For those of you too young to know, a carnival “barker” is an individual who stood outside a tent at a carnival and yelled teasing comments at passers-by to pay a few cents so they could enter the tent and see the “bearded lady” or the 30″ tall “midget” (apologies to anyone offended but that was the term in those days) or some other physical curiosity. The modern day barker equivalent is your local weather person. He/she stand in front of a map and tell you the worst possible interpretation of weather signs for the next few days. If it looks like a possibility of rain ANYWHERE WITHIN 100 MILES of your TV station, it suddenly becomes a Level 1 Extreme Weather Alert. If–God forbid–there is a true serious threat within 500 miles, you are told that this could be “on the way to our locale”. And serious consequences could be our fate. So what’s this all about…money, of course…advertising money to be exact. TV consultants tell networks that people hear certain words that compel them to “stay tuned”. Among those words are expressions like “extreme weather”, “coming our way”, “air quality alert” and so on. It’s getting to the point that they cry “wolf” so often that we are starting to ignore them entirely. The really sad aspect is that when dangerous weather is actually bearing down on us it will be difficult to believe a serious threat is developing. Write your station the next time your local weather person spouts suspicious warnings and ask for the accurate information you tuned in to hear.
Comments are closed