Mother Nature now the it-girl of TV news
NEW YORK — The correspondent most frequently seen on either ABC, CBS or NBC’s evening newscasts this year doesn’t work out of the White House or some overseas trouble zone. It’s Ginger Zee, ABC’s meteorologist.
Weather is a big element of local news, but a story about the elements once had to be extraordinary to warrant time on a national newscast. Now it’s routine, and not everyone considers that a change for the better.
Over the past five years, the newscasts have essentially doubled the amount of time spent on weather and natural disaster stories. The time has more than quadrupled since the early 1990s, said news consultant Andrew Tyndall, who monitors the content of the broadcasts.
ABC’s World News Tonight leads the way, particularly since David Muir took over as anchor in September.
“The weather is part of the national conversation and it is part of the news cycle,” said Almin Karamehmedovic, executive producer of World News Tonight.
With people following news all day, ABC wants to catch what people are most immediately talking about, Karamehmedovic said.
During Muir’s first three months, ABC spent 150 minutes on weather stories, and hired Rob Marciano as a second meteorologist. NBC did 106 minutes and CBS had 69 minutes, Tyndall said.
“If you’re trying to be relevant to a local audience, (weather is) as relevant as it gets,” said Steve Capus, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. “But we’re not broadcasting to one part of the country.”
Capus said he’d rather spend time on more substantial, less flashy, stories.
Smartphones and social media have made video of dramatic weather, crashing waves and whiteouts of snow more readily available than a decade ago.
The concern is that video makes weather stories catnip to producers, irresistible even with limited news value, said Patrick Burkey, Nightly News executive producer.
Others use a more blunt term: weather porn.
“If Ginger Zee reported in the role of climatologist rather than meteorologist, I would praise ABC’s World News Tonight’s decision as a daring intervention into a crucial national and global debate (on climate control),” he said. “Instead, she is more like a pornographer.”