When I was a kid my Grandfather Vince used to tune into the weather channel constantly. Not just frequently but continuously- he would watch it play the same forecast over and over again for hours. I suspect he just liked the easy-listening music that would play with it, because to me it seemed like the forecast itself would be repeated about fifty times before it changed.

As a kid this was mind-numbing, but now I appreciate that you used to be able to flip the channel on at any time and immediately get the information you were most likely to need. I’m watching it now to determine when Scott and I should leave (Scott tolerates driving in the rain but I prefer to avoid it when possible), and what I’m seeing is basically a newscast. There are actually people at news desks intimating with wide-eyes the RECORD heat in Seattle right now and the wildfires burning in God-knows where. It’s a mild day in Alaska! Currently, there’s a produced segment about the Grand Canyon! The Weather Channel comes in HD! This is news I personally cannot possibly use!

So, yeah, the internet is the culprit here. If I had internet access right now I wouldn’t need to sit through ten minutes of “news” to get to “information”. But even if that’s the price I have to pay for progress, there are two points I can’t get over:

First, all of these produced segments seem to cost money and mean more advertising. It seems like a channel with a subject as riveting as weather cannot afford to test the modern American attention span.

Second, if the Weather Channel is not about weather FORECASTS anymore, does it really make sense to have a channel that’s just about WEATHER? Is there enough sustained interest? You can see them stretching for news stories- one of these meteorologists just talked for 5 minutes about Hurricane Audrey 50 years ago in order to make the statement “but nothing is happening in the Atlantic today” relevant.

I suspect that that a simple, basic Weather Channel would make more money from old people who watch constantly just cause they like the music.