KETV Chief Meterologist Bill Randby (left, in front of green screen) delivers live coverage Saturday evening while anchor Suzanne Deyo can be seen at the news desk in this screenshot from the station's Newsplex camera at 5:45 p.m. Saturday.
If you were in Johnson, Gage or Otoe Counties late Saturday afternoon, your best bet to find out what was happening with the weather would have been Lincoln TV or radio stations.
With no severe weather warnings for Douglas, Sarpy or Washington County, meteorologists at Omaha’s five TV stations were forced to make a decision: interrupt regular programming or rely on on-screen weather radar and crawls to inform viewers in those counties of the threat of severe weather.
Each took a different approach.
KETV (Cox Channel 9) provided the most comprehensive storm coverage. Chief Meteorologist Bill Randby and meteorologists John Campbell, Chuck McWilliams and Andrea Bredow spent more than an hour on the air providing wall-to-wall forecasting.
KETV utilized phone reports from photojournalism Scott Buer, Lincoln bureau reporter Andrew Ozaki, University of Nebraska meteorology student Sean McMullen, information credited to radio station KWBE, photos of damage e-mailed from viewers and frame grabs from the Nebraska Department of Roads highway cams.The station finally took a break at 5:37 p.m., but resumed continuous coverage past 6 p.m., when Randby advised viewers that might be tuning in to ABC’s broadcast of “The Ten Commandments” that they might not be seeing what they had hoped to watch. After sharing video of a tornado McMullen caught on tape and a review of current conditions, Randby signed off at 7:05 p.m.
KMTV (Cox Channel 5) Chief Meteorologist Ryan McPike and Dean Wysocki periodically interrupted CBS Sports’ coverage of the third round of the Verizon Heritage golf tournament between 4:30 and 5 p.m.
After 5 p.m., as tornado warnings continued for Johnson, Gage and Otoe counties, KMTV stayed with the same approach as it aired an infomercial for Time-Life’s superstars of country music. McPike returned a few more times once the storm reached the metropolitan area.
WOWT (Cox Channel 8) meteorologist Jeff Jensen fronted nearly continuous coverage until 5 p.m., assisted by Michael Born and Scot Akin. At 5 p.m., the station proceeded with its regularly scheduled newscast, with Jensen telling viewers after his main forecast that severe weather situations merit special interruptions, but "we’ll try not to break into programming as much as possible."
On Omaha radio, KKAR (1290 AM) provided continuous coverage with an Accuweather meteorologist joining Neil Nelkin and Terry Leahy.
KFAB (1110 AM) periodically updated listeners on the progress of the storms during its coverage of the Nebraska baseball game.
8 comments:
I too was transfixed with Channel 7's coverage. I am really impressed with their technology. They were able to pinpoint up to a 1/2 hr before an actual tornado warning was issued for Otoe County that there was rotation with the storm.
I too was transfixed with channel 7's coverage! They were able to stay on for over 3 hours for a bunch of crap south of us. I felt like it was a broken record. Same info over and over mainly over open land. Really didn't think it was that bad anywhere near Omaha to deserve that kind of coverage. Can you say overkill anonymous!
And yet you watched.
Was trying to watch a couple of different shows, yet they were still on everytime I checked back! Several times when there were no tornado warnings or anything near Omaha. Couldn't watch more than two minutes of it...same thing over and over. Must be tough to stay on for so long with no fresh info!
There are stations in Lincoln. I talked to some of my friends in Beatrice and they watch the Lincoln stations. Starting to wonder if Anonymous #1 and avidomahanewsviewer aren't anonymously, advidly and gamefully empolyed by channel 7? I see you are the only two coming to defend this ridiculously overdone coverage yesterday. I know, we should all start by using our real names. I will start, my name is Joe Black.
6 was on the longest for the Beatrice storms then 7 went on forever for the stuff that came through Omaha. I thought it was a bit overdone considering there those storms were not that bad (I loved when the new kid interrupted Bill to say the sun was out in West O.) Then all three did a good job for the southwest Iowa storms. Channel 7 was the first to have any video.
Also a note about 7's radar. It's very busy. They've got arrows, circles, and lightning strikes. Throw in the actual rain, cities and the map and it is very hard to read. It looks like they have a separate 3-D radar which is much easier to look at. Although the big red blobs are a bit cartoonish.
Channel 7 was worse then overkill. Bill kept saying the same thing constantly. What could have been summed up in 1 to 2 minutes (the storm down south and the direction it was heading) he must have repeated everything for at least 10 to 15 minutes. Just get on tell us the particulars and where it is headed. We dont need it repeated 600 times in 5 minutes.
And dont get me started on all the "rotation" in every storm nowadays
Avid, you are a dork! Joe Black was being sarcastic...oops I am talking in third person. Guess I will have to find something better to do than write on the blog. That is right...I do have a life somewhere around here.
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