From the Toronto Star blurb -- Call it the Katrina effect: it's no longer enough to just report the weather; it has to be entertainment.
Has the weather gone Hollywood?
In an effort to grab higher ratings and boost advertising in a fiercely competitive market, some television stations are being accused of exaggerating, dare we say hyping, their weather forecasts.
Crippling ice storms, devastating tsunamis and powerful hurricanes enthral viewers like a drawn-out O.J. Simpson trial or the heart-wrenching coverage of 9/11. Hurricane Katrina had us mesmerized for weeks – and the ad revenue flowed.
It used to be that weather forecasters were criticized for getting it wrong. Now, in true Chicken Little style, it's being suggested they're consistently overstating their predictions – the depth of snow, the severity of wind-chill factors – urging the audience to brace for the worst.
David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment Canada, calls it "storm porn."
Yes, he's heard the criticism that "some news producers go to their meteorologists and tell them to make it bigger and badder." But that is in the U.S., he says, where broadcasters like CNN disperse teams of "atmospheric paparazzi" to catch the wind and rain behaving badly.
Phillips laughs. The viewing public is titillated by shots of pretty boys Anderson Cooper and Rob Marciano buffeted by a coastal storm or huddled against a rampart holding inside-out umbrellas, as sheets of metal fly around their heads.
But Phillips is not convinced that maelstrom has hit Canada – yet.
It's hard to prove that weather reports are being exaggerated, he points out, because there are too many variables. The intensity, duration and path of a storm can change on a dime. "At the last moment, it can stall, pick up a shot of adrenaline from another storm or swerve 100 kilometres south."
The storm that hit Toronto Dec. 16 started out as a "pimple" in Texas, he says. "It took five days to get here. A lot can happen in five days. So they have to decide – do we go for it early and tell viewers this storm could be enormous or wait until we're more sure?"
Now, what might help the situation here in Soviet Canuckistan? State control of weather warnings!
Gordon McBean, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, agrees that Canadian broadcasters are less likely to exaggerate weather reports dramatically to spike ratings. Unlike many U.S. markets, Canada has all kinds of weather. There is no dearth of material, says McBean, who was assistant deputy minister responsible for the Meteorological Service of Environment Canada from 1994 to 2000.
What's more, all severe weather warnings are issued from a single and remarkably reliable source – Environment Canada, he says.