No one's tuning in to hear about cold fronts.
Almost any News Broadcast has a part about the upcoming weather, which is not a very exciting topic and the smallest of small talk when you have nothing else to discuss. And historically it didn't matter who reported the weather, because it wasn't always accurately predicted and wasn't treated as a news leader. Initial attempts to have weather reports done through the Weather Bureau by military members or college professors in the 1950s didn't go well, since people found the reporter boring and dull and would switch away.
Thus, the invention of the Eye-Catching Weather Report: using spectacle, on-screen antics, and/or reporter attractiveness to get people to tune in and stay watching. This meant a report that was more about the presentation than the actual information, intended to lure viewers in to watching a specific station because of what they did and raise ratings. So many news stations didn't care who was doing the reporting; any warm body (or animated drawing, animal, fictional character, or event) that could get eyes on the screen was used to present an upcoming sunny day with a high of 75.
Through the early years of weather reporting, many stations chose to have young pretty women (derisively called "weather girls") to make the report, since accuracy was limited and entertainment and views were key. After all, a lot of people like to look at attractive people — and hey, if the people tuning in to see a woman in a short skirt and tight top hear it's going to rain tomorrow, that's a bonus. So the first weather girls were hired to be on the news before many female news reporters were and were hired for looks rather than any skill whatsoever; they were seen as pretty just because they're weather girls and used as a gimmick. (A New York station even once had a woman in a skimpy nightie to tell the late-night weather report.) Other stations leaned into comedy with goofball antics and appearances, or used unique characters—real or not—to draw in viewers. Weather reporters were also expected to banter with the actual newscasters and be familiar to fill time or did unrelated segments such as filler feel good stories.
Nowadays, a reporter can be both pretty and skilled at what they do or genuinely amusing, so the looks or antics are a bonus rather than the entire reason for them being on screen telling you about an incoming snowstorm. But they still count for drawing in viewers.
Truth in Television; not only did weather reports start out as half-gimmick, but leaning on personalities and weather girls hosting continued well into the 1980s and 1990s. While in many places this has long since been depreciated in favor of educated meteorological experts, some stations still use weather forecasters for attention and female meteorologists have to overcome the lingering sexist stigma of being treated as a "weather girl" — less than 25% of news meteorologists are women. News shows still rely on the spectacle of weather for views, such as sticking a reporter out in the middle of a Category Two hurricane to show viewers just how fast the water is rising.
A form of Fanservice, especially with women. See also Weather Gameplay Mechanic for when the weather being reported on can affect play in video games, If It Bleeds, It Leads for gruesome stories used to catch attention, and Yet Another Baby Panda for another filler part of the news focused on feel-good stories.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Sex Comedy manga Weather Woman focuses on Keiko Nakadai, who was originally just an Office Lady until she was pulled to fill in for the regular weather reporter. She uses the opportunity to flash her underwear on live TV, which spikes the ratings. The station — desperate to move up in the ratings — makes her the full time weather reporter as long as she continues to be sexy on TV, doing things such as flashing her underthings and wearing skimpy lingerie.
Film – Animated
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Sam was hired as a weathergirl just because she's cute, and initially acts bubbly and vapid because she's not supposed to be "intelligent" and does these things to fit in as a stereotypical "weather girl" so she can keep her job. When she puts on glasses and ties her hair into a ponytail, the newsman doesn't allow her to do the report just because she looks too plain.
Film – Live-Action
- Idiocracy: Exaggerated. In the dumbed-down future of the movie, all weather reporters are scantily-clad, extremely attractive people. They're both male and female, and the men are each completely shirtless.
- In Snow Day, Tom Brandston has to resort to gimmicks like wearing a striped turn-of-the-century bathing suit when reporting about rain, because his station is losing a ratings battle to the much better-looking Chad Simmons.
- In Up Close And Personal, weather reporter Sally Atwater is told to dye her hair, change her name to Tally, and wear sexier clothes to be a draw for those tuning in.
- Weather Girl starts with the main character, Sylvia Miller, learning her husband—and one of the station's co-anchors—has been cheating on her with the other co-anchor. Her freak out about the situation involves her calling weather reporting stupid and meaningless (adding that she's expected to "giggle" on air) and quitting on the spot, with the ensuing spectacle making her unhireable in the news business. Her friend Jane later says Sylvia doesn't have a good resume because she was just a "weather girl," implying that Sylvia was only there for looks rather than any skill in weather reporting.
