Easy one, “you create it”. I don’t think i have seen one local stations wx site displayed in a clear fashion. Always to much info that is watered down further by boring fcst discussion that i know i hate writting, etc. We need graphics! they are quick and dirty, to the point, and if people are creative enough they will draw you in. I’m not taking about a temperature map clottered with text, but a graphic that illustrates the mood of the information and caters to its audience. With the what am i getting out of this mentality. The weather channel rocks, because they make it FUN!

Why not have the weather talent use devoted weather watchers to chime in via voice, use Gmail chat or any other VoIP and have their voices piped in to reinforce what is going on in a locale? And use these reports constantly, so there is something fresh every few minutes.

ANd what is the purpose of stations which have spent tens of thousands on a radar unit to show it on a few lousy weathercasts? Why not stream live a feed of that radar, quit wasting people’s time by having the Java applets or whatever to load of a loop.

It seems harsh, but the news people seem to saturate coverage with items that have absolutely NO impact on local viewers. Take for example the JonBenet Ramsey murder; it received the BREAKING NEWS label in markets thousands of miles from Boulder, Co. Why? Meanwhile, I’m guessing that scores of local markets had murders the same day as the Ramsey suspect’s capture, but how many of these markets reported on these murders? Some of them likely involved children.

Why not use Google Maps to display the crime committed in a community on a daily basis?

And since Google is thrashing the ad revenue, why not take some of these newscasts out on the road to these area, say Shopping Malls and the like. Have the sales departments work with these outlets to offer 5 to 15% off (or more) by coming out to kiosks at the malls. Have some news talent on hand and have town hall meetings about specific issues within the mall. If not malls, why not shopping plazas?

What I don’t understand is that the market I reside in, four stations send a camera person to shoot the baseball game (a AAA team) for a couple of seconds of highlights. There is hardly any post game interview or anything decent for a true sports fan to watch. This is a good example of how GMs and NDs should contact each other and aggree to pool coverage for the highlights. Or put the onus on the team to have some intern drive the highlights over (edited!). It seems like a waste of time, resources, etc. for somebody to be sent over to shoot 2-3 hours of baseball for less than 20 seconds of a double, runner scores, pitcher strikes out someone, catcher jumps up and handshakes ensue.

The keys to me would be:

1) Simplicity and cleanliness of presentation
2) Easy personalization (automatically remembers me)
3) Easy wireless delivery of personalized info
4) Weather storytelling and personality that brings local context and experience to conditions.
5) Cool but easy-to-use technology that’s mirrored from TV to online. See it on TV, use it yourself online.
6) Emphasizing local expertise and proven track record in expanded promotion efforts, but don’t use TV-like “TRIPLE DOPPLER 6000″ promotion style.
7) Aggressive distribution of branded weather coverage to other information providers and platforms.

I mean, lets face it. At this moment, if I say “Find me a weather forecast”, even I, who runs a TV news Web site, will probably reflexively go to weather.com. It’s quicker to type and flits to mind immediately.

That’s despite the fact that, often, if I want any sort of drilled-down weather info, it’s much faster to go to a local site than navigate the myriad menus at weather.com. And if I want decent radar, I sure shouldn’t be going to weather.com.

Sure, they have a 10-day forecast. Know why we don’t? Because the 10-day is wrong more often than right. So how do you show people that?

But in the end, it will _always_ be _easier_ to type weather.com than it will to type MyFoxNY.com, ABC13.com or anything with “channel” in the name.

How do you fight simple convenience?

Now if you have some actual useful weather app on your site, that is a whole ‘nother story - for example, while it hasn’t been linked to on their site for years so you need to know the direct URL, KREM has a nifty java app that shows realtime current weather conditions outside for all over the area.