BBC Put Contract To Provide Weather Forecast

[snowingtequila]

This wouls spell the end ofna proper weather forecast on tv, a great shame, they are really pretty accurate on a day to day basis it is just their longrange probability forecasts that are silly. I am not convinced any of the alternative possible tenders give a more accurate forecast just a cheaper one.

[k19]

To be honest, i think the problem at the met office, is that for a while they were conservative in the forecasts, and last summer they thought they would go for it and issue this BBQ summer warning, after making that mistake they have retreated back into their nests. Now the forecasts at very short range are good, not great, and at mid range, we tend to se the presenters dropping in their own hints as to what to expect. If there are better tenders, then go with them. Isn't that the idea? They should be competing, and the only way to make that happen is to make them want to catch up.

[J10]

I didn't think of that one, but losing Countryfile would certainly be an issue, as I think those forecasts are still of very high quality.

Regarding the comment about ITV, to be honest I think BBC's other national forecasts have basically moved more towards ITV's style (in terms of general style of presentation- I hasten to add that I think the BBC are responsible for this, rather than the presenters) although they are still better than ITV's offerings. Losing the tie with the Met Office could, depending on what other company they choose, result in BBC going the rest of the way over towards ITV's style, in particular moving towards choosing presenters who are not well qualified in meteorology.

ITV forecasts really are bad (Certainly the national ones).

Today's forecast by Rob McElwee (2235), was fantastic, the ways he portrays his knowledge and energy for the subject matter is unique.

[Crepuscular Ray]

ITV forecasts really are bad (Certainly the national ones).

Today's forecast by Rob McElwee (2235), was fantastic, the ways he portrays his knowledge and energy for the subject matter is unique.

And that's what would be lost if Metra (who apparantly use Australian models for their European forecasts(???); they certainly don't produce their own) got the contract. No personal input from forecasters to say, e.g., whether a 'snow event' (sorry) is a 100% cert or a 40% possibility and whether what's shown on the map might not be 100% accurate, just parroted info from presenters who might have no meteorological knowledge at all.

Plus, Metra are responsible for the current BBC graphics (which are nothing to do with the MetO), which doesn't lead me to have any great hopes for them producing anything of quality by way of forecasts.

[Thundery wintry showers]

ITV forecasts really are bad (Certainly the national ones).

Today's forecast by Rob McElwee (2235), was fantastic, the ways he portrays his knowledge and energy for the subject matter is unique.

I didn't see the forecast by Rob McElwee, but for sake of balance, I should mention that of the recent BBC evening forecasts I've seen, while I maintain a general sense of them not being as good as those of the 1990s, some were still pretty good, and I can't recall any that I felt were even close to stooping to ITV levels.

And indeed, the ties with the MetO may well be helping to stop the BBC from stooping to those levels.

As an aside, I think the only good ITV forecasts I've ever seen were the regional North East ones by Bob Johnson- one rare case where they did go with an established meteorologist. I used to enjoy watching them for Bob's inimitable quirks, and he used to go into a fair bit of detail as well. Sadly he's now retired.

[peterf]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/7023899/Ever-wished-you-could-fire-the-Met-Office.html

[Thundery wintry showers]

Interesting article there, and this is certainly one area where my views are strongly concurrent with those of Philip Eden.

I advise people not to get too bogged down reading the comments- many of the early later ones, taking potshots at both Philip and the Met Office, made me cringe straightaway and I soon lost interest.

It is important to remember here that the style of television weather presentation on the BBC – sometimes called dumbed-down, patronising and childishly simplistic by critics – is controlled by BBC producers and managers, and not by the Met Office.

Good to see Philip Eden also supporting my suspicions on that one. I'm also pretty sure, especially after seeing a couple of relevant letters from the BBC Weather Centre in Weather, that the BBC encourages a style of presentation tailored to assumed viewer demographics at a given time of day, e.g. the evening bulletins often seem aimed squarely at people who are only interested in whether there will be work-related/economic disruption the next day.

