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Worst TV weather brands?

I

ixnay

The thread title is self explanatory.

I'll start. Since 1995, WBAL-11 Baltimore has used "Insta-Weather" (recently modified to "Insta-Weather Plus" for its weather branding. IMO that sounds too much like "insta" coffee. Then again I may be biased, since I'm not a coffee drinker.

ixnay
 
I'll self-nominate the 'brand' I coined some years back (I even used it on-air once on a weekly classic rock show I used to do back in the late '90s):

Eyewitness Newscenter Bureau Compu Doppler Tron Accu Sky Scan Super Radar Weather

"Accurate within 30 minutes, or else it's free"

I'm sure I could throw "Insta-" into that pile and you wouldn't miss it.

--Russell
 
Russell, you're also missing the channel number plus 3 zeros beside it.

That's my gripe about weather brands. Is it really necessary if you're channel 7, for example, to call your weather radar "The Live Doppler Storm Scan 7000"?
 
ixnay said:
The thread title is self explanatory.

I'll start. Since 1995, WBAL-11 Baltimore has used "Insta-Weather" (recently modified to "Insta-Weather Plus" for its weather branding. IMO that sounds too much like "insta" coffee. Then again I may be biased, since I'm not a coffee drinker.

ixnay
Click to expand...

WSB-TV/Atlanta has both "Severe Weather Team 2" brand for it's weather team and both "Early Warning Doppler 2 Radar Network" and "Storm Tracker 2 HD" for it's radar (the same Vipir HD Radar system). Make up your mind.

WAGA/Atlanta as of this Monday with the O&O look implementation is the "Weather Authority". Radar is called "TrueView Titan" (the name of the system itself from WSI).

WGCL/Atlanta's "StormTracker 46, Weather in Your Neighborhood" is another breather.

Almost every local NBC station is in bed with "Weather Plus" (thus why WBAL is now "Insta-Weather Plus") in cooperation with the NBC Weather Plus digital subchannel offering. Local radar at WXIA/WATL is "Power Plus One Million" (the radar is not in HD despite the news is in HD)

Just call it a weather team and a weather radar for crying out loud!
 
Apollo7979 said:
Russell, you're also missing the channel number plus 3 zeros beside it.
Click to expand...

Touche. :D

I'm with jal41 ... the meteorologists' personality ought to differentiate each stations' product.

Where I live (Savannah, Ga. market), we have "Doppler Max 11" (WTOC/CBS), "Storm Team 3" (WSAV/NBC) and "Future Trak" (WJCL-22/ABC). Not so much outlandish or bad as ... cliche'd. I wonder how "Storm Search 22,000" might sound for our ABC station?

All and good, but for years Savannah was home to what had to be the most bizarre TV weathercast in the nation. "Captain Sandy" was WSAV's weatherman in the '60s/'70s, and the segment opened with a sea shanty jingle:

"Yo ho! yo ho! What’s the weather going to be? / Here's the man who knows, let's take a look and see / Here is Captain Sandy with the weather he has found / For Savannah and for Chatham and the counties all around."

The Good Cap'n was assisted by a cast of characters -- the forecast came from "Wilbur the Weather Bird", the temperature was given by "Arthur Mometer" (our thermometer - get it?), and the best moment (as I've been told by a couple of longtime Savannahians) would be when Sandy reached into Davey Jones' Locker to get the tide charts from "Calamity Clam." A running gag involved Calamity trying to bite Sandy's arm as he reached for the tides. My kingdom to find just one tape........

New owners in the late '70s - who possessed a gross miscalculation for this city (Savannah, in ways both charming and sometimes frustrating, detests change) - put the kibosh on Cap'n Sandy.

The 'branding' IS getting a bit out of hand. It's time for a revolution in TV weather. How about Super Mylar Board Magic Marker Smiley Sun ... 3000!

--Russell
 
Apollo7979 said:
Russell, you're also missing the channel number plus 3 zeros beside it.

That's my gripe about weather brands. Is it really necessary if you're channel 7, for example, to call your weather radar "The Live Doppler Storm Scan 7000"?
Click to expand...

A few months ago, WUPW in Toledo ran a hilarious commercial spoofing the out-of-control weather branding of rival stations (particularly WTVG's "Live Doppler 13000") It went something like "The other stations have Doppler! Triple Doppler! Super Mega Woppler Doppler 14000, with quadrangular phase harmonics, so powerful it can see through time!...do you really care about this stuff? No, you just want to know the weather."
 
That Savannah story reminded me of when I was a kid in the 60's in Seattle and KING-TV had Bob Cram, "The cartooning weatherman". He would draw cartoons every night and tell the weather at the same time! When you are eight years old that was so cool!
 
I remember the cartoon weatherman at KING-5 in the 60's as well. I was very young but I loved watching him.

