Actually said by a weatherman tonight on a local TV station:
If you are going to be out driving tonight, be careful because we haven’t seen rain like this in a couple of days and it could get slick.
Wait a minute. We should be extra careful because of the possibility of RAIN?!?! Because we haven’t seen rain in the looooong time of a couple days? How condescending and patronizing can the TV talking heads get? They must think we are like stupid Turkeys, standing in our front yards, looking upwards at this strange phenomenon, rain. We must have forgotten all about it because our short attention spans don’t go back a mere couple of days. They must warn us to close our mouths so that we don’t drown!
I don’t really think it’s a matter of some contempt for their viewers IQ. I think mostly, when you’re getting paid to fill time talking about something, sometimes they say anything as long as it sounds sort of related to the topic at hand.
I mean, come on, this is Western New York. We drive through blizzards before breakfast here. (And weathermen have a canary about it.) A little rain shouldn’t even be worth mentioning.
If you were watching Channel 2 and Kevin O’Connell (sp?) like you’ve got pictured, I’m not surprised. He makes comments like that all the time slash says stupid stuff in an attempt to be funny. All we want is the weather.
Plus, he went to St. Joe’s.
Double post, but I’ve never seen a number in the spambot system before. It just had me type 6 1/2.
Names and stations were omitted to protect the guilty.
You caught the hint, though.
Like I say, I think it’s just a matter of “I have three minutes to fill. Keep talking, even if I’m out of facts.”
And yes, Recaptcha does that sometimes!
The issue is not the comment to be careful driving because of the rain on the roads. It’s the inference that a person would forget what rain is like having not seen any for a couple of days. I agree that the problem is stretching a statement to fill airtime. I haven’t seen that problem much around here with weather reporters or sports. However,the main “talking heads” can really bad that way, and most of them end up sounding like they are giving news reports for kindergarteners. In fact, two of our most well-known local newscasters are the inspiration for the newspeople on “Family Guy”.
Hi, Matt! I’m getting shown a # to type, too.