And these last two paragraphs are pretty important:

There is no hidden reservoir of experienced TV forecasters in Britain, so whoever took over the contract would simply offer contracts to the present bunch of presenters. What would be interesting is how quickly and how forcibly the new supplier would try to persuade the BBC that weather presentations should be more serious, more scientific and presented by a team that comprised only trained meteorologists.

Assuming the Met Office retains its contract, this is exactly how I would like it to exert its authority. I'm not holding my breath, though.

I'm not holding my breath regardless of which weather company gets in control. I think the Met Office does have the right kind of idea, for example its presentation on its forecasts for up to 15 days out is pretty scientific, striking a good balance between detail and clarity, there's little wrong with the presenters (they all do a great job on Countryfile), and I saw a 2005 article where the MetO recommended that presenters tone down the growing tendency to preach judgements on what weather is good and bad. But the BBC seems to ignore them, so I have doubts that any other company would be able to have enough 'clout' either.

Edited January 19, 2010 by Thundery wintry showers
actually the earlier comments are pretty good.

[Essan]

I'd go a step further than Philip and suggest the MetO refuse to tender for the BBC contract unless they get a guarantee that they will be given adequate time slots to unable them to present a proper, detailed, professional forecast.

[nick sussex]

Interestingly I've noticed over the last few days the bbc presenters being more clear regarding snow in terms of the risk and also the uncertainty, perhaps the UKMO are trying to have no further bad publicity. As much as I've been critical of the UKMO because of IMO it's obsession with GW it would be very sad to see the UKMO not providing the data and presenters for the bbc, on the day that Cadburys went the way of so many UK insitutions do we really want to see an organisation based in New Zealand providing the forecasts for the UK!

I think much of the current malaise in the UKMO is down to poor public relations, why publicize LRFS which only end up being used as a stick to beat the organisation, personally they should do away with those LRF's for public access and why would we want Metra to take over given that they came up with those useless graphics the BBC now use. Do we need any more dumbing down regarding the forecasts? I really hope the bbc think clearly here and don't just take the cost into account, it must be down to quality.

Edited January 19, 2010 by nick sussex

[keithlucky]

Interestingly I've noticed over the last few days the bbc presenters being more clear regarding snow in terms of the risk and also the uncertainty, perhaps the UKMO are trying to have no further bad publicity. As much as I've been critical of the UKMO because of IMO it's obsession with GW it would be very sad to see the UKMO not providing the data and presenters for the bbc, on the day that Cadburys went the way of so many UK insitutions do we really want to see an organisation based in New Zealand providing the forecasts for the UK!

I think much of the current malaise in the UKMO is down to poor public relations, why publicize LRFS which only end up being used as a stick to beat the organisation, personally they should do away with those LRF's for public access and why would we want Metra to take over given that they came up with those useless graphics the BBC now use. Do we need any more dumbing down regarding the forecasts? I really hope the bbc think clearly here and don't just take the cost into account, it must be down to quality.

Lets be honest BBC goverment run met office goverment run, the met and and the bbc go together like cheese and pickles.Its not the fact the met are useless its there poor quality forecasters.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Hey Blast you and Rodger could have a mooncasting session as well.

Great idea :lol:

BFTP

[Thundery wintry showers]

Lets be honest BBC goverment run met office goverment run, the met and and the bbc go together like cheese and pickles.Its not the fact the met are useless its there poor quality forecasters.

I don't agree. The forecasts have room for improvement, but the same can be said for forecasts from any other company. I think there may be other weather companies out there that can compete with the Met Office in terms of accuracy, but no more than that.

One aspect of the MetO's forecasting that I notice is that they tend to be more accurate the further south you are. I sometimes wonder if the abolition of most of the local Weather Centres and "rationalisation" to Exeter may be contributing to this, as it raises the possibility of a lack of regional forecasters with local knowledge adding to the MetO's overall base. BBC's regional forecasts help with this, but unfortunately they are less reliably fronted by qualified meteorologists than the national ones. The MetO's competitors are largely based in single locations as well so I don't think they would be any advantage in that respect.

