KSFY News Anchor Fires Back at Angry Viewers Over Storm Coverage Interrupting 'Once Upon a Time' Fin

[TennTV1983 743]

In another case of "When Someone's Life is On the Line, Don't Complain", KSFY (the ABC affiliate in Sioux Falls, SD) received several phone calls from angry viewers who were expecting to watch the season finale of Once Upon a Time last Sunday, but instead had to sit through severe weather coverage - especially with a tornado touching down in the area (well, in the Iowa part of the market anyway) that evening. Those calls prompted KSFY morning news anchor Nancy Naeve to go on a rant the next morning stating, "No Show Is as Important as Someone's Life".

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06Z_Znrrg94

[bammy9 26]

WREX had the same situation... http://addins.wrex.com/blogs/weather/2014/05/this-has-got-to-stop

[sanewsguy 509]

I am GLAD this anchor has came out and spoke the TRUTH. It aggravates and sickens me to see where people's priorities are. And the sad thing is, I have family who are like this and they get pissed off when the weatherman breaks in. People just have this "it's not affecting me so I don't care" mentaility. And you should, because a TV show is not more important than a human life. And you can watch the show online if you really value it that much.

 

Here in San Antonio, John Gerard over at channel 4 tries not to break in to programming and to only take up national commercial time (how dare they break into to their precious local spots). This bothers me because he's trying to pander to the viewers who don't like their shows being broken into. Just break in anyways. If they call hang up. Delete the emails. Don't let it bother you. Those people are messed up who think their shows are that important.

 

I know people say, just run a crawl with the information. And most times they will. Trust me, they don't really want to break in to your programming just for the sake of breaking in. If they break in, it's because it's a severe weather event and could threaten property or more importantly, life. That's why they break in.

 

If only more people understood that...

[skbl17 188]

^^ I'm with him.

 

Trust me people, Once Upon a Time isn't going anywhere; it is probably on abc.com and is probably available as a torrent or on Netflix, so those viewers will be able to repeat the program, pause, fast forward, whatever. When the episode ends you can rewatch.

 

If there's something these viewers don't have a clue about, it's this: your life cannot be repeated if it gets destroyed in a tornado. Let me repeat. YOUR LIFE is not a television program that can be manipulated like a DVR. There's no pause or rewind button for a human life. Once it's done, it's done; there are no repeats. I sure as hell hope none of these fools complaining to KSFY were in a mobile home, as that's probably the worst place to be in a tornado.

 

This also happened last year during an episode of The Voice, and I still stand by what I posted there.

[ns8401 846]

^^ I'm with him.

 

Trust me people, Once Upon a Time isn't going anywhere; it is probably on abc.com and is probably available as a torrent or on Netflix, so those viewers will be able to repeat the program, pause, fast forward, whatever. When the episode ends you can rewatch.

 

If there's something these viewers don't have a clue about, it's this: your life cannot be repeated if it gets destroyed in a tornado. Let me repeat. YOUR LIFE is not a television program that can be manipulated like a DVR. There's no pause or rewind button for a human life. Once it's done, it's done; there are no repeats. I sure as hell hope none of these fools complaining to KSFY were in a mobile home, as that's probably the worst place to be in a tornado.

 

This also happened last year during an episode of The Voice, and I still stand by what I posted there.

They are really clueless on being able to stream it online most likely.

[Guest Former Member 207]

Bravo to the news anchor for speaking out...this has gone on for far too long. It's just a bunch of out-of-touch, entitled morons who bitch and moan about things that don't go their way. It also goes to show that certain people on social media (perhaps the loudest complainers) should never have access to a computer or a smartphone.

 

I would be surprised if one of my local news stations DIDN'T interrupt regular programming to broadcast a news emergency of greater importantance, whether or not it directly affects my family and I.

[T.L. Hughes 751]

 

It also goes to show that certain people (perhaps the loudest complainers) should never have access to a computer or a smartphone.

 

It also shows that some of these people who complain are lazy or don't have any knowledge that networks stream their programs the day after air (although considering this was an ABC station this happened to, this is only the case if you subscribe to a particular cable or satellite provider, OTA viewers and some non-participating providers either have to rely on the station rebroadcasting the program during overnight or sports-free weekend timeslots or download them via iTunes or another legal download service until ABC puts it up online for everyone else eight days later; although stations have started to carry network shows live on a subchannel when necessary).

