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Why do the morning newscasts always start with weather?

K

kramie13

Banned
If I'm up early in the day and turn to a local newscast at say, 6 AM, the very first thing is a "weather teaser". But if I turn to a local newscast at 12 PM (noon), 5 PM, or 11 PM, the newscasts lead off with the most important news story or a breaking news alert.

Today, the lead news story on WCVB was a breaking news alert about a fire in East Bridgewater. But the start of the newscast was a check of the weather, followed by a check of the traffic, then at around 6:03 AM the East Bridgewater fire.

Why would weather (and even traffic!!) jump ahead of breaking news in the pecking order at 6 AM? There are several more weather hits during the morning newscasts vs. the evening newscasts! It seems like the weekday morning meteorologist has more face time than the chief meteorologist that works the weekday evenings!
 
gr8oldies said:
Why wouldn't they? Weather and traffic is the first thing people want to know/
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Well, at least those who are planning to leave the house soon (commuters). But really, who is inconvenienced by hearing about the main news story three minutes into the newscast, especially if that story is a fire affecting only one neighborhood in one town.
 
kramie13 said:
Why would weather (and even traffic!!) jump ahead of breaking news in the pecking order at 6 AM? There are several more weather hits during the morning newscasts vs. the evening newscasts! It seems like the weekday morning meteorologist has more face time than the chief meteorologist that works the weekday evenings!
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The weekday morning meteorologist at WCVB IS the Chief Meteorologist... Cindy Fitzgibbon.
 
CTListener said:
Well, at least those who are planning to leave the house soon (commuters). But really, who is inconvenienced by hearing about the main news story three minutes into the newscast, especially if that story is a fire affecting only one neighborhood in one town.
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I'm not inconvenienced, but I'm someone that likes consistency.

Either have weather at the top of the hour in the mornings AND evenings, or start with the lead story after the anchors introduce themselves. Is it really that hard?
 
kramie13 said:
I'm not inconvenienced, but I'm someone that likes consistency.

Either have weather at the top of the hour in the mornings AND evenings, or start with the lead story after the anchors introduce themselves. Is it really that hard?
Click to expand...
The commuters who flip on the TV at 6 a.m. just before heading out the door are more inconvenienced by three minutes or more of fire coverage from some other town before the traffic and weather than you are by three minutes of traffic and weather preceding that coverage. And they don't do the traffic/weather first in the evenings because very few people are heading to work at 6 p.m., and those who went to work in the morning are generally already home and don't need to know immediately what the weather is or how the roads are. I understand being a bit obsessive about consistency, but in this case, the way local television does things makes perfect sense.
 
I’d think many people are watching morning tv news for a shorter period of time (maybe 5, 10 or 15 minutes) and multi-tasking while tv is on, often listening to tv in the background as they’d be listening to radio. They want the weather and traffic for themselves, their kids they are getting to school or daycare, etc., they can get the news later. Give the people what they want! Similarly morning radio often has quick weather and traffic updates which often don’t air the rest of the day.
 
Weather is the first thing people wanna do.... we begin the 7am, 8am, 12noon and 2pm hours with a broief look at current temps and the days weather at KSKO.. the most important thing we could do is local weather
 
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