And I very much doubt that changing supplier will help the "dumbing down"-related problems- probably like Philip Eden said, some companies might make a slight difference either way in the short term. I have a feeling that many of the options may lead to an increase in the dumbing-down in the long run, however.

[Buzzit]

To qualify to tender you need to have an annual income in excess of £10 million so i think netweather is out

With respect to the most bandied about competitor to the MetO , can they really do a worse job ?

I know this will raise the heckles but the NZD is a lot cheaper than the £ so I expect the tender will likely be

highlighting pound for dollar an even better service than currently provided... (and updated ledgible graphics)

And lets not carried away here, if the MetO does loose the contract they will still have a role within the new provider

it would be rediculous not to...

Edited January 19, 2010 by Buzzit

[Essan]

I know this will raise the heckles but the NZD is a lot cheaper than the £ so I expect the tender will likely be

highlighting pound for dollar an even better service than currently provided... (and updated ledgible graphics)

They already provide the graphics

I can't see the MetO failing myself. And how can anyone provide a better service? The issue is the time given to the forecasts. And the BBC consider adverts for Depressednders to be more important.

Edit: a case in point being tonight's forecast when Dan, to his credit, very briefly explained the reason for snow being forecast for tomorrow, but then had no time to even mention the weather for the rest of the country .......

Edited January 19, 2010 by Essan

[Thundery wintry showers]

I agree that time allocation is a major problem- but it does raise the question, is time allocation purely a cause, or is it partly a symptom?

The BBC definitely tailors forecasts to different audience demographics at different times of the day and different times of the week (hence the growing gulf between the presentation style of the 18:57 forecasts vs that of the Countryfile ones)- that's a key part of moving away from the "one size fits all" approach (to quote the words of the BBC itself) where all of the BBC broadcasts were similar in style to today's Countryfile forecasts.

So if, for example, the BBC works from the premise that most viewers at 18:57 just want to know if it's going to be wet or dry, hot or cold and if there will be disruption on the drive to work the next morning, it may well allocate a very short amount of time for that reason.

Personally I see nothing at all wrong with the style of today's Countryfile broadcasts as a potential "one size fits all". The problem with the 1990s broadcasts was that the synoptic analysis was all at the beginning and it sometimes took a while to get into the main forecast, so some of the less interested viewers had switched off. But today's Countryfile forecasts get around that problem by distributing the synoptic analysis more evenly through the forecast. Of course, to make that work, they'd then have to allocate similar sized time slots to what they did in the 1990s.

[Roger J Smith]

My apologies if anyone takes this as being too literal-minded, but I don't want entirely false impressions to be created or spread around here or other forums.

I do not use "mooncasting" to make short-range weather forecasts. While my research has helped me to spot features of interest on perhaps one or two occasions over the course of a year or more, it's essentially the case that when I make a short range forecast, I use the same techniques as your bog-standard forecasters of both the public and private domain.

Also, I am not a novice at it, I have been providing daily forecasts for almost five years on one UK forum, and for almost a year now on an Irish forum, and in both cases people have given these forecasts good reviews. I'm only saying this because I suspect there could be an impression of some entirely different set of circumstances, such as that I issue short-range forecasts from inside a windowless cave relying only on astronomical almanacs and a reliable time device. Some people may do that, I do not.

Several members of Net-weather have asked me in the past why I don't join the Net-weather forecast team. I never got the impression that I would be wildly welcomed into said team, but in any case, I never applied in part because I live outside the country, and related to that, in a time zone that is largely out of sync with the daily routines of anyone else likely to be actively forecasting on the team. So I realized that it would just be more hassle than benefit in both directions. However, I honestly feel that my skills are up to a challenge like that, and at this point I don't really feel like I need to prove anything to anybody either, so if anyone wants to dispute it, go ahead but don't expect a response from me.

Just my way of saying, please, no more cheap shots, it's getting old, and so am I.