Environment
A Brief History of Local TV Weather Reports
Where have all the puppets gone?
Decades of progress in satellite and computer technology make it pretty easy for today’s meteorologists to track weather patterns. Our smartphones make it easy to know the latest forecast in two seconds. It’s all quite impressive, but it’s nowhere near as entertaining as the handmade maps, personalities, and puppets that defined local television weather reports of the 20th century.
Less important than news, more important than sports, weather presenters have long walked the line of comedian and scientist. With limited tools at their disposal before the 1970s, many stations saw it as a chance to experiment.