• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Weather Channel Radio Network?

B

BDBopper

I am a new subscriber to Sirius. I noticed that there is a major severe weather outbreak occuring in the midwest. I tuned to channel 184 expecting to hear wall to wall coverage since the outbreak is over such a wide area but I am not hearing that. Why don't they feel this situation is important enough...or is that only for hurricanes? <P ID="signature">______________
In Harmony
From the Bop Shop,
Brian "BD Bopper"</P>
 
> I am a new subscriber to Sirius. I noticed that there is a
> major severe weather outbreak occuring in the midwest. I
> tuned to channel 184 expecting to hear wall to wall coverage
> since the outbreak is over such a wide area but I am not
> hearing that. Why don't they feel this situation is
> important enough...or is that only for hurricanes?
>
The dirty little secret is that both Sirius and XM have essentially no resources (trained people, wire services) to do this kind of coverage regularly themselves. That explains why the weather information is outsourced, all the news services are outsourced and why they have some seemingly inexperienced people cobbling together mediocre traffic reports. You really don't want those traffic folks doing this sort of reporting; they don't have the training (but they are the ones doing it when it is done). Of course, if it's really a big disaster, you can probably count on the outsourced news channels on Sirius to bring you good details anyway. Promoting 184 as a weather emergency channel is more sizzle than steak. Overall, I love Sirius, but the effort in this area and the traffic channels isn't worth the hype or bandwidth IMHO.
 
I find the traffic information to be pretty good. They use the same resources as the local all-news guys here in NYC. You get a good overview every 2 minutes. Now...if there is severe weather, or something very local going on, I'd flip to one of the all-news stations to get the story. I don't think there is any sort of local responsiveness from Sirius. But that's to be expected from a national service. Here is another "dirty little secret"...most of the "local" weather and traffic on your local all-news station is outsourced too. For the most part, outside of drive time in NYC, the weather is handled by the Weather Channel or AccuWeather on the all-news stations. All traffic is outsourced to either Metro/Shadow, TrafficPulse, Traffic.com, etc. etc.


> The dirty little secret is that both Sirius and XM have
> essentially no resources (trained people, wire services) to
> do this kind of coverage regularly themselves. That explains
> why the weather information is outsourced, all the news
> services are outsourced and why they have some seemingly
> inexperienced people cobbling together mediocre traffic
> reports. You really don't want those traffic folks doing
> this sort of reporting; they don't have the training (but
> they are the ones doing it when it is done). Of course, if
> it's really a big disaster, you can probably count on the
> outsourced news channels on Sirius to bring you good details
> anyway. Promoting 184 as a weather emergency channel is more
> sizzle than steak. Overall, I love Sirius, but the effort in
> this area and the traffic channels isn't worth the hype or
> bandwidth IMHO.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom