Helicopters Used for News Coverage

Weather radar, and raw data provision in the UK (and similar in much of Europe) is a function of the Met Office, who were part of the military. They certainty have their roots as a government agency/institution.
There's not really a free market approach here to the compilation of weather data, only third parties buying the data from the Met Office, and presenting/packaging themselves.



Fair point



Umm, perhaps it's time to review their Commonwealth membership.

Depends on the frequency band. Arqiva and the Joint Frequencies Management Group at Ofcom are involved in quite a lot of frequency licensing. Certainly if you want protected radio mic and RF camera frequencies you apply for a licence for the duration of your broadcast in that location, otherwise you play pot luck with unlicensed spectrum.

Weather radar frequencies may well be regulated in a different manner though.

However the UK has decent, high quality, national weather radar provision via the UK Met Office, so I don't see much point in duplicating this commercially. (We're a small country - so a nationally co-ordinated service makes sense.) The data is available commercially, and most weather services use it I believe.

**EDIT - post I was commenting on has disappeared **
I think the difference in the UK and the US is that we'd expect the Met Office to provide that kind of information to all audiences - not those watching a specific TV station. We don't see that kind of essential public service as a commercial provision.

We have far fewer extreme weather events, but when we do have major weather issues (usually flooding or - in UK terms - heavy snow) the first port of call is usually BBC local radio and then BBC network and regional TV, along with online.

Just to be clear, we don't find the provision of weather coverage silly. What we find bizarre is that it is a function of commercial competition rather than a straight public service.

I mentioned this in the weather thread the NWS and NOAA actually in the US the data is free to the public online and most of the population is covered by radar and thousands of weather stations. Stations typically buy radars because of the delay (five minutes) it takes for a NWS radar to do a full scan at all elevations. If the weather is severe - flood, tornado, hurricane warnings we will get a push notification with a loud obnoxious tone on our phones.

What seems odd to me is the fact that clearly unnecessary levels of detail are being boasted about. I suppose it's the same thing I feel about Sky News when they boasted about having cameras at every election count in 2015.

But they don't. CTV and Global are the only networks that operates helicopters and they rarely ever promote them or have the flexibility to use them. The former actually owns the helicopters and are up twice a day; the latter are leased by a traffic operator - they're usually up monitoring highways rather than chasing stories. Citytv once had a helicopter in Toronto which they have dropped decades ago, and CBC never had a helicopter due to its absurd operating costs. So much for "helicopter wars".

And the same could be said about doppler wars too. Stations often use Weatheroffice data - they rarely operate their own weather tracking systems. Stations also don't break into programming to cover storms because it would be a "overuse" of their resources and would equal to lost revenue for the network (all of those pricey American programs!)

Live Chopper coverage from Dallas a trench collapse and a trapped worker.

I think a lot of it has to do with the commercial nature of US local TV news. Don't get me wrong — local TV news has plenty of strong points, and it can be (and often is) an important civic resource. But at the end of the day, almost every decision is driven by ratings.

You would probably feel much more at home with public radio in the US, which has a strong tradition. I know next to nothing about radio in the UK, but US local public radio feels somewhat similar to regional TV news in the UK. Local public radio news stations have much more humble operations than US local TV news stations, and it's all much more driven by NPR's nationally-distributed programs which have allotted time for local inserts each hour. In late morning and early-to-mid evening slots, NPR affiliates in large cities often have 30-60 minute local newscasts that follow the national programs, but not always. Staffing typically consists of one or two anchors and a handful of reporters covering more meat and potatoes issues than what you'd see on local TV.

Compared to the UK, public television in the US never developed a strong tradition of local news coverage, let alone very much national significance. PBS was starved of resources for decades, leading us to the current situation with commercial broadcasters leading in pretty much every area (entertainment, national news, local news, etc.) At least our public radio is pretty healthy.

Plus it doesnt help the current administration wants to kill off or defund (however you choose to phrase it) NPR and PBS.

Yep - I listen to NPR occasionally. ISTR that the BBC World Service and WGBH Boston have a joint radio production with a US public service radio operation (PRI) called 'The World'

Yes, NPR is the main producer and distributor of public radio in the US, though there are many others as well. The World from PRI and the BBC is a great show. It doesn't air on all stations, but it usually runs in the early afternoon. BBC World Service provides the five minute newscast at the top of the hour along with some other reporting. Another broadcaster, American Public Media, distributes BBC World Service in full to stations. It typically runs in the evening and overnight hours, as well as in some oddball slots during the day.

I don't want to stray off-topic too much, but I find the NPR national programming to be excellent - and their podcasts like Up First, and NPR Politics, are intelligent yet quite accessible for the occasional listener.