PR 101

This rant might not resonate with you unless you live someplace where it snows a lot. I do. I live in Milwaukee, WI, a great, great city. Milwaukee is located in the northern United States. Winter can be tough here. It get’s cold and it does what it does every winter, it snows.

Snow is no surprise here. We tend to expect it to start snowing sometime around late November or early December. It keeps snowing until late March or early April – sometimes it snows into May. For those of you who live anywhere on Earth where there’s winter, I am sure the same thing happens where you live. As I said, it’s winter, it gets cold, and it snows. This has been going on for millions of years.

So, why do television stations go crazy whenever more than two inches of snow is predicted? Now, I am not talking about snow in a normally warm weather city such as Dallas, Texas or Charlotte, N.C. Snow is news there because it so rarely happens.

However, in my home city of Milwaukee, or in Chicago or Boston, snow is not news to most of us. Yet, every time the forecast calls for snow to fall, the local television stations treat the event as if aliens were invading. Broadcasts start at 4 a.m.; reporters are deployed around the area; all programming is canceled to make way for weather reports; and television meteorologists stand in front of blue screens looking very serious.

(A quick television note: the meteorologists cannot actually see that large, nifty map behind them. All they see is a blue screen. When they do the broadcast, they are looking at off-camera monitor that shows the map.)

Now, this hysteria over some snow is a result of marketing run amuck. A long time ago, some marketing consultant told some station manager that people like weather news. I always imagined the conversation happening in a bar after the station manager had consumed several adult beverages paid for by the marketer. Once the station manager was in an “agreeable” mood, the marketer told him about the “viewers like weather” idea. At this point, the station manager decided that sounded good and signed the contract the marketer shoved toward him.

The marketing guy goes to work the next morning and remakes the station’s newscast, giving weather reports way more prominence then deserved. For whatever reason, ratings rose. The marketing guy discourages doing an actual study of why ratings went up. Hey, the only change was the way the forecast was delivered, right? So, it had to be that.

Other local television station managers took note. Station managers are under constant pressure to raise ratings – their jobs often depend on it. Local news is a revenue source. So, seeing what happened to their buddy’s station, they do the same. The next thing you know, from Bangor, Maine to Portland, Oregon, television reporters are standing on street corners with rulers, measuring snow depth. Others are asking truck drivers whether icy roads are slippery. All this is done with the gravitas of reporting a major announcement from the White House.

So, when there is a normal snowfall coming, we now get hysterics instead of reasoned, normal coverage.

And I don’t think people care that much about snowstorms. I think I am like most people – all I want to know when it is going to snow and what the temperature will be. Of course, they get those wrong more than half the time.  If there is a major freeway accident, tell me about that too so I can change my route. But don’t treat it like World War III has broken out.

One final note: a very fine classic rock radio station in Milwaukee, WKLH, now has what they call “storm tracker tracker.” Basically, they make fun of the hype over the weather. I recommend listening to them. Just click on the link. You will laugh out loud.