Local Meteorologists Fired In Ill-Advised Cost Cutting Move, Public Outcry Ends Up Saving Those Jobs, Offers Lessons For Trump Admin

Allen Media Group, owed by billionaire Byron Allen,
pictured here, tried to get rid of dozens of 
meteorologists at their local television stations and
replace them with a consolidated group
of Weather Channel meteorologists in Atlanta.
This did not go over well and was rescinded,
but it's a reminder of how corporate consolidation
hurts locals, including their important weather info,

Local television meteorologists very often quickly get a big fan base, for very good reasons. 

They tend to be personable, and also quickly learn the lay of the land, meaning they're on top of local conditions that make storms worse or less severe depending on which neighborhood they hit.  These meteorologists really become the public's eyes and ears on the ground when the weather crap hits the fan.

Which leads us to the Allen Media Group's really stupid, now rescinded move to fire meteorologists at local stations it owns.  Their weather forecasts would come from Weather Channel meteorologists in Atlanta, who might be excellent at their jobs, but have little idea of the nuances that really make local weather forecasters indispensable. 

This whole kerfuffle gives us lessons on the evils of corporate consolidation, which ensures big money for the CEO but messes with the quality that the public should expect.  

The hijinks of these private corporations also gives us a warning regarding the fate of the National Weather Service. The NWS is  a critical resource in which their meteorologists in regional offices,  like their local TV counterparts, know the areas they cover like the back of their hands, making their storm warnings all the more accurate and effective.

I bring this up because there are fears that the Trump administration could actually disband the National Weather Service and rely on corporate meteorological corporations without that local expertise, and the sense of duty you'd expect from local experts. 

More on that in a moment. 

ALLEN MEDIA AND THE RESCINDED PURGE

Local meteorologists tend to be underpaid, but their dedication to their craft is legend. 

They come to us every day with useful information, and sometimes, with timely, life-saving alerts and warnings. They'll tell you the precise neighborhood the tornado is heading towards, which streets are about to go under water in a flash flood, and why the roads in, say, Waterbury are about to get snow covered and slippery while the roads up in Burlington will stay just fine. 

As one person LeeWatson_357 posted on X:  "Laying off Weather People in tornado prone areas is very dangerous. People based in Atlanta don't know the local areas in markets like Tupelo, Mississippi."

All this made the supposed  cost-cutting move by Allen Media Group, owned by billionaire Byron Allen, this month really stupid.. They axed local meteorologists for television stations and would just send forecasts from its Weather Channel headquarter in Atlanta to its stations across the county. 

As Variety reports:

"Handing out pink slips to dozens of beloved small-market local TV news weathercasters would be ill-advised even in the best of times. But to do it right as unpredictable and dangerous weather disasters tear across the country this month - from wildfires in California to a historic freeze in the south - was particularly tone deaf."

Apparently, local viewers understand this. A huge public outcry led Allen Media Group to rescind the firings. At least for now.

It looks like all the affected television stations were given the same statement from Allen Media Group to read: "After receiving significant feedback across various markets, Allen Media has decided to pause and reconsider the strategy of providing local water from the Weather Channel in Atlanta and (local television station) will continue to provide market-leading coverage from your Storm Tracker Meteorologists."

As tvtechnology.com reports, local stations affected by the layoff cancelations were grateful to their audiences. "Your calls, emails texts... every word spoken in support of our team was heard, and without your outpouring of messages that rang so loud, this change may not have been possible," said Craig Ford, the news anchor for ABC affiliate WTVA in Tupelo, Mississippi. 

LESSONS LEARNED

This bad move by Allen Media was averted, but these consolidation efforts are happening throughout the media. It's not just meteorologists: 

Variety reports:

"Sinclair, CBS, Gray Media and others have done variations of the same in recent years. These cost-cutting moves are a disappointing financial reality given a soft advertising marketplace and audiences turning their attention away from TV.  It's also happening in newspapers of course. But what's lost in these moves to centralize coverage is the local expertise and nuance that goes from having your boots on the ground, knowing the intricacies of your community and having a personal relationship with viewers. 

Ironically, removing all of that will only hasten the demise of local media as we know it. What is more local that the daily weather forecast? Stripping away the very selling point that still makes broadcast valuable - it's live, local nature - may help save a few coins in the short run, but it's a recipe for obsolescence in the long term."

I witnessed that here in Vermont when I worked at the Burlington Free Press. It was founded in 1827 and became a daily in 1848.  It had a storied past of ground breaking Vermont journalism. When I joined the paper in the late 1980s, it was still the to-go source for news and information. 

The paper's corporate overlord kept doing its cost cutting, laying off workers in waves (I was finally led go in 2013). Now the Burlington Free Press is pretty irrelevant, online only, and no longer a source of local news brought to you by journalists who really knew the community. 

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

During his campaign, Donald Trump professed to know little about Project 2025 and he said he had even less involvement in it.

Project 2025 is a detailed plan developed in recent years by the conservative Heritage Foundation explaining how they wanted to radically change the federal government. This plan would only happen, the conservatives thought, if Trump was elected. 

And here we are. 

As I wrote last August, one of the ideas in Project 2025 would privatize the National Weather Service. Some private corporation would issue forecasts from somewhere, probably with less expertise, never mind any expertise on local conditions.  Perhaps the forecasts and life saving weather warnings would be behind a paywall, making only people with means to be able to hear, say, a tornado warning.

