Weather channels internationally

mjlarochelle · Jan 30, 2012

I posted something on the Mexican radio board but that board doesn't get much traffic...

I'm in Mexico City on business right now, and one glaring thing I've noticed on cable here is the lack of a channel dedicated to weather, unlike in the United States and Canada. There also isn't much weather coverage on the existing channels; Televisa's newscasts have very brief national weather overviews that provide very little local depth. The "weather" on the morning program on Canal 4 is more about showcasing the weather girl's tight skirt rather than actual weather - and eventhough they're a local channel, their "weather" is national in scope. Even Canal 40, which has a daily half-hour local newscast, doesn't bother with weather. CNN en español at least seems to give weather a little more serious attention, but like Televisa, it is national in scope and lacks local depth.

Do viewers in other countries just not care about weather enough for it to receive coverage on TV? Is there not a business opportunity here, even if it is just a teletext cable channel?

Gregg · Jan 30, 2012

Funny, I noticed the same thing while in San Diego recently, watching the Tijuana Televisa station. They do an hour of news every evening at 6pm and again at 10pm. You'd think they'd want to fill up some of those hours with weather.

But you're right. It's simply the young woman in the tight sweater looking at a map with highs and lows on it, telling us what we can already see. No high pressure centers, no warm fronts, no stats on rainfall or humidity, no long-range predictions. Did she even take a class in meteorology?

You'd think with a higher percentage of the Mexican population involved in agriculture and tourism than in the U.S., weather would be more important. I didn't know that Mexico has no cable weather channel. Canada has two... one in English, one in French. So Canada has a weather channel for its 6 million French speaking viewers but Mexico has no national weather channel for its 113 million population.

Gregg
[email protected]

PTBoardOp94 · Jan 30, 2012

British and French coverage of the weather is similar to the above described from Mexico -- a two minute national overview with one day forecasts only contained in an hour long news programme

TheRob · Jan 30, 2012

Not that anyone would watch a lot of TV vacationing in the Caribbean, but there is a channel called One Caribbean Weather available by satellite. However, it is a service of not-so-tropical WSEE-TV in Erie, Penn. One of the on-air personalities does the weather with a parrot puppet on his shoulder.

borderblaster · Jan 30, 2012

In many areas the weather isn't changeable enough to bother. It's March; it's raining and everyone pretty much knows that.

mjlarochelle · Jan 31, 2012

borderblaster said:
In many areas the weather isn't changeable enough to bother. It's March; it's raining and everyone pretty much knows that.

Probably true - the whole time I have been in Mexico City it has ranged from sunny to partly cloudy, with the high temperatures every day around 72°F. Yesterday and today have an exception, overcast and about 57°.

However, as Mexico is vulnerable to hurricanes every bit as much as the U.S. south, I would think it would still be a valuable service.

I wonder if The Weather Channel in the U.S. has ever explored franchising its channel in Mexico, considering the number of U.S. cable networks that are franchised there such as Nick and VH1.

Sidenote - on the Canal 4 (FOROtv) morning program, the weather "report" usually concludes with the sounds of men whistling.

azumanga · Jan 31, 2012

Gregg said:
Funny, I noticed the same thing while in San Diego recently, watching the Tijuana Televisa station. They do an hour of news every evening at 6pm and again at 10pm. You'd think they'd want to fill up some of those hours with weather.

But you're right. It's simply the young woman in the tight sweater looking at a map with highs and lows on it, telling us what we can already see. No high pressure centers, no warm fronts, no stats on rainfall or humidity, no long-range predictions. Did she even take a class in meteorology?

Can't say for all Televisa stations, but the newscast on XEWT in Tijuana was mostly style and not much substance -- when I attended the San Diego Comic Con back in 2005, I saw a 6PM newscast on XEWT one night; the first ten minutes was a fluff piece about the station's 50th anniversary -- north of the border, all other stations, even those with a significant anniversary, would put fluff pieces later in the newscast and present important, hard news at the top.

M.J. said:
I wonder if The Weather Channel in the U.S. has ever explored franchising its channel in Mexico, considering the number of U.S. cable networks that are franchised there such as Nick and VH1.

Been there, done that -- a Spanish version of The Weather Channel for Latin America, including Mexico, lasted from 1996 to 2002:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Channel_Latin_America

mjlarochelle · Jan 31, 2012

azumanga said:
Can't say for all Televisa stations, but the newscast on XEWT in Tijuana was mostly style and not much substance -- when I attended the San Diego Comic Con back in 2005, I saw a 6PM newscast on XEWT one night; the first ten minutes was a fluff piece about the station's 50th anniversary -- north of the border, all other stations, even those with a significant anniversary, would put fluff pieces later in the newscast and present important, hard news at the top.

