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Severe Weather, how your station handles it.


FirstNews8

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Tornado Warnings in the DMA get wall to wall coverage on all the stations. Non-DMA tornado warnings, but within the stations' viewing areas, can get cut-ins or even wall to wall depending on the situation in that particular area. Metro Memphis Severe Thunderstorm Warnings often get rather substantial, sometimes wall to wall, coverage, mainly due to a major severe wind storm here in 2003. You at least get a cut-in. Non-Metro Severe Thunderstorm Warnings are handled through crawls and bugs as is everything else. Every once in a while there will be a flooding situation within the city which can get more substantial coverage, but its rare.

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WQAD usually breaks-in for a simple cut-in during Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Flood Warning, Winter Storm Advisory or Warning, Watch, All watches. But in Tornado Warnings if it is for more than one county, they stay on for around 5-10minutes giving complete details, and breaking in with updates, but there was four times this year where WQAD was on for more than an hour without commercial breaks, one time when a huge squall line, with tornadoes sighted went through, WQAD was on for three hours strait, with reporters out in the field, Matt hammil at the Newsdesk, Anthony Peoples checking warnings, Neil Kastor at the weather desk and James Zahara at the chroma key. Im a weather watcher for WQAD, and I had relayed reports abput ten times to NewsChannel 8

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There are times where the Memphis stations here are on for a good solid 4-6 hours without interruption, last time we saw that was back in April earlier this year. Longest time I can recall was back in 1999 where they were on for nearly 8 hours without interruption, when there was a break for a couple of hours, before another round of tornadoes and about two more hours of coverage. Of course when you have events that long and that big, there is a lot of news reporting mixed in with all of that.

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It depends on how bad the weather is. If there is a significant severe-weather outbreak - such as numerous tornado warnings - all stations will break in.

 

However, if this were to occur during the late night hours, WWL usually breaks in first, then WDSU while the others scrolls info at the bottom of the screen.

 

Otherwise, all stations will scroll info at the bottom of the screen with a warning/watch map.

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St Louis, well used to they wouldn't break in for anything unless it was within the 270 loop. But during the March outbreak Fox 2 was on for 12 hours straight. very good coverage espically since they had just started the transition to the fox o&o set design, so the weather center was well basically non-existant. Actually KMOV channel 4 just started a new thing, where instead of Breaking in wall-to-wall on the tv, they will go into serious detail in an online stream. KSDK, well unless you have a tornado on the ground in the metro area, well forget it.

 

Now for the Evansville, IN stations. WFIE and WEHT will go wall-to-wall before a warning is even issued if they see a possible tornado coming into the viewing area, no matter where it is. and they will go for hours stright, in fact WEHT basically will be the only thing on the radio, as most radio stations in the evansville tri-state area will siumlcast the coverage on the radio.

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In the Twin Cities I would say KSTP does the best weather coverage, they will break in for almost anything. KMSP is normally the second one to break in. However when things are really bad every station will stay on the air for hours. If none of them are on the air they will scroll it across the bottom of the screen. So I would say the Twin Cities have pretty good weather coverage.

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Most of our affiliates will do crawls for severe thunderstorm warnings, and short break-ins for tornadoes. Rarely will you see a break in last longer than 10 minutes here...tornadoes happen often here but are not the F3 and up monsters out in the midwest. For hurricanes, like cfif says, wall to wall, ad nauseum. Now that Dave Marsh is retired, the most credible weatherman in these parts is Tom Terry (WFTV), which gets reflected in the ratings books.

 

I could remember growing up in the midwest that WEEK would always break in to shows for tornadoes and severe weather, but this was years ago.

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WTVF here in Nashville has one of the greatest capabilites. When there is severe weather, yeah, they'll break in on commericals just to give an update. However, if it does get to the point where there needs to be continuous weather coverage, they'll broadcast both on the main channel, and their cable station, News Channel 5 Plus.

 

If they feel that the main network station can go back to regular scheduled programming, they'll do that; but if the need for still running severe weather coverage, they'll continue running it on Channel 5 Plus.

 

If there is a major program that people were looking foward to watch and there is severe weather that needs to be covered, they're pretty good at deciding to cover the severe weather event on their sister station and let the main channel air network (CBS) programming.

 

This certain event happened last year I believe when CBS was airing the CMA awards and there was severe weather. Within just a matter of minutes, Ron Howes, the cheif meteorologist of WTVF announced that they will be airing the CMA Awards on the main channel but if you wanted to continue to see severe weather coverage, tune to Channel 50.

 

That's one capability that WTVF, News Channel 5 here in Nashville has that NO other station has here in Nashville.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Luckily I'm in an area that I can receive 3 markets here's the run down:

 

Louisville, KY:

 

WAVE: Tom Wills ( Physho, Weird, Getting up in age, Mental ) Prefer John Belski

Triple Team Doppler AKA NWS knock off ( Storm Cutter HD

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btw, WLPO, a radio station in the county next to me, is an NBC affiliate, and broadcasts WQAD, ABC affiliate stuff.

 

So you Live in Bureau County? I live in LaSalle. WLPO does do good coverage on severe weather.

 

I agree WLS and WMAQ do good with severe weather coverage. The scrolls at the bottom and weather break ins. Same goes for breaking news.

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All of our local stations go into "squeeze mode" to display a map with the warning in the corner of the screen, alternating with a RADAR map... along with the requisite banner or column ads (or both) for the weather department. Of course, they do this on both analog and digital, which on the digital station drops it down to standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio... then stomps on the image more by squeezing it down to fit in the requisite advertisement.

 

(By "advertisement" I mean the "WEATHER WATCH 12 SEVERE WEATHER COVERAGE" type of logos/artwork/etc that serve no informational purpose other than to promote the weather department).

 

Is there ANYONE in the country able to present graphics on the digital station, without dropping programming out of either HD or at least 16:9 standard def?

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Yeah, WEEK dosnt do it anymore. I would say that WQAD and KWQC do the best in my area.

 

I find it odd that WEEK doesn't do them anymore...i'm told they have the weakest weather team in the market (are any of them sealed? I know at least 1 is not...) but they are still the dominant station...

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I know when I used to get both Peoria, illinois and Quad Cities stations(dont get Peoria anymore) WMBD would be the first, then WEEK and eventually WHOI. I never really watched Peoria stations when I got them... But I would sometimes go to it, and watch just for fun.

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