Watershed education for TV weather forecasters
Recently, a project I helped design and develop was published. It’s a series of multimedia educational units on watersheds and related issues (water quantity, quality, storms & floods, drought). It’s called Watersheds: Connection Weather to the Environment and freely available via http://meted.ucar.edu/broadcastmet/watershed/.
The intended audience is broadcast meteorologists in the U.S. I learned that these broadcasters are the main (and often sole) source of scientific information for many people in the U.S. Recognizing this fact, there is a shift occuring in many U.S. TV stations, trying to help their weathercasters transition into “station scientists.”
Our goal with this project was to get TV weathercasters to start talking about watersheds on the air. To support this goal, this series has been incorporated into the new list of professional development topics recommended by the American Meteorological Society. We hope broadcasters will start using these materials and that some of the messages will begin filtering into their broadcast segments. (There’s going to be a follow-up study conducted to evaluate the use and adoption.)
As a recent immigrant to Canada (3 years), I’m wondering about the viability of this approach here. Are TV weathercasters seen as key disseminators of environmental information? And are educational projects like this viable in the much-smaller Canadian TV market?
Based on my experience with a Canadian television broadcaster and from watching several hours of weathercasts as tag-ons to evening news, I think I can safely say that weathercasters provide mostly innane banter in addition to telling the viewers what is happening in the local region and across the country. Hence, anything that could be done to elevate their awareness and ability to speak to larger ecological principles and concepts would have to be a good thing.
As for how viable your approach would be, I honestly don’t know; however, you’ve got nothing to lose in trying. I suggest starting with the CBC, as they are likely to be more receptive. If none of the major broadcasters pick up on the ideas, then try the public education networks such as Knowledge Network (BC), ACCESS (AB) or TVO (Ont).
Best of luck with this, and keep us posted of your progress.
By the way, had difficulties accessing the module as it appears to be geared solely to PC users.