Mike Roberts, the weather guy on KSDK-TV-5 is on the air right now, using one of those cool scrolling maps (a la Google Earth) to move from town to town, showing what the high temperature for today will be in each place:
It’ll be 89 in Town & Country, but you go west on Manchester Road past Queeny Park and you’ll find Manchester pretty much in the same situation. South on 141, does it make any difference for you in Valley Park? Nope. You’re looking at a nice day, but a little on the warm side, 90 degrees. Crestwood, same story, you go east on 44 just a little bit and it’ll be a little warmer than yesterday at 91 degrees.
These are all suburbs of St. Louis which are within a few miles of each other. The temperature difference is one or two degrees. Who cares? Everyone in Valley Park knows that if you tell them the weather in Manchester, theirs will be almost identical.
This is a classic example of using cool technology just because you have it, not because it provides anything valuable to the viewer. It’s the weather forecast, fer chrissakes, not a guarantee, and we don’t need it broken down by municipality, zip code, or neighborhood. Even when TV meteorologists go to their Big Map of the area, showing the entire viewing area, the temperature differences are never greater than 5 or 6 degrees.
Would anyone in any of those towns be upset if Mike told them their high today would be around 90 degrees? Would anyone file a complaint if it only got to 89, or broke through to 91? Actually, there probably is some loser who would call and complain, but that’s the kind of person who’s never happy about anything, so don’t even try to please them. They’re going to continue watching because it enables their caught-you fetish.