So far, nothing like this has been proposed, but the Trump administration is still very young. It could definitely still happen.

Which brings us back to public outcry. 

Loud opposition to Trump's steamroller of dubious decisions won't overturn all of them.  But public opposition is already slowing down and in some cases at least temporarily stopping some bad idea. As seen in the Allen Media Group blunder, the public can change things it doesn't like. 

Especially when it involves crucial resources and safety that are held near and dear to hearts of the public. 

  

Project 2025 Goals: Take Away Free, Accurate Weather Forecasts and Warnings, Make Them Expensive And Less Accurate

Among the many bad ideas in the Heritage Foundation's
Project 2025 is breaking up NOAA and probably
putting what are now free, accurate weather forecasts
and warnings behind paywalls. 

 There's lots of buzz about Project 2025 and the great harm it would cause if Donald Trump goes along with this blueprint.  

Project 2025 is  detailed, 922-page plan put together by the conservative Heritage Foundation of how they see the federal government radically changing if Trump is elected. Trump himself says he knows little to nothing of the plan, but a lot of observers aren't buying that.  

If enacted, it would concentrate power in the presidency, leading to the risk of abuses of that power. It would impose a hardline religious agenda. And it would gut numerous federal agencies, and do things like abolish the Department of Education,  intensely slash Medicaid, and purge the government of federal employees and replace them with Trump loyalists and hacks.  

Which brings us to a topic more related to the point of this here blog thingy. Which is what it Project 2025 would do to the National Weather Service and NOAA.

Project 2025 would make it harder to obtain weather forecasts - even those that have life-saving warnings. Chances are it would make the forecasts less accurate. It would end research and information into climate change. And would flood the agency with all those loyalists and hacks I mentioned. 

PAYWALL FORECASTS?

The United States - like in most developed countries - delivers free weather forecasts, storm warnings, and often life-saving advice on coping with dangerous weather. Think about how many lives must have been saved over the years because National Weather Service meteorologists issued tornado, hurricane, flood and winter storm warnings to the public. 

Those warnings are available to everybody.  As The Atlantic points out, all this is available for the low, low price in taxpayer dollars of $4 per person annually. 

One of many scary things about Project 2025 is that it might privatize weather forecasts, which could put them behind a paywall. Which means people who can't afford such forecasts would be out of luck.  

"What you do not want is a paywall system of weather where only paying customers can find out if they're about to drive into a tornado," John Oliver once said. 

He was then referring to a now- abandoned proposal by AccuWeather some years ago to take over forecasting services from NOAA.

But this is precisely what we'd get out of Project 2025. As Outside Magazine writes, this proposal would have a private company like AccuWeather take over many of NOAA's functions, and we'd have to start paying for weather reports a warnings. 

Forget people with low incomes. They high and mighty hard core right wing clearly believes only people with money "deserve" life-saving weather warnings and information. 

That's a slap in the face to everybody, including who knows how many Vermonters who were saves by cost-free warnings during the extreme flash floods we had last month. 

AccuWeather, to their credit, rejected the idea of their organization replacing the National Weather Service, unlike their public stance several years ago.  But Project 2025 backers would likely just find another organization - probably one much less reputable than AccuWeather, to do the weather forecasting. 

Which begs the question, how accurate would those privatized forecast be, if you had enough money to afford them? Perhaps not very. Especially since these forecasts might not be produced by scientists, but political hacks who would put spin for their Dear Leader above actual facts. 

The Project 2025 document makes the false claim that private weather firms offer more accurate forecasts than the National Weather Service. Besides, private weather forecasting companies rely on NOAA data to make their forecasts. 

After all, one of Project 2025's goals is to "ensure appointees agree with administrative aims."

Will these privatized forecasts tell you the hurricane is headed your way? Or will it falsely tell you it's headed somewhere else to satisfy the whim of Trump or whoever is in charge?

The track record isn't good. Meteorologist in Chief Trump back in 2019 said massive Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama. Real meteorologists with the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service disagreed, saying Dorian would miss Alabama.

Those professional meteorologists were of course correct, as Alabama escaped unscathed from Dorian, but Trump could not stand to being contradicted by those lowly dumb scientists. Which is why he produced a hurricane prediction map, suspiciously altered by a Sharpie to "show" that Dorian was headed toward Alabama. 

You can see how Trump, if he's re-elected, or some other egomaniac would go further and really try to mislead the public about dangerous storms 

That's especially true because most scientists believe climate change is a real threat. The fine folk at the Heritage Foundation beg to differ. In their Project 2025 scheme, they would stop anything that even hints at climate research.

For instance, as Outside reports, Project 2025 would downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. That bunch provides scientific research so that forecasters can better understand tornadoes, hurricanes, other storms, climate change and ecosystem health. 

"The source of much of NOAA's climate alarmism," sniffs the folks at Project 2025.  

Lately, you've probably seen on the news that some Republicans, including Trump, have been backing away from Project 2025, whether they explicitly say so or not.  

That's because there's so much in there that so many people don't like. Remember, though, they're just going to keep it relatively quiet unless and until Trump is elected. Then they'll unleash this monstrosity, whether you like it or not.