In Following the Equator, Mark Twain wrote:
“In America the ice-storm is an event. And it is not an event which one is careless about. When it comes, the news flies from room to room in the house, there are bangings on the doors, and shoutings, ‘The ice-storm! the ice-storm!’ and even the laziest sleepers throw off the covers and join the rush for the windows.”
Yesterday, we had the latter day equivalent, with television reporters being dispatched to the always good for snow northern suburbs to cover the snow and ice.
The morning, of course, started with the requisite school closing and delays being displayed on the screen taking up either a great deal of screen real estate at the expense of the morning news show, as seen on WPIX and WNYW, or relegated into the space normally reserved for the news crawl. As the day progressed, there were updates and by the 5:00 hour, there was team coverage from all over the tri-state from rainy Long Island to the slushy city to delay filled airports to the always hit with the most snow northern suburbs. WNBC and WCBS even had “tag team” weather – having one weather presenter/meteorologist in front of the green screen and a meteorologist in the weather center.
If it wasn’t for the huge story of the baseball steroids scandal, we would have most likely been inundated with even more weather coverage. Thankfully things calmed down a bit by 6 p.m. when there was only about ten minutes dedicated to weather and as the evening progressed the amount of weather coverage basically halved with WNBC leading with the baseball scandal and everyone else leading with weather.
We don’t seem to recall the tag team weather last winter season, which we have to admit seemed a little over the top and something you would find in some truly weather obsessed market. Now, we thought the WCBS branding of Eye on the Storm was brilliant, since it is a play on the CBS “eye” logo.
Still, we thought there was some overkill all around the dial, especially compared to last winter. We also wonder how many stories fell through the cracks or didn’t get enough attention. Just unimportant little stories like the New Jersey Legislature being the first state in 30 years to vote to abolish the death penalty.
