ACCORDING to Lord Reith first Director General of the BBC, the mission of radios should be "to inform, to educate and to entertain". No doubt he would have voiced a similar ambition in the case of television, but the American commentator Ed Murrow saw the latter medium in a rather different light: it served, he said, merely "to distract, delude, amuse and insulate".
It is a matter of opinion into which category we should assign television channels entirely devoted to the weather. But in places where they are available they have proved to be very popular indeed.
The longest established venture of this kind, The Weather Channel in the US, broadcasts nationwide 24 hours a day from its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia - a place that of late we have come to regard as almost home. The schedule is organised around a regular hourly routine of weather forecasts, bulletins, and other snippets of meteorological interest, and is available to subscribers as part of the basic TV cable service for a fee of, I believe, $25 a month.
Each hourly module contains a local weather forecast every 7 1/2 minutes, travel weather appears four times an hour, and an extended forecast for two or three days ahead is given every 30 minutes. Other bits and scraps of weather information, together with satellite images, radar displays and relevant weather statistics, are slotted in as time allows.
At appropriate times of the year, matters of topical interest are given special attention. In wintertime, for example, wind chill reports are broadcast in the autumn the Fall Foliage Report highlights areas where the autumnal woodland scene is likely to be at its colourful and dramatic best; Boat and Beach is a popular item in the summer time; and the Seasonal Allergies Report is a perennial "must" for those whose constitution is a little delicate. Severe Weather Alerts issued by the National Weather Service are broadcast repeatedly when the occasion demands, with the television screen turning bright red for a time to catch the attention of the casual viewer.
The Weather Channel was established in 1982 and has proved a highly successful commercial venture that attracts the highest rates from advertisers, being particularly attractive to manufacturers of products whose sales are dependent on the weather.
A similar channel, The Weather Network, was launched on the UK cable networks earlier this year, and no doubt it will not be long before we have a similar facility available to us here in Ireland to inform, distract, delude or entertain, whichever you think may be the most appropriate.