WTVG Weather Coverage Disaster

[CurlyHoward]

WTVG, "Toledo's #1 local breaking news source" did a laughably bad job reporting on the Christmas winter storm of 2022.

First, this morning around 8 am they tweeted that Lucas County had gone to Level 2 snow emergency....right before the local cut-in during GMA erroneously announced on air that Lucas was still under Level 1.

after GMA they preempted their usual fluff late morning show "The Nine" for SPECIAL BREAKING WEATHER COVERAGE consisting mostly of the poor terrified 25 year old reporter in the passenger seat of a JEEP vehicle (because THIS IS HOME!) driving down snow covered route 2 in Port Clinton and Oak Harbor to confirm that the roads were, indeed, bad! Oh, and Sashem Braindead getting no cue and cussing out the producer with her eyes while snarling "Could I get some direction here, please?"

Then this afternoon they tweeted LUCAS HAS GONE TO LEVEL 3!!! only to retract it about 15 minutes later. turns out someone heard the scanner wrong.

Jordan Strack of WTOL tweeted "Make sure you’re following local news sources that care about accuracy more than clicks during severe weather."

Yes, even the station that employs Jeff Smith as lead anchor has earned the right to talk smack.

[Deleted User 15835]

To me WTOL and WTVG incited panic, I mean get this is bad weather and yes people need to be ready, but I have not seen people freak out like this in the long time. However, given the choice, WTOL seems to be the best choice.

[MWmetalhead]

Kudos to WTOL for the (justifiable) smack talking.

[Deleted User 15835]

Kudos to WTOL for the (justifiable) smack talking.

They really go overboard with that " First alert" nonsense, if it's going to be bad out tell me, but sheesh 86 the hysteria.

[CurlyHoward]

as I've written before, WTOL and WTVG have both spent the last 12 years trying to make up for having kind of under-covered the horrible June 2010 tornado as it was happening. WNWO once had decent weather coverage, but SSinclair's endless penny pinching took care of that.

[Deleted User 15835]

as I've written before, WTOL and WTVG have both spent the last 12 years trying to make up for having kind of under-covered the horrible June 2010 tornado as it was happening. WNWO once had decent weather coverage, but SSinclair's endless penny pinching took care of that.

Oh yeah! I did not see that one coming, I've seen damage from storms obviously, downed power lines, tree fell on a car, roof damage, etc.... but nothing that awful, it was very surreal. When severe weather is predicted in the spring and summer, my mind still goes back to that night in June in 2010.

Nov 17, 2013 was evil as well, Perrysburg township got hit really hard. On 795 and Oregon rd I can still see the metal tangled in the power lines and the side of this one small warehouse torn totally off. Not to mention The Circle K gas station flattened. I knew someone who had to go stay with family because there power was out until Thursday, the storm happened on a Sunday

[radioandtventhusiast]

I think the meteorologists at WTVG did a decent job for what they had to deal with. My blame seems to go more toward the social media team and possibly the staff in the control room. I think since the June 2010 tornadoes, they seem to care more and more about people's safety.

On the radio side, the internet station Towpath Radio thanked all their local personalities for updates and seemed to attack Cumulus for not covering much of the storm, saying this wasn't like this for them years ago.


I think the biggest panic myself was the wall-to wall coverage of the Toledo Water Crisis in August of 2014, everyone except WNWO went wall-to wall for at least 48 hours, preempting shows entirely while constantly repeating the same information over and over when no new information was known. I could understand for a few hours, but everyone knew about it after being up for a few hours, and the stations could've put a crawl until a press conference happened.

[CurlyHoward]

What I remember about the water crisis was ODOT putting nothing on any of its expressway message boards, yet any time there's a stupid Amber Alert for some county bordering West Virginia it overrides pertinent Toledo traffic information

[rugratsonline]

What I remember about the water crisis was ODOT putting nothing on any of its expressway message boards, yet any time there's a stupid Amber Alert for some county bordering West Virginia it overrides pertinent Toledo traffic information

Reminds me of "All-Canada Alert", which is Canada's version of the EAS, in which radio and TV would be interrupted in Kenora, Ontario for a tornado warning over a thousand miles away in Cornwall (as a fictional example).