Panos GiannopoulosHellenic National Met. Service

13th EMS Annual Meeting & 11th European Conference on Applications of Meteorology (ECAM)

Weather in the Greek mediaIn a difficult economic enviroment

overview•historical background

• the present situation

•how the difficult economic environment has affected the way that weather is presented in different media?

• have quality issues been raised ?

TV

1975 the first weather bulletin in Greek TV from a meteorologist of Greek NMS –

TV

1985 the first woman meteorologist presenting (from NMS)

TV

1985 “Weather for Farmers” for first time a six day forecast

TV

Until 1989 only two public channels with 3 meteorologists each (from NMS) as presenters

TV1989 Private Television launching (5 channels that cover the entire country)

For first time weather was presented from non meteorologists

The meteorologists in the background preparing the material – again from the HNMS (retired or not)

TV •2008The first weather graphics system (by private channel)

TV •a daily 10-15 minute weather bulletin in a public channel

•live morning weather bulletin only from 2007 in private TV

• a “bizarre” weather bulletin (for 2 years)

TVFrom 1990-2009 the usual scheme was: •3 persons for weather in each channel • private TV(2 presenters +1 meteorologist)• public TV (3 meteorologists-presenters)

• meteorologists from HNMS origin

• simple graphics produced in every channel• (not weather-specific graphics software)

Since 2009 – radical changes

Public TV•In 2010-2011 Public TV has no meteorologist presenting the weather for a 9 months period

•In 2011, for the first time since its start it hired meteorologists not from HNMS (as forced by law)

•2013 sudden “death” of Public TV (closed for 2 months). No broadcasting, no news at all.

Private TV2011 a channel closed

2013 one channel replaced the presenter with animated graphics video

Since 2009 – radical changes

The scheme now is 1 meteorologist or 1 meteo + 1presenter

Again meteorologists are of HNMS origin

Since 2009 – radical changes

radio•Now, only two stations have a live weather bulletin every day from meteorologists.

•From 1996 until 2009 a private station had three meteorologists presenting a 2-min weather bulletin every hour

•Usually, in most stations, there is a less than 30-sec weather bulletin evey hour (usually, but not always, from HNMS)

newspapersDecline of circulationFrom 2007 to 2012 Sunday newspapers daily

Loss 40% loss 62%circulation500.000 90000

Sunday newspapers Before the financial crisis, all Sunday newspapers had a meteorologist (from HNMS) writing a full-page weather forecast.

Now more than 70% have retained a signed weather forecast

Daily Newspapers (excl. Sunday’s)Until 2008 the top 5 newspapers in circulation have a weather forecast signed by a meteorologist

Now there is no signed weather forecast in any daily newspaper.

Usually, only a “copy and paste” forecast from HNMS without mentioning the source or just a weather graphic with no source of data

Daily Newspapers (excl. Sunday’s)

In Europe 70% of the weather forecasts are “signed”

•What happen:• In some cases newspapers have:

•misleading forecasts•Their weather graphics differ dramatically from text forecast appear in the same page •Some times people complain to HNMS (although it is not responsible for the content of weather pages)

internetAt the end of 1990 the first internet weather forecasts appeared (numerical weather forecasts), produced by:

the University of Athens, the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, later.

internetIn 2002 the first greek weather portal was introduced, created by some researchers of the National Observatory of Athens

Clearly oriented towards the general public.

Now it is the most well-known weather site with forecasts , meteo-news and much more.

internetSince 2009, there has been a “boom” of internet greek weather pages (output of numerical weather models)due to the little capital needed for their operation.

(from alexa.comSearch :καιρόςweather)

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internet next year (2014)HNMS will totally redesign its Internet site

Conclusions I•Meteorologists still presenting weather in most TV channels

•The biggest radio stations had and still have a live daily weather bulletin from a meteorologist

•Although many new weather internet sites appeared recently, people seem to favor the site they have been used to.

Conclusions II•Economic problems affected the way weather is presented to the different media

•Less meteorologists, less presenters, more internet

•in some cases it seems the quality has deteriorated.

Conclusions III•Still the majority of the meteorologists working for media are having a NMS origin. •HNMS is not the one and only source of weather forecasts in the Greek media as it used to be some years ago

Thank you!!!