I was mad last night. Real mad. I’m still kinda mad. When I get done telling you why I was so mad, you’re probably going to think it is ridiculous. You’ll think I’m crazy and petty and selfish. You may be right, but I doubt it. ?

Ok, as you know, I live in Waverly. Well last night I guess there were a few Tornado Warnings in and around Iowa City. Fine, so here comes KWWL, KCRG, and KGAN (the local NBC,ABC and CBS affiliates) busting into my precious TV shows telling me there is a Tornado Warning and to seek cover if you are located in X location.

Fine, great. I’m OK with that. Folks need to know when bad weather is coming. HOWEVER, they spent the next 40 minutes talking about it! They all had to show off their stupid weather systems, such as the Ultra Doppler Mark IV, or the Moon Unit Zappa Weather Predictor.. of DOOM.

Forty fricken minutes they wasted my time repeating the same damn information. On KGAN they even flashed on the bottom of the screen that if you lived in a trailer to get out! HAHA. They had a “reporter” on the scene and they would call him up and say, “Give us an update.” The guy would say back, “Well, it’s dark….” No crap?!? It is night out… Jebus.

I seriously felt as if these dudes were getting their rocks off on severe weather. I really did.

They went back to regular TV at around 7:55 so we could catch the last 5 minutes of the shows we missed for the first hour.. Nice. Then a few minutes later they did it again with another warning that went until 8:45… Those bastards.

Now, why did this bother me? For a few reasons, most which you will think are petty. I wanted to watch the new Caveman show on ABC. I love those guys.. The show probably sucks, but I wanted to watch it. Also I love NCIS, I got screwed on that too.

Yes, petty, I know. But the problem is I feel we don’t need these 45 minute “weather orgies” every time there is a tornado warning somewhere. I think we have some “workarounds” that can please TV addicts like myself.

(1) Break into the show, say there is a warning, tell people to take cover and then use a scroll bar along the bottom… Tornado’s affect a small section of viewers; don’t screw the rest of us over with your 45 minute weather love fest.

(2) All the local channels are broadcasting in HD and they also have a weather channels. For example, KWWL for those who get their HD over the air you get 7, 7-1, 7-2, 7-3. 7 is the normal feed channel, 7-1 is the HD feed, 7-2 is the KWWL all weather channel and 7-3 is some crappy music channel. For those with HD, if you must have your weather sex-a-thon, keep the HD feed normal and flash something on it to turn to the weather channel or the normal channel to get weather updates. You have all this technology… use it!!
And thank God some people are taking advantage of technology, because most high profile shows can be viewed the day after on ABC,NBC, CBS’s websites, so all is not lost. I just think these TV stations are going overboard with their stupid weather systems trying to show how cool their toys are and it makes them look silly.

There, I’ve said my peace…