Do you care what kind of wrench the mechanic uses when he repairs your car?
Or what kind of spatula a fry cook uses to flip your burger?
No?
So, why should you care what kind of computer a TV weather person uses to forecast the weather? All you want is an accurate prediction of what the weather will be like in the near future.
And that’s what TV weather used to be, a brief prognostication of tomorrow’s weather given once during a local news broadcast.
But, now, the weather seems to have metastasized so there are a minimum of two lengthy weather segments per local news broadcast. A lot of that time is spent by weather persons bragging about their equipment, which is so accurate it can tell us it is raining hard at the Jones farm just outside Peotone.
Amusingly, the weather persons often leaven this cutting-edge technology by using the old-school method of sending a reporter out in a car to let us know it is raining and on I-57 and that traffic is heavy during rush hour.
Of course, knowing of the approach of tornadoes and damaging storms is important. But dangerous weather happens less often than weather persons would have you believe.
And, maybe, they don’t even believe it.
I was watching a Cubs game on ABC when a dozen annoying beeps sounded, obliterating what the sports announcers were saying.
Then, across the bottom of the screen appeared a crawler that the National Weather Service had issued a severe …
But, at that moment the inning ended and the station went to commercial. The very instant the commercial came on the weather warning disappeared.
If these warnings are so important, so necessary, so vital to protecting people and property, why cut them off for a commercial. Will dangerous weather wait to strike until the commercial is over?
Commerce, ego and justifying the cost of new whiz-bang technology often seems to trump protecting the public.
And while we’re talking, that baseball game I was watching had its own commerce issues. Today, everything in a ballgame is sponsored and cause for a commercial: the fifth inning is brought to you by; this pitching change is brought to you by …
Next is bound to be: This first baseman scratching himself moment is brought to you by …
But, that’s another column.
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.
