WITI in hot water for cut-in timing

[Weeters 1811]

Milwaukee's WITI picked a bad time Sunday to cut-in over the fourth quarter of that day's Packers game to bring viewers updates on a major pile up on the interstate and.. snow totals.

 

One minute was spent on the traffic situation, thirty seconds was spent on snow totals and other weather information. The problem here, is that the cut in was preempting gameplay, and because of that, viewers missed the play that brought the Packers into the lead to win the game.

 

Read more here: http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/234975801.html

 

In most cases, I side with the stations when it comes to weather cut-ins, but come on, common sense would say you don't plan a minute and a half cut-in over a Packers game in Wisconsin.

 

If I was their GM, I'd make a rule that in cases where if a weather cut-in would preempt sports, it would need to be done in a double box, with the exception being for tornadoes. Saves everyone involved a lot of grief.

[wabceyewitness 767]

Yikes.. Why not just run a crawl? From what I read, traffic pile up was pretty severe but probably could have been summarized in less than a minute with more info online or in a commercial break cut-in. As for snow totals.. that's a complete waste of time.