Weathercasting Worthy Of A Museum

While the weather is extremely hot, as it has been in large parts of the country lately, weather news gets even hotter at TV stations. But even when the weather turns mild, weather is big draw.

Capitalizing on that deep and near universal interest, Cox Media Group’s Orlando ABC affiliate, WFTV, late last year teamed with the Orlando Science Center to construct a mock weather set at the museum.

Kids learn about how weather works and how it is forecast and the technology that makes that piece of green wall fill up with the important maps viewers see on TV. They can even videotape themselves delivering the weather, and then watch themselves.

“The Severe Weather Center 9 Experience,” was created by Ocoee, Fla.-based FX Design Group, which has more than 20 years in the TV set-making business. It designed the WFTV set in 2007 and then worked with the station on the museum project.

“It’s been a huge success for us,” says Mike Lowe, the museum’s director of marketing. “We look at exhibits in terms of ‘dwell time’ (how long a visitor stays in the area) and the kids, especially, we can’t get them out of there.”

The FX Design Group is now marketing the idea of creating museum weather sets to other stations, making the pitch that they are a chance not only to do good, but to make money.

“As crazy as it’s getting, the more and more popular the weather forecast is, we believe these exhibits give a station extra exposure in their community,” says FX VP Paul Meena, plus it’s a showy piece of public service a station can tell the FCC about at license renewal time.

And the exhibits can be sponsored, Meena says. He envisions that sponsor offering to send a museum visitor's weather video to his or her home via email along with an advertising message. In the process, the sponsor collects email addresses for its database

WFTV doesn’t do any of this, although Bob St. Charles, WFTV creative services director and the point man behind this project, has some ideas about that.

There are at least a few other museums with weather news exhibits.

In 2008, Tampa, Bay News 9, a cable news channel operated by Bright House Networks, became a showy part of an exhibit at the city’s Museum of Science and Industry called Disasterville, which teaches kids about floods, hail storms, wildfires, earthquakes and, particularly relevant in Florida, hurricanes.

As at the Orlando museum, kids can perform their own weathercasts at Bay News 9’s WeatherQuest exhibit, which looks just like the one they see on the real Bay News 9.

At the John C. Freeman Weather Museum in Houston, the weather set isn’t sponsored by any television station, perhaps because representatives from four of Houston’s stations sit on the museum board, and nobody wants to let a fellow board member run away with a good idea. Not surprisingly, when weather turns nasty, that exhibit gets crowded with curious kids and their parents.

In Washington, the Newseum also has a TV news exhibit that includes a weathercast area.

The WFTV museum space is a fairly elaborate setup, although Meena says the cost can be scalable. That apparently means anything from $50,000 to six figures. WFTV’s is at the low end of that scale.

In Orlando, through recorded messages, WFTV’s meteorologists explain a typical day in the weather office and what tools they use to tell viewers about everything from sunny days to killer hurricanes.   

Two interactive weather stations let museum-goers test what they know and learn more about severe weather. At the weather desk, they also can use a split screen to scope out weather data on one side, and then work up their own forecast for a weather report. Then they can move over to the green screen and deliver their “on-air” report.     

As important and identifiable as weathercasts have becomes, a station hooking up with a local children’s museum or a science museum may be the kind of promotion that pays dividends.

“I guess what has surprised us was the reaction from the community from an educational standpoint,” says WFTV's St. Charles. “It’s a great way for us to start touching the next generation of viewers.”

Read other stories in this Severe Weather Special Report here.