The New ITV & BBC Weather Thread

Not necessarily, contracts can and are able to be extended to cover the changeover. Indeed there are a few other contract changes at the BBC which are overrunning slightly and that has happened there too - the old suppliers keeping going for an extra few months.


I'm pretty sure the weather contract has been regularly put up for tender, in fact legally I don't think it couldn't not have been

Doesn't the same company taking over the weather contract already provide graphics solution? One thing I don't understand about this is some of the concerns about quality. Won't MeteoGroup still be buying data from the MetOffice which may include forecasts? It's not like they'll set up thousands of weather stations, radar sites and satellites? If it's anything like what happens with the US is that unlike the MetOffice the NWS provides raw data and forecasts for free but companies have to provide the data link (although a lot is uplinked by satellite for free) but the graphics vendors have their own models to make the forecasts better.

IIRC you're right, Meteogroup use the Met Offices data. Though they'll create their own forecasts from that amongst other sources.

Remember they already provide weather services so it's not as if they're setting up from scratch

The weather on the news channel looks a bit odd, the screen looks different, and is being presented by someone I've never seen before. Preparations for new weather going on?

If you're talking about the weather report just before 12, I also thought I hadn't seen him (Simon King) presenting the weather before but apparently he has: https://tvforum.uk/forums/post1061771#post-1061771

Could the different looking screen be in Salford?

There is a forecast by Simon on BBC Weather's Twitter.

I wonder if it came from the BBC Breakfast studio (assuming it was Salford) otherwise it looks to have come from a news studio rather than a weather studio assuming we are certain it wasn't the balcony.

Simon King is Salford based, as he is the regular BBC Radio Five Live weekday morning weather forecaster.

And has presented BBC World Forecasts alot over the past 10 years.

Chatting to a Met Office colleague today, I understand that the Met Office / BBC contract has been extended until the autumn.

One point of interest is that after the changeover the BBC will still be broadcasting branded Met Office weather warnings - with a requirement to be clear that the Met Office is not responsible for the remainder of the forecast.

Interesting to consider how that might be handled in practice, especially for the longer range 5-day warnings where the different providers' meteorological models might not match.

That doesn't sound good - did the Met extend because Meteogroup weren't ready?

I don't know - but seems a plausible explanation.