Martin Rowley wrote:
"Dave Ludlow" wrote in message

And it's not just about gales: I've seen it suggested that winds
are
somehow of little interest to Joe Public but I don't think that's
right. Looking outside now, here, the most noticeable thing is how
breezy it is. snip
For example, I'd be loathe to show the wind arrow
diagrams onscreen until I'd found a way to stop them looking silly
-
which is how they look to me at the moment. Francis's wind arrows
on
Sky News are about 10 times bigger and inspite of having only two
or
three wind "streams" over the UK, they give much more useful
information, easy to absorb, than the BBC's wriggling tiddlers.

... this was one of the facets I complained about in my submission to

the BBC; in fact, the *previous* wind-flow output was quite adequate
and
gave a useful indication (coupled with voice-over) of the change in
the
wind field during the forecast period.

Of all the aspects of the changes, I can't understand how this one
has
slipped through; *if* it is based on NZ experience, I know for a fact

that they are just as interested in such data as we are - so I
suspect
that someone made a decision based on little or no knowledge, and is
now
desperately digging their heels in (if still in post) to deny us the
information.

Martin.


I've been staying out of the pro/anti BBC debates, but I can no longer
ignore the continued references to NZ, for the following reason:

I went there in 2003, and fell in love with their forecasts. They used
the "zoom" thing, carefully going over the whole country and stopping
at each major town/city to give its forecast. They used images of what
did look like clouds, and at the start reviewed the max/min that day in
each of several locations. The presenters used informal language ("The
mother of all cold outbreaks" sticks in my mind for instance) but made
it clear they knew what they were on about. No wannabe Ulrika Jonssons
or anything. The weather was the best bit of NZ TV (everything else
seemed to be recycled British and Australian rubbish, they had that
Jamie Oliver teaching kids to cook thing for instance).

And the newspaper weather was even better. Huge synoptic charts, and
data for several places that had max/min reports to the nearest .1C,
rain, sunshine plus stuff like grass temperatures and evaporation.
Never seen that in the Telegraph or Guardian.

Edmund