Wx Watch: Sunset for 'A.M. Weather'

February 3, was a dark day for general aviation. That was the day that A.M. Weather was unceremoniously canned. A.M. Weather was an early morning television show that focused on aviation weather, and for the past 17 years many pilots had come to depend on the program's concise, authoritative analyses of current and forecast conditions. The 15-minute show had a rapid pace, a no-nonsense style, no annoying commercials, and a Monday-to-Friday schedule over some 340 television stations participating in the Public Broadcasting Service network. Being broadcast over UHF frequencies, the show was free, too. It was a great complement to any official, FAA-endorsed weather briefing, DUAT or otherwise.

Nearly every pilot I know watched the show. AOPA, the AOPA Air Safety Foundation, and a half-dozen other loyal sponsors regularly fed the show's coffers. The only complaints I ever heard about A.M. Weather centered on its not being aired more often.

What happened? Unfortunately, we'll probably never learn the unvarnished truth. WMPT, the Owings Mills, Maryland, PBS station that provided the show's production facilities, cites budgetary pressure. When asked for an explanation, WMPT's director of communications, Sharon Philippart, said, "...We were proud to produce A.M. Weather for many years, but not all of the show's costs were covered. We asked all of the participating stations to help out, but this was unsuccessful.... In the end, we had to make a difficult business decision — like so many other PBS stations have to do these days." When asked if WMPT had any plans to reinstate the program, Philippart said, "...we tried to do all we could to save it. Now it's a done deal...we have no plans to reinstate." A moment later in the conversation, however, Philippart said, "If funding were available, we would look at another weather program, but not A.M. Weather."

A.M. Weather's producer, Kay Bond, gives a different version of the axing. "I was told that the decision was not based on funding or viewership," she said, adding that "we had an aviation company waiting in the wings as a new sponsor, worth $50,000 in funding, the week they made their decision."

Maryland Public Television's president and CEO, Raymond K.K. Ho, presumably had a central role in the decision to cancel. A career PBS executive, Ho was head of the Arkansas Educational Television Network before taking over at WMPT. He would not return this author's telephone calls.

The bottom line, according to Bond? "They said the station wanted to take a new programming direction...to become the business news station for PBS," she said.

The program lineup for the Monday morning following the show's cancellation seems to support this theory. Bloomberg Business News, a daily program that summarizes world market activity, had taken over A.M. Weather's slot, expanding from 15 to 30 minutes in length. "[ Bloomberg] came fully funded," Philippart said. Coupled with Bloomberg's 30-minute evening news program, Bloomberg Information Television, and another business-oriented show, Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser, it appears that Maryland Public Television's business news strategy is indeed on a roll.

At the moment, A.M. Weather's future seems dim. A large part of the show's problem has to do with obtaining a time slot for satellite uplinking. Uplinking is the method whereby a show's originating station beams the program to communications satellites, which in turn downlink it to participating local stations for broadcast.

Broadcast satellites have busy schedules, and reservations for their time involve issues of availability, long-range planning (uplink schedules are determined months in advance), and politics (a PBS commission decides who gets satellite time, how much, and when). Even assuming that WMPT wants to reinstate A.M. Weather, the next available satellite time won't be available until May 1995.

Though the show's 12 staffers have been laid off, and the on-air meteorologists have returned to jobs at the National Weather Service and the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service, Bond soldiers on. "We're still hanging in there, trying to find a new home," she said. "Supposedly, we're on the Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission's agenda to discuss reinstatement. I have a proposal in to WGBH [a Boston-based PBS station] to do the show up there, and I'd like to see them do it." Bond also said that other stations had been approached.

Bond is troubled by the South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV) network's decision to team up with cable TV's The Weather Channel (TWC) to produce a PBS-disseminated weather show. Bond feels that such an unprecedented alliance of commercial TV and public broadcasting would be sure to make this kind of show less responsive to viewers. (Personally, I'd be worried that TWC's talent would stand in front of a severe weather watch box.)

Jesse Bowers, South Carolina Educational Television's vice president of programming, explains, "We are in negotiations with The Weather Channel to make a package that would replace A.M. Weather. We're determining the show's content right now, but we know that there's a definite need for an A.M. Weather-type show with an aviation focus out there. From the moment we first said we might try this kind of a program, the interest we got has been tremendous from all over the country."

Bowers is unsure about some of the proposed show's details. "It would air at the time A.M. Weather did, we think, but we're also looking at putting on shows that run on weekends....And it probably would be a 15- minute show," he said.

The SCETV plan is to use TWC's studios, talent, and meteorologists. SCETV would simply be the show's conduit to PBS viewers. "I want to make sure you understand," Bowers said, "that we still have to put together all these elements, so things are not definite yet."

Even so, Bowers said that the show could go on the air as soon as late March or early April of this year. The plan is to gain access to satellite time using non-PBS transponders.

Bowers hints that WMPT's reasons for canceling A.M. Weather go a bit beyond the official excuses. "They seemed to feel that they weren't able to continue with the content or current cast of characters," he said.

For all the recent tribulations, it's important to remember that A.M. Weather has emerged from trouble before. It began life in 1972 as Aviation Weather, a three-part, half-hour show dedicated exclusively to flying weather. Documentary segments fleshed out the program with clips about flying technique and safety topics. This program aired Thursday and Friday nights until 1976, when a funding crisis shut it down.

The program returned in 1978 with a new approach. The new format limited the amount of aviation weather information and did away with the documentary bits. The idea was to bring in weather information aimed at the farming and marine communities, and thus broaden the show's appeal.

That appeal has been widespread. Since the cancellation, WMPT has received some 3,000 complaints. AOPA has also heard from many angry ex- viewers. Retired Pan Am pilot A.J. Leftwich of McLouth, Kansas, wrote, "I have tuned to Kansas City's Channel 19 or Topeka's Channel 11 for the last 14 years. The show provides an excellent 'go-no go' review of our national weather. Losing A.M. Weather is like losing the fingers on one hand — - I'll get along but certainly be greatly inconvenienced."

Member John Copeland of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, wrote, "Although I am a cable subscriber and do get The Weather Channel, I do not regard the meteorological information obtained from that source as a suitable substitute for the excellent aviation-oriented format that has been provided for years on A.M. Weather."

These are representative of many similar letters and faxes that have come to AOPA and the AOPA ASF.

Should you wish to air your comments or suggestions to WMPT, contact the station at 800/223-3MPT, or reach them on the Internet. The address there is [email protected].

We'll certainly keep you posted on any new developments in this television drama. Let's just hope that something good emerges from this crisis, that A.M. Weather receives a fair hearing in its attempts to restart, and that free access to professionally produced aviation weather information is preserved.