When Did Local News Become Obsessed with the Weather?

[royce]

It's almost become unbearable for me to watch local news now because the breaking news story seems to be led by an upcoming "winter storm" alert. Now, last Friday's snowfall led to a number of power outages and therefore the reporting of the power outages was a significant lead story for the news. However, prior to the power outages the news kept telling us about this impending snow storm. Maybe it was different for you, depending on where you live, but where I live the resulting snow was more of a "snowfall' than a "snow storm." By Saturday afternoon most of the snow had melted where I live and we were dealing with temperatures in the 40s.

Now, when I look back to "snow storms" when I was a kid, they usually involved snowfalls between 10-30 inches. Now, the local news is reporting a four to six inch snowfall as if it is the storm of the century. What's behind this obsession with the weather? Each night, regardless of the severity of the weather, the weather person comes on within the first two minutes of the news broadcast and then does the wrap up around the 17th to 20th minute into the broadcast. Are local news stations using "doom and gloom" weather predictions to simply get us to watch? I think if you are going to give the weather forecast within the first two minutes on the broadcast, then why stick around to hear the rest of the news?

Honestly, even the world news is starting its newscast with the weather, but at least they report on weather across the country. Anyway, I just thought that in the northern hemisphere we are experiencing the winter season. Aren't snowfalls and the occasional snow storm simply a part of the season? Well, that's my two cents.