Live-Action TV
- Castle (2009): The Victim of the Week in the episode "Cloudy with a Chance of Murder" is a buxom weather girl that Castle was a big fan of. Beckett is unimpressed when he talks about her.
Castle: Oh, man. I watched her every night. She had the best...
Beckett: [glares at him]
Castle: ...forecasts.
Beckett: [keeps glaring]
Castle: What? Listen, as a single man, I appreciated her assets. You can't tell me people watched her for the weather! - Cheers: In "Cheers Has Chili", Cliff's plot involves him being a bit too obsessed with one weather girl, with the crew finding it pathetic when he reveals he watches the Weather Channel all day just so he can see her.
Cliff: Isn't she dreamy?
Norm: Cliff, everybody looks sort of dreamy when they have giant clouds floating behind them. - The Day Today is a satire of the increasingly extravagant ways in which the news was presented in the 1990s, and the weather is no different. The weather is headed by a floating head named Sylvester Stuart, who uses strange analogies to refer to the weather (such as calling gloomy weather "a bit like waking up next to a corpse") and presents it in bizarre ways such as depicting the United Kingdom as a pinball graphic (with him as the pinball).
- Drake & Josh: Walter's rival weatherman at the other news network is Bruce Winchell, who is mostly known for having very nice hair, which is compared to a fluffy cloud. While Walter struggles to get viewers, audiences flock to Bruce, including his own family. On one occasion, Walter even changed his own hair to compete, but it didn't work.
- Drop the Dead Donkey: In "Beasts, Badgers and Bombshells", Gus makes a deal with Roy in which Roy would reconsider cutting 72% of Globelink's workforce if Gus can improve ratings by 10% over the next week. One of Gus' efforts to achieve this involves hiring an attractive woman named Melissa Cabriolet to head the weather. Melissa ends up injuring herself when she falls off the Globelink building whilst trying to present the weather in a Marilyn Monroe dress on the roof (with Gus thinking of having her present dressed as one of the sexiest women each day). In the end, her efforts do help to improve Globelink's ratings by 10.22%, although they prove to be for naught when Roy decides that the best course of action is to sell off the entire business whilst share prices had rallied.
- Married... with Children: In the episode "Raingirl," Kelly gets an internship at the local TV station and becomes the assistant to the weatherman. When the weatherman gets relegated to secondary status he threatens to quit, and Kelly becomes the weathergirl to the tune of a $250,000 a year, since her good looks attract viewers. However, on her premier broadcast Kelly's illiteracy doesn't allow her to read the teleprompter, so she flashes some leg—but this fails to calm down the producer and she's fired on the spot.
- Wizards of Waverly Place: Implied. In "Don't Rain on Justin's Parade - Earth", Justin tries to help a struggling weatherman, Baxter Knight, by magically changing the weather so his forecasts would be accurate. However, after Mother Nature steps in and punishes him for it, Justin is forced to stop. With Justin no longer helping him, Baxter Knight is fired as the weatherman, and is replaced by someone named Heather Nakatomi. Justin, who was feeling sad to see Baxter Knight go, instantly changes his tone when he sees the new weatherwoman, though we don't get to see her on-screen. Various jokes later on in the series play off the fact that Justin has a crush on the weatherwoman.
- Mandy McAllister of Young Sheldon and Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage is a pretty woman, introduced as a former weather reporter who was fired when she broke up with the station manager she'd been dating. She later gets into a relationship with Sheldon's older brother Georgie (and initially lies about her age to him, saying she's younger than she is).
Podcasts
- This Sounds Serious: Chuck Bronstadt, the murder victim the first season revolves around, was a weatherman and a bit of a local celebrity in Orlando, Florida. He was dedicated, good-looking and did well on camera, but he stood out by doing fun field reports and talking about or including current trends when he did forecasts, like delivering one while also doing the Macarena.
Video Games
- Story of Seasons:
- Harvest Moon: Magical Melody: Nami, one of the local marriage candidates from the earlier game Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, makes a cameo as the local weather reporter. This wouldn't matter except this was the first time the Story of Seasons series had a weather report with a character reporting it rather than just a voice/text coming from the TV or radio, and the series went with a previous girl character who is known for being attractive rather than anyone else or creating a new character.
