PM Blog FAIL!

I listen most afternoons at 5 pm to the afternoon news and interview show PM on Radio 4. Today they changed a little bit of the program, in which I was intensely interested. They’ve modified the weather forecast.

Now those of you in the U.S. or in Singapore might wonder what the fuss is about. I gather that Singaporean weather forecasts are pretty much the same every day, and weather forecasts in the U.S. generally focus on a small metropolitan area in which the weather is mostly homogenous.

Here in the United Kingdom, weather forecasts on the radio and TV have generally been delivered as a story. In order to keep the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish happy, sometimes the forecast begins with those, other times, and perhaps even most times, the forecast begins with Southeast England and East Anglia, corresponding to Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk counties and the London Metropolitan Area. But, what often happens is the one’s ears glaze over when the weather forecast starts, only to snap to attention when it’s too late and your area has already been mentioned.

A few weeks or a month ago, a woman wrote in to the PM program stating that the current weather forecast was very easy to forget to listen to; she wondered whether other formats would work better. So some experiments were conducted, including:

  • Delivering the regional forecasts in the accent of the area concerned—Scotland in a Scottish accent, North East England in a Newcastle accent, and so on;
  • Playing music behind the forecast;
  • Playing agricultural sounds such as birdsong behind the forecast;
  • Playing sounds corresponding to the weather being forecasted—gales behind strong winds, pattering rain behind showers, and so on;
  • Finally, dividing the country up into regions and announcing each region, then its weather—similar to the Shipping Forecast.

After trialling each of these, and consulting within the BBC and the Met Office (=USan Weather Bureau), the last alternative was selected. Peter Gibbs, the head of weather broadcasting for the Met Office services for the BBC, (also a hottie for those who are into men like him—unfortunately, he’s already taken), went on PM and explained how and why the new style forecast was being trialled. If it works well, and people like it, it’ll probably replace the current story weather forecasts on radio. The PM host asked for comments to be left on the PM Blog.

I heard the forecast, and I liked it. I was able to concentrate long enough to get the gist of what will be happening here tomorrow. However, when I went to the BBC PM blog website to comment, I discovered that one has to register to leave a comment.

No problem? After filling out the form, you have to also verify your email address by clicking on a link in an email that the blog will send you, presumably automated. What PM didn’t seem to anticipate is that so many of its readers would not already be commenters that the comment verification email mechanism would be overwhelmed and is probably down for the count. I asked for the verification email to be sent 27 minutes ago. Nothing yet. Normally these emails arrive almost automatically.

Of course, when I finally get my email, finish registering, and make my comment, I’ll have a short approving phrase for the weather forecast and a rant about not anticipating this kind of load.

#BBCPMBlogFAIL

2 Responses to “PM Blog FAIL!”

  1. rsc says:

    I looked at the header and thought “What? The Prime Minister has a blog?”

  2. chrishansenhome says:

    He might have a ghost-written blog somewhere. However, nobody in the United Kingdom cares what Gordon Brown thinks.

    He’ll be out of Parliament by the end of next year, once he resigns as Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in May 2010.