses at Sinclair Broadcast Group have imposed upon their stations. (You may recognize Sinclair from their work as one of the more insidious negative forces on modern American society.)
In a nutshell, Joe’s argument here is that the National Weather Service already has a “Severe Weather Outlook” that works perfectly fine, and more importantly, has a five-tier system that tells you just how severe that weather is. Calling every day with a possibility for some severe weather a “Code Red Day” causes unnecessary stress and will eventually lead viewers to ignore actually important warnings. Basically, Joe says, they don’t like it any more than you do.
“When you hear ‘Code Red’ you think the, as they say, feces is about to hit the fan,” says Crain. “So that being said, we understand your concerns, and we want you to know that we take them very seriously as far as myself goes… So we want you to know this is not us, this is a corporate initiative, the Code Red Alert, and behind the scenes many of us have tried to dissuade it for the last few months.”
Crain concludes by noting that while his station is corporately owned, they still have a responsibility to the public per the FCC, who viewers should feel free to inform if they feel that responsibility is not being upheld.
Digg notes that Crain’s bio has apparently been scrubbed from WICS-TV’s website sometime since March, but in an interview with the State Journal-Register following his missive, Crain said he was still employed.
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36 Comments
Agreed it is terrible. They should just return it to Mountain Dew Day.
I honestly thought that Mountain Dew was the sponsoring corporate overlord in question based on the headline and picture.
“Mountain Dew or Mountain Dew not, there is no try.” ~ Yoda, Mountain Dew Skywalker Berry Blast commercial (late 2019, probably)
Canada Dry alert, grape Fanta alert, and the dreaded Diet Dr Pepper alert.
What’s this? A conservative news conglomerate trying to keep people needlessly afraid? You don’t say.
To be fair: Local news networks have, for decades, worked extra hard to make the weather report interesting. Strip away all the graphics and maps and weather reporters, and it’s just a list of numbers. I don’t see this as fear-mongering FOX style as much as I see it as “StormTracker4 Eye In The Sky Live Up To The Minute Weather Coverage With Meteorologist Chet Riley And The WeatherNewsStormWatcherTeam4 News Team with updates Every Eight Minutes!!” It’s been like this as long as I can remember.
It’s one thing to brand your Doppler radar as “StormTracker 9000 Super Duper Doppler!” but another thing entirely when you go issuing your own weather alerts. Stick with the products from the NWS. Ditto for The Weather Channel’s idiotic names for winter fronts.
I shut off all my weather app’s alerts because they got way too frequent. Like guys I just use this to check stuff now and then I’m not going to be interacting with this app for hours a day. That’s all this is gonna be for, quit it.
I personally prefer the Blaccuweather Forecast with Ollie Williams.
IT RAININ!
Kinda depends on where you live. There are places in America that REALLY NEED the ability to make informed decisions involving weather. Could be life or death.
Places where knowing accurate weather conditions is life or death are not looking to AccuWeather 7 5 Days Of Toyotathon 5 Day Forecast for their weather reports. They just go to the National Weather Service. Or the window.
Wrong. We look to our local weather people (the meteorologists on the local stations.) Ask anyone in Oklahoma and they will have a favorite meteorologist (mine is Travis Meyer. Lots of people in the OKC area would have said Gary England until he retired right after the horrific storms in 2013.) These guys know the area and they have dealt with this weather their entire careers. Yeah, the NWS issues the warnings, but they aren’t going to tell me how long until the potentially tornadic storm makes it to my town the way Travis will. They also won’t be showing just my weather the whole time which means I could miss their storm chaser showing the wall cloud with the funnels popping down that is headed my way. But I can get that on my local station.
Extreme weather can come on quick. Nws gives a macro view. Local weather can pinpoint where the funnel cloud is and is heading, or which streets are impassable.
“Remember folks firing your firearms off into severe weather randomly is the only way to prevent tornados from enacting Sharia law on your town and protect your freedoms!”
It’s not just them. The whole idea of naming winter storms and many other “alerts” is designed to keep you nervous enough about the weather to keep you tuned in. Not all of them are BS, but the various media services have created enough confusion to make it difficult to tell which is which.
Just keep on slouching towards Idiocracy, America.
I made it 2 minutes deep. That might be the longest I’ve ever listened to a weatherman.
He’s mad as hail and he’s not goning to take this anymore.
There snow need for a pun thread. Let’s rain it in.
We’re having this pun thread weather you like it or not!
Yeah! Don’t rain on Bronkowitz’s parade!
I’m just not as cumulonimble with my words as y’all.
Gotta love it when someone tries to fix something that isn’t broken. I’d love to hear the thought process behind this Code Red System.
I doubt it’s much more complicated than “calling it Code Red will get more viewers/clicks on our station/website.”
Sinclair would have called it “Code Blue” if they thought they could get away with it. (Code Blue is actually a way to assist homeless in finding housing for the night on particularly cold nights, allowing shelters to take in more people than normal, in case you live in a warm weather area and Code Blue warnings aren’t issued by your local municipality.)
Reminds me of the Homeland Security Advisory System that basically stayed at “we’re all gonna die!” for nine or so years.
They only went to that level right before an election, in a (successful) attempt to drive Republicans to the polls. On the day after the second Tuesday in November, the alerts went back down to normal.
Good for him. Sinclair isn’t the first corporate overlord to pull this shit, but I’m not surprised, given the asshattery their boardroom has become known for.
Soon enough they’re going to bring back the Peter Pan Peanut Butter Alert and bring it straight into our homes! Where do we draw the line?
Digg still exists?
The kind of hero we need right now.
How could they deny us the reaction of the news anchors?
Either way I’m gonna hunker down just in case
Yeah Sinclair is dumb for this and evil for its other shit. Yet this is the first time I’m actually completely okay with a weather person losing it on air over some bullshit. While I get they have a responsibility to their viewing area and severe weather can be life and death, I can’t help but understand some pissed off viewers. The viewing area for some of my local stations are about two hours or so around me. Basically you can pull in some of the local stations in two two hours away from me in a few directions. So there has been times that they have broken in to talk about weather that in no way will affect me at all. So I get it, I do wish there was like a “Are you sure you don’t want to watch this and go back to national [channel] broadcast?” thing on my TV and/or cable box.