March 28, 2024

Survey Shows Many TV Weathercasters Are Dumb

The New York Times in its March 29 story, “Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming,” was too nice to say it and a more thorough Columbia Journalism Review article on the same subject titled “Hot Air” came closer to saying it, but the research that both articles refer to clearly indicates what we’ve known intuitively for years, that most TV weathercasters, to put it bluntly, are dumb.
The research both articles referred to was done at George Mason University, and you can look at it here.
The research shows the schism is between climatologists and meteorologists. Climatologists are those who are scientists and have at least a masters degree. Meteorologists are not scientists and don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to predicting long-term weather trends, let alone five-day forecasts.
Of course, I’m being a little dramatic when I call most TV weathercasters dumb, which I do in the headline mainly to get attention. Most TV weathercasters aren’t necessarily dumb; they are primarily entertainers who have a deep-seated need to be noticed and loved. But some are getting advanced degrees in climate change, but these enlightened weathercasters are in the minority.
The majority are exhibitionists who have an attention deficit somewhere in their background that leads them with a deep need to be noticed and loved – no different from other entertainers: actors, comedians, and radio and TV vaudevillians such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Don Imus, Howard Stern, or Glenn Beck, all of whose greatest talent is getting noticed.
In the case of TV weathercasters, especially at the local TV station level, these entertainers are good at communicating on TV and being cute and funny. The clowns and comedians among them tend to migrate to the sunshine states and, especially Southern California, where they have to come up with entertaining ways to say on the air, “Seventy-two degrees and sunny.”
For example, on-air clown and TV weatherentertainer John Coleman, who was on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” and was a founder of the Weather Channel, works at KUSI-TV in San Diego and he’s one of the dumb ones who think climate change is a “scam.”
What The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review articles did not mention are the implied characteristics of the people who watch and believe these weatherentertainers and their climate change denials. If the TV weatherentertainers are dumb, or, more correctly, uneducated and uniformed, what does this make the people who watch them? Probably dumb, or, more correctly, uneducated and uninformed and even more dangerous, terminally incurious.
Is it any wonder that we have birthers, tea party members, Sarah Palin fans, and militias that are arming to fight the anti-Christ (see this NY Times story)? They are uneducated people who probably watch local TV to get their local news and weather, watch Fox News to get their national news, and watch Glenn Beck and listen to Rush Limbaugh to get their political opinions.
By getting information from entertainers, they are doing what Neil Postman identified as “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” but in this case it is also amusing our planet to death.

Lachlan, We Hardly Knew You

Lachlan Murdoch, oldest son of News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch quit this week to take his family back to Australia. Reports in the press indicate that Lachlan was pissed at his dad’s imperious style and meddling in the way Lachlan, 33, was running the company’s most profitable division, the 35 Fox television stations.
Too bad. Lachlan seems to have shown promise and he may have learned how to be an effective media executive in a few years, but he also learned to his dismay and disgust that politics runs thicker than blood. I don’t know the specific politics of News Corp., but I do know that the politics in big media companies where money and power converge is brutal. The young Murdoch, even with his birthright and the intent of his father to have his children eventually run his empire, was no match for one of the greatest political infighters and strategists of all time–Roger Ailes.
In the August 10 story in the Wall Street Journal, Julia Angwin and Joe Flint wrote, “But issues over the station group’s day-to-day management were a big source of conflict between Lachlan and his father, triggering the younger Murdoch’s departure, say people familiar with the situation. Specifically, Lachlan often found himself out of the loop, in part because of the close relationship between the station group’s CEO, Jack Abernethy, and Fox News chief, Roger Ailes, a close confidant of the elder Mr. Murdoch.”
In the next two paragraphs, Angwin and Flint write: “The vacancy created by Lachlan Murdoch’s departure could set the stage for a power struggle between Mr. Ailes and another high-profile News Corp. executive, Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin. As chief operating officer, overseeing the TV and film operations, Mr. Chernin would seem to be the natural candidate to take control of the station group. But Mr. Ailes’ success at building the Fox News Channel into the leading 24-hour news channel has made him a favorite with Rupert Murdoch. A spokesman for News Corp. declined to comment.
The company’s TV station group, one of the largest in the nation, has long been one of the company’s biggest profit centers. The stations account for roughly 10% of revenue and 30% of operating income at News Corp. Just as important, the group is strategically crucial as the main outlet for the Fox broadcast network. The stations are also useful for other businesses, such as Fox’s sister cable networks, that need on-air promotion.”
You can see Alies’s fingerprints all over this situation, just like you can see the equally Machiavellian politcal strategist Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over the outing of Valerie Plame. I’ll bet a month’s wages (I’m on vacation this month, so I’m earning nothing) that Alies wasn’t getting what he wanted from Lachlan in terms of caving in to Alies’s demands for more Fox News channel promotion and intergration of the station’s news product with the Fox News channel.
Plus, I’ll bet next month’s wages that Alies wanted new worlds to conquer now that he’s thrashed CNN and MSNBC. And because he came out of political consulting and politics, you know he craves more power. Afterall, when it comes to power in politics and the media, you are either gaining power or losing it–there is no standing still in the power grid. Therefore, Alies lusts for more power and he’ll get it from Murdoch who must be terrified that Ailes, his ideological soulmate, will go over to the competition and beat Fox’s brains out.
I predict that Chernin will do Murdoch’s bidding (which is why he is Rupert’s #2 and short-term heir apparent) and give the Fox Television Station group to Alies. That move will give Alies more power and keep him in the News Corp. family where he belongs.
Will News Corp. and Fox be better off with Lachlan gone and Alies running the TV station group? Of course. Lachlan may have been fairly smart, but he’s not nearly as smart or experienced in TV or corporate politics as Ailes is. So, Lachlan’s blood ties lost to Alies’s political ties and maneuvering, and the young Murdoch will probably be much happier away from his controlling father and the political infighting. He probably said to himself, wisely, “Who needs that crap when I’m going to be worth about $1 billion some day no matter where I work.”
Rupert was quoted as saying he hopes Lachlan will come back to News Corp. some day. Fat chance. Would you go back if you were in Lachlan’s position?