How about Ray Ramsey on KOMO-4 in Seattle and all of his "wind direction" arrows? When he was done drawing the wind directions, you couldn't make heads or tails of the freaking weathermap!! :D "The winds on the coast will be out of the west at 25 -- small craft advisory. In the straight of Juan de Fuca, the winds will be out of the north at 15. In Puget Sound, we'll see variable winds at 10 to 15, etc. etc. etc." Of course, all of this was WELL before anyone "branded" the weather. It was simply the anchor saying "and Ray Ramsey is here with the weather...".

And who could forget Harry Wappler at KIRO-7 with his "sliding boards"!?!
 
OK, now you've got this Seattle native going! YES, Ray Ramsey, former DJ, hired at ABC KOMO probably because he could talk fast and be semi-entertaining...and again, YES, before all the "branding" that goes on today! Harry Wappler...I remember when he got the big call to go to WCBS in New York. Lasted a year, and came running back to KIRO! Sliding boards, well a lot of stations used those. And his son, Andy, is now one of the prime weather guys on KIRO. It was certainly a different era, almost as if the weather segment was used as a break from all the other depressing news. Today, it helps stations brand their newscasts (or maybe not as much as they think...I mean "storm tracker" and "first alert weather" all seem to blend together today and the average viewer is not impressed. Personalities drew audiences back in the day. All three of the above Seattle talents are long gone from on-air, with the exception of Harry Wappler, who retired just a couple years ago. Sadly, this era seems to be gone.
 
The names they come up with are the best part of the local weather. Its the weather segment that should be changed. Why do I need someone dancing in front of a green screen, blocking actual information, to tell me what the weather WAS like today. Its called a forecast, tell me what to expect. Or better yet, give the weather one minute and fill the other 2 minutes with actual news. No, not Anna Nicole or Brittney, but actual news.

OK, I'm dating myself but Uncle Weatherbee with his colorforms weathermap was just as accurate as

'SUPER MEGA INSTA DOPPLER,,,,, YADDA YADDA YADDA."
 
This thread saw more action than I thought it would. Great job, all of you! :)

Russell W., my dream weather brand wouldn't be as long as yours. It'd be "Gizmo Weather". ;D

I wish I were old enough to watch guys like "Uncle Weatherbee". :(

In 1989 I watched on WGAL-8 Lancaster (NBC, then as now) a special celebrating that station's 40th birthday. They showed a tape from maybe 1959 of their weather guy, dressed as an Atlantic service station attendant. Atlantic (which later merged with Richfield to become ARCO) was obviously WGAL's weather sponsor then.

ixnay
 
The Atlantic Weatherman was a franchised thing
back in the late '50s. In my neck of the woods,
Dave Wright was WFMY's, and Bob Knapp was
WRAL's; both guys wore the uniform. (That was
also the era of The Esso Reporter, which WFMY
and WTVD had in these parts.)
 
hootmon said:
Harry Wappler..
Click to expand...
And his son, Andy,
Click to expand...
My brother who lived in Seattle a couple years ago told me about the Wappler father/son weather combo. They could have had "Double Doppler, Double Wappler" weather team.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they could have! :D

However, severe weather in Western Washington is generally so rare that most of the weather forecast is actually for sports enthusiasts (boating, hiking, etc.).
 
searadiofreak said:
OK, now you've got this Seattle native going! YES, Ray Ramsey, former DJ, hired at ABC KOMO probably because he could talk fast and be semi-entertaining...and again, YES, before all the "branding" that goes on today! Harry Wappler...I remember when he got the big call to go to WCBS in New York. Lasted a year, and came running back to KIRO! Sliding boards, well a lot of stations used those. And his son, Andy, is now one of the prime weather guys on KIRO. It was certainly a different era, almost as if the weather segment was used as a break from all the other depressing news. Today, it helps stations brand their newscasts (or maybe not as much as they think...I mean "storm tracker" and "first alert weather" all seem to blend together today and the average viewer is not impressed. Personalities drew audiences back in the day. All three of the above Seattle talents are long gone from on-air, with the exception of Harry Wappler, who retired just a couple years ago. Sadly, this era seems to be gone.
Click to expand...

I remember when Harry went to New York and came running back ASAP. (In the sports dept, Bruce King did the same thing.)

If you grew up in Seattle, you have to remember the KIRO weather women in the 70's -- Sandy Hill (pre-GMA days), Ann Martin (pre-KCBS days), and Mikki Flowers (recently retired from KIRO after many years) -- who did the morning and noon weather. KIRO even used noon anchor and Lifestyle reporter Ann Bush (PR now) on occasions when Harry was off. It was almost like "Harry's Angels" -- there was Harry and all these women.
 
Yes, indeed, Seattle's KIRO did have the weatherwomen! Interesting that as women became more accepted in the local news business, both Sandy Hill and Ann Martin started doing more important work, eventually joining the guys at the anchor desk at times. Then, seemingly within a few years both of them were stars in L.A. (Sandy went to KNXT, Ann originally to KABC where she stayed for many years.)
 
any news department that brags about PINPOINT DOPPLAR RADAR. Why do they think the weather is going to change from block to block? I am in New England and the weather is nuts on a biblical level but not that nuts!
 
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