Prepare you, not scare you

So much for a quiet Friday!

We had severe weather. Throughout the night there were tornado warnings issued for various counties starting in Marion..then Richland...Crawford...coming closer to Ashland, Huron, Medina, and Lorain counties.

Our meteorologists must inform our customers about the latest weather warnings, watches and information 24/7. That could be in the form of a live cut-in or by crawling information on your television screen....wkyc.com has constant updates....and you can even get information on your PDA or cell phone.

We were airing the Miss USA pageant LIVE with Donny and Marie Osmond when the stormy weather began crisscrossing northeast Ohio.

Our weather woman, Betsy Kling, was receiving continuous reports from the National Weather Service as well as our Doppler Radar. When she received a new warning, she informed our Director Frank Macek, who then rounded up the Control Room and Studio Crew to get into place to do a live cut-in.

Betsy was on the air for much of Friday night, pre-empting much of the Miss USA Pageant. Since the show was live on NBC, there is little chance of re-playing it. There is a lot of red tape to get permission and the rights from NBC and frankly, after speaking with our Programming Manager, more than likely that will not happen.

As a television station, it is our obligation to alert our viewers and customers of extreme severe weather. Betsy believed many customers in our viewing audience were in danger. Her role as a meteorologist is to get the most current information out to our viewers as fast as possible. The best way to do that is through the Internet and live cut-ins. The normal rule of thumb for cut-ins is when there is pending danger and a new warning. Each situation must be assessed. Our News Director does not want us to continually cut in without new information. The most embarrassing situation is when you keep saying the same thing over and over and over again. That is counter-productive and ultimately LOSES viewers.

As a viewer, if you are not in the middle of the storm or it is not heading your way, you don't care. Very understandable. That is what everyone was saying Friday night. None of our callers were experiencing any bad weather. And other viewers were saying if you ARE in the storm, you have already gone to your basement or safer ground. Another very valid point. Our viewers are pretty savvy. Many believed we were regurgitating the same information over and again. And worst of all, there was a local girl in the pageant and I think just about every member of her family called Channel 3 News because they could not see her compete.

I even spoke to our news director and programming manager, who were on opposite sides of our viewing area, and neither one of them was experiencing any bad weather.

I was flooded with HUNDREDS of complaint calls. Thankfully, my comrades Chris Tye, who was anchoring Friday night, and Carrie Young, who was producing the 11pm show, helped me field complaint after complaint. In a situation like that, all you can do is continuously answer the phones, explain WHY we are on the air, apologize, and take the viewers information to relay to your supervisor (if they ask for the complaint to be passed along).

If we have information available on when the pre-empted show will be re-run, we can give that out as well.

As an assignment editor, I also have to dispatch crews out to cover the severe weather and make calls to gather information over the phone to disseminate to my producer and weather people. However, you have a catch-22.

I, again, was alone on the news desk. It is very hard to work Monday thru Friday alone with so much happening. Working M-F is worlds apart from working an overnight or the weekends, when working alone is kinda manageable.

So, answering hundreds of phone calls made it hard to make the necessary calls to gather information, but I did it! And unfortunately, every agency I called had absolutely NOTHING going on. No severe weather, no damage, no flooding. In times like these, it is very difficult to enhance and give fresh tidbits to our weather woman to relay on our air. Oftentimes, they like us to get what you call a "phoner." A phoner is when someone calls in and speaks LIVE during our cut-in to give their point of view or what they are seeing. We do phoners during weather situations, breaking news, even breaking Sports. However, in this situation, since I could not track down any problems, none of the agencies I spoke with wanted to do phoners with us.

I had all of my camera crews searching for weather. I even had one of them in the thick of Lorain and Medina Counties ALL NIGHT. All he could come up with was some rain and a little wind.

We have to alert our viewers, whether they like it or not. But on nights such as these when the warnings are there but they are not producing anything tangible locally, it is no picnic on the news assignment desk or being an assignment editor. Thank goodness the night is finally over! Have a good weekend everyone and stay dry!