QMTV for Schools and Colleges

cross-posted to my own LJ

These are just quick thoughts, since (of course) I've not seen much yet. Anyway... it's not quite the disaster I'd feared, but nor is it the great advance the BBC are trumpeting. The tilted perspective of the map is appalling, though, and if I lived in Aberdeen I'd be most upset. That really does have to change, and quickly. Contrast on the map is poor, and you have to look in three places at once (rain or not, land colour, time) to get the "snapshot" you used to be able to get at a glance. As I'd suspected, it's difficult to make out the transition between snow and rain, though partly that's that idiotic projection again. The rainfall forecasts are indeed much too specific, and look as if they've been added from computer models with no human alteration at all. And it's very disappointing that North Atlantic charts are only going to be shown when the forecaster things something "interesting" is happening - which tends to mean a deep, gale-producing low.

What is interesting, though, is that the old symbols (or something very close to them) have been retained for the BBC Weather website, and if anything the maps there are an improvement. They're still in 2D (hooray), and considerably larger than the maps the site used to use. The regional forecasts are good, and the introduction of a separate Channel Islands map is also to be welcomed. On the downside, the temperature contour maps have been reduced from the old one-degree resolution to three, which is a silly and retrograde step, and as on the TV forecast, simply showing different-sized arrows for wind speed without any numbers is hopeless. And why is the link to the Sea Temperature map greyed out, despite the graphic actually being there if you put the obvious into the URL?

Overall impressions at the moment? Not great, to be honest. The BBC's previous forecasts were unique because they emphasised detail and accuracy over flashy graphics. The new system looks like something off Sky or even (*shudder*) ITV. It would be some compensation if the Beeb could put on a five-minute "scientific forecast" at some point each day - even late at night would do - including model discussion, jet-stream maps and all the other things that supposedly dumbed-down American viewers happily deal with all the time... but the chance of their doing anything half so sensible is pretty much nil.

Edit: Keep an eye on the BBC website's Have Your Say page - it could be quite interesting if the current balance of opinion is continued, with the great majority of people disliking the new look...

(crossposted to my own LJ)

I note that the BBC's long-awaited new weather forecast graphics are to be publicly previewed tomorrow (although we were told yesterday that it would be on today's Breakfast, and it didn't happen...) and if the comments on the various weather forums are anything to go by, you might want to stand out of the way once I've seen it. =:S Someone on the TheWeatherOutlook forum linked to a post on TV Forum by someone (else) who'd sneaked a cameraphone into Television Centre and recorded a monitor showing a rehearsal using the new graphics, and having seen that video...

...I'm not very impressed. Several posters described them as "a cross between Sky and ITV" in appearance, and as ITV forecasts are the subject of general derision within the meteorological community this is not a good sign. In fact, to me the style seemed slightly reminiscent of Francis Wilson all those years ago on Breakfast Time! It's deeply regrettable that the BBC has elected to follow the crowd and succumb to the lure of the 3D flyover; their current 2D maps are by far the clearest on British TV, and it's no accident that the Beeb's forecasts are the ones just about everyone on TWO and other weather forums refers to. The BBC weather charts in their current form are easily the best we have.

The current "flyover" of Britain sometimes used after the 6.30pm news on BBC1 illustrates one of the problems with 3D maps - that on a 2D screen it can be hard to work out which part of the country a particular symbol is over. (It also tends to cut off SE England, but meh.) Except that the new "Weatherscape XT" version won't have symbols; just dark land where it's cloudy and bright land where it's sunny. This is a bad idea because it gives the impression that, say, the location of the edge of an approaching front can be predicted with great accuracy well in advance. As someone else pointed out on TWO, the current "sunshine and showers" symbol is indeed vague, but since it's impossible to predict precisely where scattered showers will fall this is actually a virtue. The new system will show, for example, a one-hour break in the clouds at precisely 2pm and you can bet that some people will take this as a certainty and then complain to the BBC/Met Office when it's not quite like that!

I think next week, when the new graphics are due to be introduced completely, may prove a watershed as far as the British weather community is concerned, since - if the look is as dumbed-down as I fear - we will have lost the last professional TV weather forecast that put clarity and detail ahead of flashy graphics. Thankfully there are many specialist places online that will still show the sort of basic but detailed information that is actually needed for anything beyond, "Will I need an umbrella?", but that's the point: they will be specialist places. Synoptic charts, for example, are extremely useful in making sense of the weather, yet some of the information leaking out from the BBC over the last few days would seem to indicate that isobars are to become a thing of the past. One person has even suggested that the rainfall radar screens will be dropped, though this would be an act of such spectacular idiocy that perhaps even the BBC won't be making it.

Anyway, I shall post again on this subject once I've seen the finished product in action (it comes in fully on Monday, apparently), and if it proves me wrong and is actually an improvement on the 2D charts with their old-fashioned symbols then I shall say so. I just don't think that's going to be the case. =:/