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"Local" BBC weather presenters
Wmsheep
Posts: 388 Forum Member
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Just moved up from the East Mids to the North West, and have noticed that a couple of times a week, BBC North West use the weather presenters from the East Midlands.
Surely, given the big BBC complex up at Salford, they can afford their own weather presenters, or at least nick some from the national news!!
Surely, given the big BBC complex up at Salford, they can afford their own weather presenters, or at least nick some from the national news!!
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What annoys me is the lack of green/blue screen use in recently years. Instead they use the low quality television screens in the studio. I prefer the traditional green/blue screen, one because it is high quality and two because it doesn't have lens distortion.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=&q=keeley%20donovan&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=0OAlUruXJIjd7QbRsYGoBg&biw=1123&bih=675&sei=0uAlUvuFNcnwhQfsuIDgDQ
If you look at the text maps for Northern England, there are never any icons over Manchester.
For what it's worth, why not just have one crew to cover the whole country for the live forecast and let people check for their area on the text facility.
We often get the "local" forecast immediately after the general forecast and they tell us nothing we haven't heard two minutes ago.
Think of the money that could be saved that could then be spent on improving programmes?
Just a thought
Except, for my region, they tell me ij more detail.
Maybe your region is different.
Well, I thought that the natural state of affairs for Manchester is that it will be piddling down with rain any second now, so no icon needed (sort of similar with Wales, except it's a case of "It might stop raining later in the month" there!!
Because other people do this, and the BBC weather forecasts have always had a presenter, and focus groups seem to indicate a preference for a human presenting the forecast.
I agree that there are too many presenters - there are 12 England regions which could be combined into maybe four for the purposes of a weather forecast.
However saying that it is nice to have a "local" presenter especially as the forecaster here has to cover the whole of Scotland.
In the days when (our) money wasn't a problem for the BBC (compared with the recent increasingly revealed cavalier attitude they've been shown to have taken to the control of it), the newsreaders read the forecast over a couple of maps. That was good enough for most viewers.
Now it's "The Weather Show!"
Don't remember a "focus group" saying "We must have one!"
Anyone with an internet connection can find out 24/7 about their local weather, if they can be that assed to do it.
The problem with the Manchester area is that it's difficult for forecasters to correctly gauge the wind speed and direction.
To paraphrase Eric Morcambe, we do get, " all the right weather, but not necessarily in the right place," nor at "the right time," so forecasts are often worse than useless.
Indeed, doing a quick google search, I found this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/about/newsid_7833000/7833282.stm
So they have been in place for close on 60 years!
No, not only were focus groups a recent concept, but as the article points out, it was first suggested by [/i]"a young but highly professional meteorologist"[/i] in 1953.
You're making me smile now, because you've proved my point, at one time there were no weather presenters, then two, for many more millions of people who watch BBC programmes than they do now..
But I can definitely remember newsreaders giving the forecast after reading the news and it would have been in the sixties. Maybe it was the late bulletins.
So it's "grown like Topsy" ever since, to become almost a "cottage industry" within the BBC.
So unnecessary when they keep bleating about how shortages of cash has led to so many repeats and many programmes which are often mentioned on here as consider poor.
Of course I knew there were no focus groups in that time. Perhaps the fact that I used speech marks round the words, might have given the clue that I wasn't taking this too seriously.
The familiarity with the use of smilies does sometimes seem to limit perception.
I am sure other weather presenters could contribute to their local news shows in other ways if not there is no reason they couldn't train to read an autocue on a quite Saturday evening.
It is quite possible that was the case, especially for bulletins close to closedown (11:30pm or thereabouts?) where it would have been more cost-effective to do that in the light of the very late shift that would have to be staffed (in the days when BBC World would not have existed, meaning that weather forecasters/presenters would not have been deployed on other duties). Since the advent of more channels and more broadcasters (in the early days ITV did not even exist of course) viewers' expectations have changed.
let's face it, sometimes it's difficult to know as the use of speech marks in your posts is often quite prevalent.
Wendy Hurrell regularly films reports and features for BBC London News and on more than one occasion in the past she co-presented the Radio London breakfast show.
Also when there was a journalists' strike Kaddy Lee Preston ended up presenting South East Today.
So I wasn't wrong, newsreaders have given the weather forecast in "recent times" (by the way, it's the first time I've said that) which rather suggests a weather person isn't essential. In fact the later the forecast given, the more chance there is of it being accurate, who reads it ain't more important than the content.
There's no getting away from the fact that the number of "weather people" on salaries, holiday pay, sick pay, maternity pay, expenses, clothing allowances, etc., and gold plated pensions, seem a bit of an extravagance in these much harder times for the BBC.
Oh hang on! They aren't are they? It's the poor licence payer who's the only one disadvantaged.
I don't mind that you like "The Weather Show" but given the fact that the forecast is often wrong then it seems a bit daft to spend as much money on presenting it.
Yes, I've been accused in the past of using "inappropriate speech marks" (that was really funny. Some people take a message board which can only be "for amusement only" so seriously). I find them better than a lot of daft smilies, but then it takes all sorts, doesn't it?
Don't most itv weather presenters not interact with the news presenters anymore? I know West Country do but on Calendar it's a separate feature there is no handover, I think London is the same.
I remember him. Must be long dead now....:(
Or this way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T572HSW47wY
Do you remember any focus groups then?