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Old people. That's why they spend 13 minutes on weather. Old people are obsessed with it for some reason.

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Haha. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

I don't see how local news hasn't reached critical mass yet. A long-time reporter with a local station gave us a talk once and pointed out the expansion of local news over the years. Locally the networks are airing news from like 4 or 5AM until 7AM, then most of them have Noon, 5, 6, and 10 broadcasts - and this last broadcast is usually 35-40 minutes and bumps back the late night shows, even though reporters will tell you there's really only like 7-8 minutes of actual "news" per show, so it could easily go just a half an hour.

The byproduct of this expansion is that it is an increasingly sh1tty industry to work in, as the hours get longer. Plus, no way I'd want to be either a morning or evening anchor - the morning ones have to get up at like 2AM and the evening ones apparently get to the studio by like 2PM and are there until at least 11PM. No thanks.

If there is one improvement in the industry over the years it's that the broads have gotten a lot hotter. There's probably a lot of 50 YO unemployed meteorolgists sitting around who didn't see this coming.