 

Getting to the point, I come from a city (see left) whose southern suburb (Moore) was decimated by an EF5 tornado last May (about 359 days ago), and was almost hit by the largest tornado on record a week-and-a-half later. When life-threatening weather happens, the ability to know minute-by-minute where the storm is so you can take shelter in case your neighborhood is affected eases the fear to some extent (even when that fear overpowers you sometimes). People should look to it as "what if a tornado destroyed your home and you had no warning?," they'd complain then. It's worth having to wait hours or days to watch your favorite program somewhere else or by the station's rescheduling so you can DVR (or in my case, VCR) it when a severe weather event happens than to have people in danger of the storm not know what's going on.

[MidwestTV 1173]

She also makes the excellent point that those people don't care until it's THEIR home and THEIR neighbors and THEIR family and THEIR friends, THEN all of a sudden everything has to focus on them. Another thing is that nobody outside of television seems to understand the concept of Designated Market Areas. I actually posted this video to my own Facebook and stuff last night and had a short, but nice, conversation with someone explaining that markets have a set geographic region to which they are the primary provider of television and are OBLIGATED/REQUIRED to serve the viewers. It doesn't matter if the storm is 100 miles away from the largest and main population center, it's in their viewing area so they have to cover it. Also, while not obviously stated, part of a meteorologist's job is to protect people from dangerous storms that could potentially kill them but nobody seems to understand that either.

 

I'm waiting for the day when there's a dead/highly destructive storm and there's LITTLE coverage on it and people are up in arms for the stations for NOT covering the storm extensively enough. That will be the day and then the TV stations, especially the meteorologists, will have the perfect weapon to use back at those bitching for the nonstop coverage.

[Weeters 1811]

I personally love it when people pull the ol' "WELL IT'S NOT RAINING BY ME!!!!!!!" card. Oh, the weather isn't affecting your life? Well, neither is the outcome of Dancing with the Stars.

[detroiter313 178]

And that's why we have local meteorologists: to give out info about severe weather, whether it be tornadoes, hurricanes, or thunderstorms. No program (either be sitcom, drama, or reality) is important as human life. A meteorologist's job is to imform the public about severe weather heading their way and give out info all day or all night until the threat passes. People everyday always tune to the TV station for critical weather infomation that saves lives. Now there will be viewers that will complain about their favorite TV show being interrupted by weather coverage. If they don't like it, they can go to the network's website, or even Hulu to watch. So which viewers think is important: Some popular TV show or weather coverage that saves lives? I'll take the latter, because watching local weather information helps you understand the threat that is coming and helps you be ready to take action when it does. TV stations don't need to be barricaded by e-mails, phone calls, tweets, or Facebook posts of some viewers ranting against weathermen or weatherwomen by interrupting their fave show to do weather coverage. Just to recap: A meteorologists job is to provide info about severe weather, that's the reason they break into syndicated or network programming. And if people can't understand that, why do still think a TV show is important? Don't be surprised when all of a sudden a torando comes in and devastate to area, and people didn't get the warning. Let's face it: TV shows don't save people, weather information saves people.

[Rusty Muck 4167]

I mentioned it in the "Out and About" thread, but it bears mentioning here.

 

Legendary WJW meteorologist Dick Goddard assisted in expanded severe weather coverage Monday night, which pretty much went from 4pm until 11pm. It was necessary coverage, as torrential rain and a slew of tornado warnings plagued the entire area. But on the way home, he had to be rescued from his car after the interstate off-ramp he was on became completely overwhelmed with rainwater. Dick was trapped in his submerged car for close to 45 minutes and started to suffer from hypothermia.

 

Mind you, Dick is 83 years old. He's been at WJW since 1966, and on TV since 1961. His AMS certification number #45, is also among the lowest of any active meteorologist, if not THE lowest.

 

It can happen to anybody.

[LTSC1980 96]

NICE WEATHER REPORT. NICE FIRE BACK.

