When my girls were young and were going to school, I would wake every morning and turn on the radio to a local station. This was necessary, especially in the winter, in order to know how the girls were going to dress--and, whether it was too cold (in my opinion) to send them out in the -30* wind chills. Also, the radio was where we would get school cancellation announcements, so we always had one in the kitchen. I still hadn't gotten a TV for the kitchen, but it wouldn't have mattered if I had one: the local TV station did not have early morning news, so I wouldn't have been any the wiser as to what the school or weather conditions were. Then we got The Weather Channel.
My life got infinitely easier when The Weather Channel (TWC) made an appearance on our cable system. I never had to worry that my kids were not going to be dressed properly for school and I always knew if it was going to be a good day to do any amount of driving. My life quickly began to revolve around TWC and watching to see forecasts, etc.
Over the years, I have needed to rely on TWC less and less. My girls graduated and moved away and I didn't have as many outside 'duties' and interests, so the weather conditions weren't as important to my every day life anymore. As the interwebs got better and better, I have begun looking online more frequently for my weather news--which is all well and good while my computer is actually on. But, I am one of those people who turns her computer off when she is done with it for the day, so it isn't always convenient to go online to see a forecast. And then I must rely on TWC once again. And that is where my problem lies.
WHAT THE F***ING HELL is wrong with The Weather Channel these days? At one time they began a feature called Local On The 8s, which meant that the local weather conditions, radar, and forecast would be broadcast every ten minutes. It was convenient and I never needed to wait more than ten minutes to know what was going on outside. Okay, most people would just look outside to see what the weather conditions are, but where we live, looking outside is NOT representative of what is going on two blocks from our house. So, I really need to see radar and forecasts, especially if I would be away from home for any length of time. (Local On The 8s still is being broadcast, just not as consistently as it was at first.) And then TWC decided that 24 hours of weather conditions and forecasts was boring and not necessary. Before you knew it, we got to watch hour after hour of shows dealing with global warming, past devastating storms, 'what if' stories, and the Gulf crisis. And in recent months, TWC has even been showing Hollywood movies. Now, I guess some of the features could be considered interesting, but I really don't appreciate some of the preachiness and political leanings of some of them. Also, if a channel is going to be named The Weather Channel, shouldn't it be doing what it is supposed to do: forecast and report the weather news from around the world? That is what I expect and wish the channel would get back to. But until then, I watch it less and less every year--pretty soon, I will stop altogether. And with the next smartphone I get, I probably won't need TWC at all.
Where's My Weather?
