By John Eckberg
The Cincinnati Enquirer

As Queen City television meteorologists shelve the snowstorms of winter for the tornadoes of spring, the drama of bad weather will keep audiences tuned in to their TVs.

"When you talk about local television news, one thing is always consistent," said Mary T. Rogus,assistant professor of broadcast journalism at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University in Athens. "The No. 1 reason people watch local news is for the weather. It's the one story that affects everybody."

Pundits of precipitation are hair-trigger quick to plug the coming of a big storm through the Tristate, playing up the possible impact on the evening promos. They do that for a reason: bad weather can bring big ad revenues.

That's because bad weather grabs viewers, offering broadcasters a chance to hang sponsorship banners on news teasers, pitch advertising to local businesses and heighten the immediacy of the television newscasts.

"The relationship between weather and advertising is, in reality, a relationship between ratings and advertising," Rogus said. "If you ask what brings in ratings, the fact of the matter is severe weather brings in ratings."

Weather watchers

So why do people care so much about the weather?

"We are the only species that knows there's a future," said Paul Diamond, a Ph.D. and psychologist in private practice in Mount Auburn. "And we carry a myth that we can control the future. We may not be able to control the weather, but we can control what we do and what we wear."

People don't like surprises, said Diamond. "Knowing what the weather may be gives us some sense of control."

Some stations go to great lengths to showcase their powers of forecasting:

• WCPO-TV Channel 9 touts its Ultimate Doppler radar - two towers of 350,000 watts of power - and VIPIR radar imaging.

• WLWT-TV's StormTeam5 has a Doppler Loop and boasts that Meteorologist Mike Nichols has bachelor's and master's degrees in meteorology from Penn State and Florida State universities and is a dissertation away from getting his doctorate in meteorology.

• WKRC-TV Local 12 offers viewers a Precision Doppler 12 Weather Team and Web software that enables Internet users to track storm systems as they move through the Tristate.

• WXIX-TV Fox 19 brings viewers FirstWeather, Ohio NEXRAD radar, weather e-mails and a Fox 19 weather calculator that lets Web users compute wind chill and heat indexes, convert wind speed into knots and Fahrenheit temperature to Celsius and calculate dew point.

Bill Fee, vice president and general manager of WCPO, said the station does not sell advertising linked directly to the weather segment but instead offers a news buy for advertisers.

"We don't sell weather, sports or news," Fee said. "We sell the whole half hour.

"Everybody would love to sponsor the weather, especially in a market like Cincinnati with four distinct seasons. In Phoenix, where the weather is always the same, that may not be the case. But in this market, weather is the news."

By selling only the entire news program, WCPO says, it prevents advertisers from cherry-picking the prime time around the weather report, Fee said.

Selling storms

Jack Williams, USA Today weather editor, believes forecasters hype bad weather because they are directed to do so by managers.

"Local news directors have good reason to hook viewers by implying that the coming storm will end life in our town as we know it," he said.

"Viewers will sit through a lot of the images of yellow police tape, flashing police car lights, barely disguised promos for the station's entertainment shows later that evening and the other visuals that pass for news on local television."

By the time the weather report is aired, viewers will have seen several rounds of commercials. While TV meteorologists may say they don't use hyperbole, Williams believes otherwise.

"Over the years I've attended various conferences, and I have heard a lot of them complain about being forced to hype weather by their news directors, but they never make these complaints for the record."

The American Meteorological Society, which approves the professional forecasting capabilities of 1,200 North American meteorologists, said the society does not monitor weather reports to ensure that broadcasters are not exaggerating.

Serious business

Lorne Lambert, senior market manager at EmpowerMediaMarketing, a Cincinnati-based media planning and buying agency, says viewership falls precipitously after the weather as people head to bed.

He advises clients that any news slot buy should be, if possible, in the top half of the broadcast.

"If you look at news by the quarter hour, the decline can be anywhere from 16 percent to 24 percent after the weather," Lambert said. "As a sponsor, I want to be in the first 15 minutes of the news."

Lambert says the weather has gone from being an afterthought to a centerpiece of local news.

WCPO Chief Meteorologist Pete Delkus. (Glenn Hartong photo)

"Used to be the weather guy was somebody in a bad suit and a wig, but not any more."

WCPO Chief Meteorologist Pete Delkus says forecasters are no longer the buffoon of the evening newscast. Major market weathercasters these days have college degrees and are more scientist than showman.

Delkus is certified by the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association and has degrees from Mississippi State University and Southern Illinois University. He insists he will never "exaggerate any type of weather event."

"Good or bad, I tell people the way I see it," Delkus said.

Pat Casey, news director at Fox 19, said his station rarely sells sponsorships of banners, logos or teasers linked to the weather, even though weather is clearly the No.1 reason people watch local television news.

It is the success of the entire 10 p.m. news broadcast that advertisers buy, Casey said.

And he disputes that meteorologists in the region have a "Chicken Little" approach to their jobs.

"I don't see stations blowing things out of proportion," Casey said. "Other markets are guilty of exaggerating that inch of snow - Philadelphia, some of the coastal markets where they get to an elevated range on a hurricane that's five days away.

"I don't think anybody in our market is guilty of that."

What is Doppler Radar?

Why the name?: Named for Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, the Doppler Effect is the change in pitch of a sound as an object approaches and then departs. As an object moves away, sound waves are stretched, lowering the pitch.

How much does it cost?: Doppler radar is a capital investment that can cost a station as little as $300,000 and as much as $1 million or more. The average Doppler radar equipment costs between $300,000 and $700,000, according to Bob Baron Jr., chief product officer at Baron Services, a Huntsville, Ala.-based manufacturer of Doppler radar equipment and weather analysis software and technology.

Three-quarters tuned in as snow was coming

• 74 percent of televisions turned on in this region were tuned to a local newscast at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. March 15, when a late winter snowstorm bore down on the Tristate.

• 68 percent of televisions turned on in the region were tuned to a newscast during the same timeframe on March 16, the day after the snowstorm hit.

Source: Nielsen Media Research