[rkolsen 1678]

The same thing happens with the EAS alerts where the most common message is severe weather alerts by the National Wx Service - it gets annoying after a while but it's necessary. I'll give you a for instance, which deals with my local Hearst Station WBAL (which I seem to write about frequently, but it's the station I watch) their sister radio station the clear channel WBAL-AM is the local primary entry point station so they have to pass on every message they receive, that the TV station is an alternate monitoring station for the area and their FM sister station is the secondary. (Don't ask my why for the entire state of Maryland they made the primary, alternate and secondary all at one station under one roof, but the AM stations antenna is located off site and about 10 miles from the TV and FM tri stick.)

 

Compounded with the fact that their encoder is/was shared (or at least used to be, I don't know why they'd need three separate ones) with WIYY their sister FM station and outputs to WBAL-TV - they really have no way to bypass the system. So while WBAL-TV was running the EAS test crawl every few minutes for the duration of the test the other tv stations just run it once, while the weather crawl will go until the alert expires where the other stations will only carry a severe weather crawl about every ten minutes.

 

This info comes from email correspondence with the station engineering, press releases from an EAS encoder manufacturer when they installed it (I don't know why they sent it out just for making a sale), reading the national EAS manual from the FCC and the local DC, Maryland and Virginia EAS Manual.

[trustno1 4]

She is absolutely 100% spot-on!

[nbc9houston 21]

I haven't seen anything like this since KMSP's Tim Boltz got "cheesed-off" during UEFA Champions League Final coverage back in 2011

[AaronQ 259]

Still can't believe that people are a bunch of self-centered pricks these days. It happened before a couple of weeks ago when some people got pissed off because they cutoff the Stanley Playoffs during a tornado warning in the Cedar Rapids area.

[LoadStar 363]

It's a balancing act. While I'm sure KSFY got it right, given that there was indeed a damaging tornado on the ground, I've seen other stations get it wrong. They go on the air at the drop of a hat (any hat) and go wall-to-wall with useless non-information repeated endlessly and stay on the air long after they are no longer needed, knowing viewers will watch when they do. Even the viewers who say they hate it watch anyway.

 

The increasing prevalence of tornado warnings issued due solely to radar signature is designed to increase warning times and keep people safe -- but at the same time, it becomes a "boy who cries wolf" situation and people become desensitized to meteorologists on TV providing these warnings. As people become desensitized, it becomes easier for them to become irritated.

 

Additionally, to provide a rebuttal to one of this anchor's points: if you are going to direct viewers to your website to watch a program, it had better be there and available for *everyone* to watch. The problem with ABC right now is that if you aren't on a participating ISP, you have to wait to watch the episode. It'd be nice if the affiliate could provide a "free pass" to the episode on the streaming service to everyone when they have to interrupt a program.

[rkolsen 1678]

I say break in to regularly schedule programming for: Tornado Warning, Hurricane Warning, Blizzard Warning (Atleast during rush hour), and a severe thunderstorm warning that is issued into a conjunction of a Tornado Watch.

 

If there is are tornados on the ground during a warning and the NWS let the warning expire then you can go to regularly scheduled programming. But if there is damage and one has been confirmed I say stay on the air until the brunt of the storm pass your viewing area. For hurricane warnings continue to broadcast information until the storm has passed by.

 

And for blizzard warnings only break into the morning programming because the station wants to cover the closings - let the reporters have some fun by finding the top sledding spots used by kids. By 12 Noon everyone and everywhere should know that everything is closed and there is no more information to report so go back to normal programming.

[easttxtv 7]

In KDFW's 'Viewer's Voice' segment (a nightly brief of phone calls (sometimes emails also) received by the station about coverage (usually, but sometimes someone calls with just blah-blah-crap about nothing) that is aired during their 9pm news) occasionally they will air reactions to cut-ins for weather alerts or breaking news. The ones that seem to hit the hot-button the most/worst are any during the afternoon double-dip of Judge Judy. The s--- that hits Ch.4's fan, and it's not even their fault. Just amazing how much some folks come unglued over a TV show that's been rerun to death (some of the weekend overnight ones I've come across have cases that date back to 2007, 2008, 2009) and some sequences are even available on YouTube. It'll be on again, and again probably, nothing's been missed. And even in the off-chance that KDFW would even have to make up for not showing a new one? There are *12* chances a week to see it!! Meanwhile, the rest of us don't want to be blown into the next county, thank you very much.

[johnnya2k6 171]

Earlier this year, WRAL anchor David Crabtree had something to say about Winter Storm Pax preempting their regular programming (which was shunted to their subchannel): "This is reality TV."