Something Else I Learned

Over the last couple of days, we've had some severe weather in Oklahoma, including deadly tornadoes. The weather has prompted a large amount of television airtime devoted to covering the storms. I have, through hard work at making things up, uncovered a memo detailing how this weather coverage is to proceed. Any personal names or other identifying information has been removed because these things could apply to any station on the air anywhere.

PROCEDURES DURING STORM COVERAGE

(Please do not circulate, meso-cyclonically or otherwise)

1. Male on-air weather personalities shall not wear their suitjackets while coverage is ongoing. Although they do the same thing they do twice a night, five nights a week -- stand in front of a camera and talk -- with their jackets on, the removal of the jackets suggests diligent effort and helps convey the gravity of the situation, i.e., "I don't have time to put on my coat, I have to look at these computer screens right now!" Notes: A) Regular anchor personalities shall keep their jackets on to indicate their overall command of the situation and that they are, like always, On Top of the Job. B) Female on-air weather personalities may remove their jackets or keep them on; they're not going to get to talk except in special circumstances (detailed below) so it doesn't matter what they're doing. C) This rule may be waived for severe weather coverage that happens very late at night or very early in the morning, because nobody cares about our 3 AM ad buys so we can just pass along needed information.

2. Facial expressions when on the air should be kept at Second Degree Seriousness, No-Nonsense Taking Care of Business Mode. The speaking personality may alter expressions suitably while communicating information, but these must remain at the Second Degree Seriousness level. Non-speaking personalities may from time to time add a slight Brow Furrow of Concentration, especially when changing the view on an existing screen instead of looking at one of the other half-dozen screens that may be showing the same thing, but should not overdo this to the point where people wonder if the personalities even know what's going on.

3. We are aware that the radar images projected onscreen are false color -- real thunderstorms are white, black, and various shades of gray. We are also aware that the different colors actually indicate amount of rainfall rather than some kind of super-severe storm. Nevertheless, red is an urgent color that commands attention and suggests that changing the channel from our coverage will doom viewers to being uninformed about the very latest developments of impending rainy disaster. Radar screen shots should include as much of the red zones as possible, even when it means zooming in so closely that no one can tell where the storm is except for the people in the towns shown, who are presumably in their storm shelters and not watching us.

4. Mobile news crews and helicopter cameras should shoot as much footage of the storms and of storm damage as they possibly can. Not only does it allow us to continually loop that footage while we essentially repeat ourselves every five minutes, it gives us footage to show long after sunset, when cameras would not be able to pick up images of either storm or damages. When we begin to recap the storm that ended barely 30 minutes ago, we will also need this footage to show people what happened in the dim misty pasts of the last half hour.

5. We paid good money for this whiz-bang high-tech equipment. It should be used at the drop of a hat, whether it provides any useful information at all. Whether an area has seen 500 lightning strikes in the last hour or 600 may not be relevant to the viewer, but we will make sure they know it and see the neato animation on the screen that shows exactly where those strikes happened. Also, be sure to mention the name of our specific whiz-bang radar frequently; we want viewers to think they will see something different when our installation bounces radio waves off the storm than they will see when other stations' installations bounce radio waves off the storm.

6. Many people will accuse us of sensationalizing the most trivial weather disturbance by offering it three or more hours of live coverage. We know this is untrue. But we should frequently insert genuinely useful warnings and information into our coverage, such as "You should take shelter now," or "Do not approach downed power lines." This will help strengthen our cloak of self-righteous indignation with which we will respond to those accusations by allowing us to assert that our efforts may very well have saved lives. Also, it is possible that some of the people working for us genuinely care about the well-being of others and want to be able to believe they have been of help. Marketing is working on this last issue but as yet has made no breakthroughs.