The 10:30pm national news on Televisa's XEW-2 is fairly straightforward and sometimes has in-depth reporting on major issues. Almost every night last week, they led with long-form stories about the drought in Chihuahua State. Stories like Chinese New Year are left for the end of the newscast. Generally it's a no-nonsense newscast, but I also don't know enough about current politics there to judge how balanced their coverage is today compared with 30 years ago when they were heavily pro-PRI.

Gregg · Jan 31, 2012

A couple more thoughts...

In Puerto Rico, the weather reports are like U.S. mainland weather. The women may still wear tight sweaters but the weather coverage is more in-depth on Telemundo WKAQ-TV and Independent WAPA. Both stations do several hours of news in the morning, at dinner and at 11pm. Puerto Rico has pretty much the same weather most of the year, other than hurricanes in the fall, but both stations still do good weather coverage. The Univision station only does news at 6 & 11pm so I didn't see what they were doing.

And when I saw Televisa XEWT 12 Tijuana news some years ago it was clear they were only reporting good news. A new government office opening, a new bus route, a newly opened highway. Lots of video of men in suits holding meetings or ribbon cuttings. Almost never any interviews with average people. I remember they did a story from a school and only talked to a government education official. No interviews with any teachers or parents, even though there was plenty of video of parents bringing their kids in and out of the school.

If you watched their news, you'd think Tijuana and Baja California never had any murders, crime, union strikes, fires, corruption or any dissatisfaction with the government. The only exception was when police shot and killed a man suspected of killing a cop. Then we had extended video of his contorted dead body bleeding on the ground from several angles. Clearly in the U.S. you'd never see a dead body for more than a couple of seconds and no view of the face. I guess officials wanted to drive home the point that this is what happens to you if you challenge the police. It was the only negative story I saw.

This was still the day where the PRI controlled the federal govenment and most state governments. Maybe things are a bit more free in news coverage today. I often wondered if an XEWT camera crew was on its way to cover a ribbon cutting and they ran into a big high-rise fire, would they simply drive around the fire to get to the ribbon cutting ceremony?

Gregg
[email protected]

azumanga · Jan 31, 2012

Gregg said:
In Puerto Rico... The Univision station only does news at 6 & 11pm so I didn't see what they were doing.

...which I think is generally the norm among many Univision stations -- they only have local news at 6PM and 11PM (one hour earlier in CT).

Gregg said:
And when I saw Televisa XEWT 12 Tijuana news some years ago it was clear they were only reporting good news... If you watched their news, you'd think Tijuana and Baja California never had any murders, crime, union strikes, fires, corruption or any dissatisfaction with the government. The only exception was when police shot and killed a man suspected of killing a cop. Then we had extended video of his contorted dead body bleeding on the ground from several angles.

I think the only other competitor for Tijuana news is XHAS, which is San Diego's Telemundo station, programmed in San Diego by the local Univision affiliate, KBNT -- but unlike KBNT's newscast, XHAS's news is slanted more towards Tijuana. I wonder how popular XHAS's news is in Tijuana, compared to XEWT?

mjlarochelle · Jan 31, 2012

Gregg said:
And when I saw Televisa XEWT 12 Tijuana news some years ago it was clear they were only reporting good news. A new government office opening, a new bus route, a newly opened highway. Lots of video of men in suits holding meetings or ribbon cuttings. Almost never any interviews with average people. I remember they did a story from a school and only talked to a government education official. No interviews with any teachers or parents, even though there was plenty of video of parents bringing their kids in and out of the school.

If you watched their news, you'd think Tijuana and Baja California never had any murders, crime, union strikes, fires, corruption or any dissatisfaction with the government. The only exception was when police shot and killed a man suspected of killing a cop. Then we had extended video of his contorted dead body bleeding on the ground from several angles. Clearly in the U.S. you'd never see a dead body for more than a couple of seconds and no view of the face. I guess officials wanted to drive home the point that this is what happens to you if you challenge the police. It was the only negative story I saw.

This was still the day where the PRI controlled the federal govenment and most state governments. Maybe things are a bit more free in news coverage today. I often wondered if an XEWT camera crew was on its way to cover a ribbon cutting and they ran into a big high-rise fire, would they simply drive around the fire to get to the ribbon cutting ceremony?

I can't speak for the Tijuana stations as I have never seen them. However, from what I've seen of the newscasts based in Mexico City, there seems to be at least some reporting freedom. The coverage of the drought in Chihuahua has included plenty of interviews with affected farmers. And in the short time I've been here some of the stories I've seen have included the shutdown of a large drug production facility in Jalisco, large seizures of weapons and cash from drug cartels, and at least last week, a couple significant roundups of drug cartel members by the military. Last week there was a report on the national news about a fire at a restaurant in Mexico City, and on independently-run XHTVM/40 I saw a story about a hoax bomb threat at a school.

Still, from what I can see, there's a lot of stuff that does not get covered. Part of the problem in Mexico City at least is the lack of dedicated local news programming - there's one hour per day on XHTV/4, and a half-hour on Canal 40. Everything else is national and international news.