Archive for the ‘Weather’ Category

Weather Central adds Facebook, Twitter integration to product

Weather Central, one of the world’s largest weather graphics and data providers has announced that its 3D:LIVE offering will now include ways for forecasters to directly sends portions of their forecasts to social networking sites.

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Detroit station streaming live video from city snow plows

WDIV-TV, the Post-Newsweek station in Detroit, reached a deal earlier this year to equip 25 city snow plows with smartphones capable of broadcasting live video via Sprint 3G service and Streambox, reports Broadcasting & Cable.

“On big weather days, the question is always, ‘How do we show people what the conditions on the road are and what’s going on?’” says WDIV News Operations Manager Jeff Liebman. “Then we had an idea: Why don’t we show people what the inside of the county snowplows are looking at? They’re traveling on the roads themselves, and you’ve got to figure they’re pretty safe.”

Unfortunately, the setup hasn’t gotten much use this winter since Detroit has managed to avoid a heavy number of major storms. However, the idea is certainly interesting and worth considering for other types of coverage.

AccuWeather weatherman delivers dramatic ‘Snowpocalypse’ forecast

Pile of snow, spray paint takes place of weather map on CBS

Well, here’s an interesting alternative to a chroma key wall. CBS’s Dave Price used a snow drift and some colored spray paint to create a weather map Wednesday morning on “The Early Show.”

It was a little hard to make out the layout of the map, but I suppose you have to give him credit for creativity.

Expanding options could rain on TV news forecasts

There could be changes and challenges in the wind for a fixture of TV news — the weather forecast.

We’ve written before about WeatherNation, a company founded by a former Minneapolis forecaster to provide “outsourced” weather forecasts to television stations and now Broadcasting & Cable has featured the company in an article about the changing face of local TV weather.

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Weather on new CNN site lacks emphasis, still uses old design

It’s been almost two weeks since the new CNN.com debuted but the site’s weather section is still skinned with the old design.

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Weather Channel tunes out ‘elevator music’

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting the Weather Channel has opted to stop playing smooth jazz-type music during local forecast segments.

The music, which was apparently popular enough to warrant a CD release of a sampling of the tunes, will replaced with soft rock.

“I think we’ve been doing an injustice to our viewers playing, for the lack of a better word, elevator music on the segments for all these years,” Geoffrey Darby, the cable network’s new executive vice president of programming, told the AJC.

The Idolator blog, meanwhile, has list, complete with sample tracks, of the June 2009 lineup.

Darby also mentioned the new tunes won’t be thematically intrusive. So don’t expect the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” with the next tornado alert, says the AJC.

WeatherNation offers ‘central-casting’ for mid-market stations

WeatherNation, a company founded by former WCCO-TV meteorologist Paul Douglas, who was outsted from the Minneapolis station in 2008, is offering white label weather forecasts for mid-market stations, cable outlets and Web sites at this year’s NAB Show.

The venture has built an HD studio facility in the outskirts of Minneapolis where it produces unbranded weather forecast segments. Stations can select from a 42-inch monitor position as well as a 65-inch touchscreen area. Graphics can be branded to each station’s unique look and font, according to the firm’s Web site.

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Baron boosts WX graphics offering

Baron has announced new features for its Omni offering:

Volumetric radar imaging combines available radar scans and creates 3D maps that illustrate the data in ways viewers can understand.

In a demo Tuesday at NAB in Las Vegas, imagery from the Oklahoma May 3, 1999 tornado was shown with a detailed 3D look at the storm, including the various parts of the structure. Though highly technical it was obvious how, when combined with a meteorologist’s expertise, this system could provide a unique and vital view of storm systems. (more…)

Baron partners with Cell Journalist for CJ effort

Weather data and graphics providing Baron Services has announced a partnership with Cell Journalist to allow viewers to contribute to local stations’ coverage of weather.

Baron will integrate viewer material into its systems in addition to its already extensive lineup of 3D graphics and data avaialable to forecasters.

Cell Journalist works with camera-equipped cell phones, iPhones or Blackberries and provides non-weather citizen journalist tools as well.

This is an interesting application that will likely be very valuable to stations, especially during severe weather coverage. Having an “army” of reporters on the ground who are ready and excited to share photos with their local station is a great way to boost loyalty and viewer involvement and having a tightly integrated solution will be a big convenience booster.

Park Place studio tweaks Web site

Park Place Studio, the Carnegie, PA based set design firm, has recently updated their website with a new gallery of work and updated information.

The site, online at www.ParkPlace.tv, has some of Park’s recent work for NASA, the United States Senate and KTNV. The new galleries make looking through pictures a snap and allow for quick viewing of all of Park’s work.

And, now the forecast for ‘Edit Location’

This screen grab of a weather forecast from New Zealand’s TVNZ certainly isn’t a new kind of mistake, but it does make us wonder why people still insist on using placeholder text that can be so easily misaken for real text. Optimally the best solution to prevent things like this would be leave the placeholder areas blank so when a forecasters is scanning his or her lineup, the omission would show up better. The problem with placeholder text like this is that, at a quick glance, it looks like it could be real text.

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