The NCPOWE

I have started a new non-profit organization this week. It is called NCPOWE (pronounced, "nuc-pow-wee"). The acronym stands for "National Coalition for the Prevention of Overreporting Weather Events".

This week in Dallas we had a bunch of rain, followed by some really cold temperatures, followed by a little ice here and there. It was pretty messy.  Here in Dallas, we have like 3 sanding trucks that have to go around the entire huge city and sand everything down for us Texas drivers. 

So yes, I agree, there are issues.  The combination of a) drivers with little practice driving in ice/snow, with b) sparce bad weather road gear, do make for some interesting driving when you get out on the roads in this stuff.

But couldn't you just have one little segment, as part of the weather, that says, "Hey, it is icy out there, and remember, you don't know how to drive on the ice so either don't go out and drive, or slow way down."  Shouldn't that do it?  And then, the whole weather team could sit inside by the fire and hang out and just do other news stuff like shootings and Iraq.

Instead *all* the news stations have dropped EVERYTHING and the entire newscast has gone into "ICE ALERT".  They scatter around town reporting, "ice mishaps", "icy blast accidents", "slippery conditions", "slip sliding away", blah, blah, blah.  Last night there were about a dozen scenes of minivans spinning into onramps, Hondas hitting curbs, and a comical mix of reporters standing in the freakin-freeezing weather with ball caps and bandannas trying to report more and more and more about the (un)exciting events sliding around town.

So, I am calling for change. I want to see one station. Just one....take the initiative and sit back in the studio where it is nice and toasty, and just give us one good warning and then move on. Give us the weather, then remind us about our lack of driving skill on ice, then drop it.

Way back when, these guys had to report to the FCC on why they should have a license and how it benefited the public in some way. I just don't get how hours of reporting on minivans spinning around is in the public good.

Report something of moderate interest and then sit back and drink some hot chocolate and let the other guys skid around overreporting when the ice comes to town.

Send your donations to NCPOWE today to stop the madness.

Comments

[brian]

Couldn't agree more. My wife is a bit of a weather junkie anyway, but on Saturday night when we realized the news had been on for an hour, and they'd talked about the weather the entire time, we started to wonder about the insanity of local news.

[JG]

I find the NCPOWE agenda intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.