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Weather Warning Graphics During Live Sport Events

O

ohdxer

Does your local television station show their weather warning graphics during live sport events?

During the All Star Baseball Game on Tuesday night, Sinclair owned Fox affilate WTTE 28 Columbus had a map of Ohio with color coded weather warnings and a scrolling weather warnings on top of the screen that ran through the whole baseball game except for commercials!

I felt that the weather graphics was in the way of watching the baseball game on the tv screen.
 
ohdxer said:
Does your local television station show their weather warning graphics during live sport events?

During the All Star Baseball Game on Tuesday night, Sinclair owned Fox affilate WTTE 28 Columbus had a map of Ohio with color coded weather warnings and a scrolling weather warnings on top of the screen that ran through the whole baseball game except for commercials!

I felt that the weather graphics was in the way of watching the baseball game on the tv screen.
Click to expand...

The Fox station in Houston runs weather warnings during baseball and football games all the time.
 
So...are you saying stations shouldnt inform of warnings during sporting events? While, yes, I agree they can get a little annoying with their graphics, etc taking up 1/3rd of the screen, but, they are giving out important information, information that could potentially save someones life, depending on how severe the storms are.

All stations here in Milwaukee display graphics in the lower 3rd during severe weather, no matter what is airing at the time
 
ohdxer said:
Does your local television station show their weather warning graphics during live sport events?
Click to expand...

In Baltimore, Hearst Argyle's WBAL-11 (NBC) shows weather warning crawls during sports events. As well as a warning mini-graphic in the corner continuously if there's a warning. WBAL also does it during prime time. WJZ-13 (CBS O&O) does the same things I think. Don't know about Scripps' WMAR-2 (ABC). I hardly watch Sinclair's WBFF Fox 45.

ixnay
 
So would you rather watch the game then be warned of a possibly very severe or deadly weather event? They could've did local cutins every commercial break. Imagine how annoying THAt would've been!!
 
At least you got to see the game in its entirety.

The Indianapolis market news stations like to break into programming many times when a severe thunderstorm is moving through the Indianapolis metro and pretty much stay live until it passes the metro. Personally, I feel that breaking in and staying on with solid coverage just to cover a severe thunderstorm warning is a little much, but it's happened before. Tornado warnings are a different story altogether.

By the way, does anyone know of a website that features past and present weather warning graphics? A few weeks ago, I had a passing thought about that and tried to look one up. No such luck.
 
Here in Atlanta ther local stations will run weather crawls and graphics during sports events. However they never appear continuously, except when there is a Tornado Warning somewhere. And during a Tornado Warning the station will either go live during commerical, or split screen live coverage while still showing the sports event without any volume.
 
It's much different in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

In this market, the local stations run weather crawls whenever there is severe weather occuring in the coverage area. Most severe thunderstorm warnings they just let the program roll trough, but with tornado warnings the station will have to interrupt regular programming to give detailed information about the path in one or more counties in the DMA.

However, the situation for FOX and WB(soon to be CW) stations is different. WOLF-TV(Fox 56) and WSWB-TV(Pennsylvania's WB) run an EAS crawl from The National Weather Service ranging from Severe Thunderstorm warnings to Flash Flood warnings. In some cases, the program's audio got interrupted and I get to hear the audio coming from The National Weather Service itself. When we had a major flood last month, it did this almost all day, about ten times in one day. It's kind of annoying to FOX and WB viewers, especially during the prime time hours. The EAS crawl that both stations used took 1/3rd of the screen. Also, not to mention our PBS station WVIA-TV used EAS for tornado and flash floodings, not severe thunderstorms. They used it for a "Civil Emergency" message for my county because the floodings that occured last month threatened the dams and also for residents in one neighboring county to evacuate the area because of the threat of major flooding. Jeez, this was a major national news story.

Does anyone ever get EAS weather alerts on stations running FOX, WB, or UPN just like ours? I understood that none of such alerts gets ever broadcasted on CBS, NBC, or ABC stations.
 
In Indianapolis, I believe WNDY (UPN), WHMB (Independent religious), and WFYI (PBS) are the only stations that use the EAS on a regular basis. This may have changed, though.

I can't speak for the market's LP and CA stations.
 
Tiger1983 said:
Does anyone ever get EAS weather alerts on stations running FOX, WB, or UPN just like ours? I understood that none of such alerts gets ever broadcasted on CBS, NBC, or ABC stations.
Click to expand...


Here in Milwaukee, the UPN and WB affiliates (ch. 24 WCGV and WVTV ch.18 respectivley) run the EAS crawls during severe thunderstorm watches/warnings and tornado watches. For a tornado warning, they run the crawl with the audio from NWS. I believe the same goes for the local PBS affiliatec chs. 10 & 36
 
A great future use of digital television technology would have the weather warning graphics coded by NWS forecast zones, only showing up on sets within the effected geographical area.
 
ohdxer said:
Does your local television station show their weather warning graphics during live sport events?

During the All Star Baseball Game on Tuesday night, Sinclair owned Fox affilate WTTE 28 Columbus had a map of Ohio with color coded weather warnings and a scrolling weather warnings on top of the screen that ran through the whole baseball game except for commercials!

I felt that the weather graphics was in the way of watching the baseball game on the tv screen.
Click to expand...

There's one running on Phoenix Fox station KSAZ during the Phillies/Giants game right now. And those storms are more likely to hit 100 miles from here, but those areas are part of the market also, thanks to translator stations.

I don't mind them, though - the benefit outweighs the detriment.
 
What bug me is not that the stations do the warnings, but if a program is HD, they will switch to the SD feed to do the warnings. Very annoying when you've invited 20 people over to watch an event in HD, only to have it HD feed eliminated because the station is too lazy to insert a graphic onto the HD feed seperately.
 
Apollo7979 said:
By the way, does anyone know of a website that features past and present weather warning graphics? A few weeks ago, I had a passing thought about that and tried to look one up. No such luck.
Click to expand...

NorthPine's screengrabs (http://www.northpine.com/broadcast/captures/index.html) include some pix of weather warnings "in action". So does Matt Sittel's site (http://www.mcsittel.com/html/travel_tv.html).

BRice16 said:
What bug me is not that the stations do the warnings, but if a program is HD, they will switch to the SD feed to do the warnings. Very annoying when you've invited 20 people over to watch an event in HD, only to have it HD feed eliminated because the station is too lazy to insert a graphic onto the HD feed seperately.
Click to expand...

I heard some stations do the same thing with hourly-IDs, especially during live sports.
 
In Terre Haute, IN, both stations run a color-coded map of the viewing area in one of the lower corners and interrupt only occasionally. The bugs can be hard to see because they are semi-transparent.

Frenchman: WNDY doesn't use EAS anymore since LIN bought the station.
 
Last night during Jeopardy, WMAR had a t'storm warning graphic in the upper left comer and a bottom-line crawl about a heat warning.

ixnay
 
BRice16 said:
What bug me is not that the stations do the warnings, but if a program is HD, they will switch to the SD feed to do the warnings. Very annoying when you've invited 20 people over to watch an event in HD, only to have it HD feed eliminated because the station is too lazy to insert a graphic onto the HD feed seperately.
Click to expand...

A HD character generator & keyer are not exactly cheap, and for some weather crawl systems they simply are not available. If the existing weather-alert system doesn't support multiple CGs then you pretty much have to duplicate the entire alerting system to get a separate feed for HD. Since the HD isn't bringing in any additional revenue, it's awfully hard to justify spending that kind of $$$.
 
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