Not Always Watching, At Least For Us

I'm furious. It doesn't happen often, so you might want to step back. I'm easy going about a lot of things. But this thing happens, each and every time, over and and over again. Each time, I think it will be different this time. Each time, it's the same thing.

Once again, last night, we had severe weather here. Once again, the supposedly "regional" news channel covered the weather only until it got past their city borders, then dropped coverage and returned to regular programming. Seven minutes later, our law enforcement officers spotted rotation in two separate locations in our area.

We continued to have severe weather for hours. The regional channel continued to ignore us, for hours.

It has happened before, often enough that it shouldn't suprise me. I keep hoping our "good neighbors" over at KAIT 8 will take that title seriously, but apparently they take it too seriously. If you aren't, quite literally, their neighbor, they just don't care.

Their new tag line these days is "Always Watching, Always Tracking, Always On." Well, maybe for some people. Not for those of us in Mississippi County. It was a Memphis channel that was telling me what was happening with the weather last night. Channel 8 thought a sitcom was more important.

The reason this upset me particularly last night is that some of our tornado sirens weren't operating. Our officers were literally having to go street by street, warning our citizens of the severe weather. Wouldn't it have been nice if some regional channel that was watching, tracking, and on would have helped our residents out by doing just that and letting us know about the severe weather in our area? Guess the sitcom and the dancing stars were more important that the continual rotation that kept developing.

I was upset enough that I called Ryan Vaughn last night. I identified myself as being with the Blytheville Courier News, because insanity reigns during bad weather. I wanted him to know that I wasn't the regular "I just saw aliens in the tornado" person that bad weather brings out.

I told him some of our sirens were down, that law enforcement officers had spotted rotation, and that I was upset they had dropped coverage even though Mississippi County was still under the gun. I added Memphis stations were telling us to take cover, while they were doing their regular programming.

His response? He wanted to know if we had damage. He told me he would not go on the air with the storms in Mississippi County unless I had damage to report. It's nice to know he's not concerned with the storms beforehand, only the damage after the fact. He told me they had been on the air for hours already, and if the Memphis station was telling us about the storms in our area, they were "just trying to scare us."

I swear to you I am not making this up. I know he was tired. I know he was busy. But this doesn't make sense. If it is so vitally important to get the news out in Jonesboro and the surrounding area, how can it be so unimportant when the bad weather gets over here? They get sufficiently warned, but we don't because warning us will just scare us?

Oh, I don't think so. I'm glad there were other news channels out there willing to look out for us, even though we are in a different state. I just wish the channel that claims us as being in their region thought that region extended to being included in severe weather coverage.