It has come to my attention that DIRECTV is going to be dropping the Weather Channel in the coming days. This is not surprising given the fact that the Weather Channel has delved more into reality programming and less into actually showing satellite maps and radars. While a storm could be barreling across the country, tuning in the weather channel won’t get you a national radar, no satellites, but gold miners searching for Gold, people being rescued in the Alaska by the Coast Guard or people swimming in icy water.

Wait is this the weather channel or the Discovery Channel? What does any of this have to do with weather. Oh wait now I get it, there’s the sky, I see clouds, there’s weather! This unfortunate circumstance has time and again brought more people to watch these kind of shows but are these the same people that come to the channel for their weather. What about their local meteorologists at their local stations. Do they even trust them or what? You can’t expect the Weather Channel to be around 24/7 for every little thing when they are too busy with reality programming or naming a storm that may only effect a portion of the country that isn’t west of a Cleveland to Louisville to New Orleans line.

The Weather Channel has made some effort for those that want local weather at all times with the lower third showing local weather at all times. What they don’t know is that goes away during cable breaks when the local cable company has to put in their own commercials that block out that weather L3.

My question is…Is the weather channel as a network really needed anymore. There is other ways to get weather than from some cable operation outside of Atlanta. There’s a certain thing called a Weather Radio. My gosh, weather alerts from a radio, fantastic when did they come up with this ingenious product. Well if it had been from the Weather Channel it would be loaded with commercials touting all their “non-weather” related programming, let alone blasting you with promos from their staff about how great they are. The Weather Radio gives out warnings and watches for any county that you program into the radio. There’s also another thing, it’s called the internet. Oh my gosh, when did this come about? You can easily get weather on the internet from many different sources including the Weather Channel. At least there, you can get weather 24/7 and not be littered with gold miners, coast guard cutters and snow plow drivers. Third of all is local weather people in your market. They know the ins and outs of the weather where they are (or at least they should). Some of the more experienced ones know every little nook and cranny of their market to a tee. I don’t see the Weather Channel doing that now do you? They’re too busy naming a storm after some politician in Bolivia or Ukraine to care about Timbuktu Road in Blanksville, TN or wherever.

It’s 2014, why are people getting so uptight over losing a cable channel. There are other sources to get your weather information and you should have to be “forced” into just one source for your weather information. It’s time for a lot of people to wake up and get with it. This isn’t 1995. This isn’t the era of dial-up internet and AOL. This is the 21st Century. We are better than this. If and when DIRECTV and the Weather Channel come to an agreement (which I think will happen) then this will all blow over, but I suggest finding other sources for your weather information than just from a 20th Century outlet that may or may not be around in the next ten-twenty years.

THIS POST IS THE OPINION OF THE BLOGGER AND NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE IOWA WEATHER NETWORK IT’S STAFF OR IT’S AFFILIATES.