"Ian Currie" wrote in message
. uk...
I gave a talk on the Weather the other day to a group in Richmond, Surrey
and after a very enthusiastic response with plenty of interest in my
display a lady came up to speak to me. She apparently was responsible for
BBC TV weather in the 70s and 80s.
I said to her well you have seen how enthusiastic the public can be on the
Weather if it is put across in the right way. Yet I said these days in the
media time is cut for the forecast and it is often hurried to make way for
programme trailers etc. She agreed and despaired of the modern trends which
brings us back to the initial post re Barry Norman.
On a slightly different point it is amazing that a programme on astronomy
"The Sky at Night" should continue to run after so many years and continue
into this "fast food- flaunt what you have got"- style age yet no comparable
programme exists for meteorology unless you count the daily weather
forecasts. I firmly believe the Weather could be made into one of the
greatest programmes of all if it was done in the right way.

I have always thought this would be a great idea, but as you say it would
have to be pitched correctly. The Sky at Night manages to be talk to
a general audience without being patronising, so why not the weather?

You could have a programme at the start of every month that would
discuss the previous month's weather. Trends, any records broken etc.
If the month had been particularly thundery for example you could have
a feature on storm formation. And if the weather here had been
non-descript then there's always world events to consider.
They wouldn't run out of material!

We always say in this country that we are obsessed with the weather
but there's no programme for it.

What we do get are those programmes I have heard described as
'weather porn'. All the really exciting stuff with added death and
destruction for our entertainment, like floods and tornados.

Col
--
Bolton, Lancashire.
160m asl.
http://www.reddwarfer.btinternet.co.uk