One of the bloggers is Real Radio's own Jim Philips. His first post was poking fun at the local weather people:
Hipwader madness (HWM for short) can be seen every night on any of the local television news programs. Reporters don all manner of foul weather gear in their never-ending effort to inform the audience that it's raining outside.
At times I expect one of them to announce that after their "live shot" they will have to head to the docks and loosen the lines on the "Mary B" because the lobster pots have to be hoisted aboard. I swear I saw one of them in an advertisement for fish sticks.
May a merciful God intervene before one of these reporters sloshes into a nest of water moccasins or steps on a snapping turtle.
OK, I admit that there are some reporters that I enjoy watching outside in the rain.... and that water moccasin thing would make great TV. Otherwise, Jim is spot-on. Last week WFTV pre-empted Oprah for a one-hour special on the rain. And then ran their regular 90 minutes of local news, primarily focused on - you want to guess? - the rain! Even Kevin Oliver, the space reporter, got shoved outside without an umbrella to hold a model of the shuttle and explain why it couldn't land in that weather. Apparently rain hitting your exterior when you're coasting in at mach-2 can do serious damage. I can't really remember the specifics though - I was too distracted by the little waterfall pouring straight off Kevin's nose!
I hope he was wearing his hipwaders!
2 comments:
Ooh, fun reading! I had missed that & I'm upset that I missed the shuttle/rain silliness.
Oh man, I just love reporters in the rain. LOVE IT! Especially during hurricanes that peter out to nothing and become even less that our normal summer storms after all the cable networks have dispatched crews to Florida. Last year I was up at 2 or 3 am watching Geraldo Rivera during a rather mild hurricane LITERALLY tied to a palm tree! I laughed so hard I woke Golf Guy up. (The storm was not a bit worse than anything we've been through the last week.)It was a TV weather moment just full of awesome!
Definitely an industry that started out attempting to be informative ... and has morphed into something altogether different.
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