Here’s something I’ve never understood. Why do half-hour local news broadcasts spend a third of their program talking about the weather? Does anyone really care that there’s a cold front coming in from Albuquerque? Or what the temperatures were in Des Moines today?
I contend that we really want to know just a few pieces of info: the temperature, the wind chill/heat index, and the forecast. These are things that can be flashed up on the screen as a bumper as they go to commercial, like they do the stock prices. This would leave around eight extra minutes (and an extra staff person’s time) for more in-depth reporting, or at least more sports highlights — anything more exciting than seeing an interminable PowerPoint presentation about the weather.