WCCO Weather

[GodfreyGR 506]

There's got to (hopefully) be an explanation- but I just watched WCCO's 6pm newscast- Weather was the pre-recorded online/streaming quickcast with only the audio of the meteorologist who recorded it- showed temps and outlook- no radar/satellite/etc. When they panned the set- weather center was empty and you could see the log-in screen on the computers.

 

I get it's a holiday weekend, but as a certain blogger says- the weather is the most important part of the newscast (and I agree!). The #1 station, with 5 meteorologists, in Market 15, and they couldn't have someone there to forecast the weather?

[Bsean 138]

That just made me literally LOL. The chair may as well had be spinning like they just got up and left when they panned to the empty weather center.

[mrschimpf 2065]

I actually see no issue at all with this. There wasn't much going on with the weather that deserved actual live coverage (it takes two seconds to say 'NextWeather Doppler is clear'), and the presentation seemed fine enough to me.

 

But likely, it was pre-recorded because you never know how long the college football game beforehand goes at all; usually there's no Saturday 6pm newscast and the postgame overflows the timeslot, so your meteorologist gets all nice and ready...to do absolutely nothing. A nice and short two-minute forecast can be recorded to fit into a commercial break, and if you need to be on-air, then you just wait it out and justify being there. But for an above-average Black Friday with not a cloud in sight, it just made more sense to record it without having to appear on camera.