The New ITV & BBC Weather Thread

Well.... John Hammond just reappeared doing the weather in the studio of Midlands Today.




Maybe he's now a relief regional forecaster.

Central Weather teams on both ITV and BBC seem so strong at the moment.

Why oh why are Becky Mantin's forecasts increasingly devoid of map graphics. She does love a text summary does Becky! Tonight's weather after the 6,45 news is a case in point.

And her first summary. Seeing double http://www.itv.com/news/2017-04-14/rain-clearing-southeast-overnight-feeling-cooler/

Not as bad as a few of the London weather hub forecasts I've seen on Look East at the weekend, which if I remember correctly have featured no maps at all on a couple of occasions! I seem to remember they went from the intro screen to the headline slide (the one with the blue rectangle at the top with a summary in), and from that to a slide showing temperatures across the region! Look East used to just have a presenter read a forecast if they didn't have anyone in themselves previously, so this did seem a step backwards as having a forecaster didn't improve the end product one jot!

Lucy's weather from yesterday. There's simply no comparison in quality. Becky is lovely and cheery, but after all she's there to present the weather. I'd have thought in general a forecaster should use maps, pressure charts etc with a short headline text bullet point summary to start: http://www.itv.com/news/2017-04-13/colder-than-christmas/

Emma Jesson's weekend forecasts are often like that as well, she spends half the forecast showing weather photos and making dry quips about what you may have been up to in today's weather, then a few maps and then the outlook.

We're now well into May and still the new BBC Weather contract hasn't begun...

Indeed not. I'm sure I read at some point that the change of provider was meant to be in the spring?

If we go by Meteorological seasons rather than Geological ones (as seems apt!), then there's only about 2-and-a-half weeks of "spring" now remaining.

I'm inclined to anticipate that the last day of Met Office forecasts will be kept fairly low-key, whereas the first day of the new contract will be accompanied by much fanfare (and probably mainly emphasising the new look graphics etc, and not quite so much focus on the change of data provider).

Still no sign of any changes to the weather graphics as of yet, but I guess it will be soon as meteorological summer starts this week (1st June).

What has the change of season got to do with it?

I think the BBC announced the change would be in the spring?