- Harvest Moon: A New Beginning: The weather report isn't presented on the TV since there isn't one; instead it's part of the mailbox, showing the week's forecast highlighted by a chicken in a mortarboard.
- Story of Seasons (2014): One of the six bachelorettes the male player can woo and possibly marry is Lillie, an in-universe pretty and fashionable weather girl and the daughter of the not-so-attractive innkeeper Maurice. She's quite intelligent with an open passion for meteorology, and her weather reports are accurate to the next day every time. Like Nami, it's in universe that she's a reporter in part because of her looks—she was just an actress when she started—and she does additional performances on a local children's TV show. One of the ways to lose relationship points with her during an event is to wonder if she doesn't just read the report off a teleprompter when she talks weather with you—and while she'll admit she did in the past, it insults her intelligence and she'll end the event early.
- Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life: There are two different weather reporters: an attractive man in a suit and a plain-looking farmer. The attractive man, however, is much less reliable as a weather reporter and his predictions are almost always wrong—but the game doesn't tell you this outright.
Western Animation
- The Fairly OddParents!: In "Mother Nature", Timmy's mom becomes a weatherwoman after being neglected by her family. Fearing she'll be chased by an angry mob for getting the weather wrong (like the last two weathermen), Timmy wishes for all her weather predictions to come true (even the giant hole in the middle of the park). As a result, she becomes a big sensation—so much so that Chet Ubetcha's news reports get sidelined to focus on her. At one point, she poses in a sexy firefighter outfit while the TV announcer declares her "Dimmsdale's hottest TV personality", to which Chet protests, "What about me? I'm hot, too!"
- Family Guy: The weather reporter on Channel 5 Action News, Ollie Williams, is a parody of Al Roker who does the "Blac-u-Weather Forecast." He reports the weather and other news by screaming in short sentences: examples include saying "it's raining sideways!" in the face of an incoming hurricane, beating the heat with "Swimmin' hole!" and saying "she dead!" after Dianne Simmons died. This is explained in "Friends of Peter G." by him being an alcoholic who can only speak in such a manner.
- Haha, You Clowns: In "Viral", weatherman Tom's rival at another station manages to become a viral sensation by incorporating dancing into his spiel, and thus Tom's boys try to help him go viral, too. In the end, he goes viral by accident when during a sudden tornado, he pauses his show to call his boys live on the air to warn them to get to shelter.
- King of the Hill: Nancy Hicks-Gribble starts off the series as Channel 84's weather girl, a job she's had for years—and got due to her looks. She was very pretty in her day but has gotten older, and the topic of her fading beauty affecting her job comes up in two episodes:
- "The Trouble with Gribbles": Nancy turns forty and the station manager Tom immediately wants to replace her with someone younger and prettier, seeing her as too old for the position. When Nancy is late to come in to report due to getting caught in the rain, Tom asks Luanne Platter to step in, only asking if she can read before putting her on camera. Luanne says the words are going too fast and is ditzy, but she's wearing a partially blue dress and the blue background makes it disappear and her breasts prominent so Tom lewdly remarks that it's a "good look". Nancy then gets demoted to late-night and weekend weather reporter and has a crisis over her looks because of it, which her husband Dale exploits to try and sue the Manitoba Tobacco Company for a large settlement. In the end, Dale sues Channel 84 for discrimination instead and gets Nancy her job back as the weather girl.
- "Gone with the Windstorm" has Nancy inaccurately say the weather for an upcoming pork festival—where she'll be handing out signed photographs of herself—will be sunny; it's a terrible windy and overcast day instead. She tells two people angry at her for the inaccuracy that she just reads what the teleprompter gives her. She then demands the station get proper meteorological equipment so she can tell the weather accurately, but she has absolutely no idea how to use it (she speaks into the disconnected parallel port to ask for the upcoming weather). The station hires a new meteorologist, Irv Bennett, and Nancy initially thinks he'll do the science while she continues to do the reporting due to her looks, but Irv takes her place and Tom reduces her to waiting on incoming faxes in the back. Nancy attempts to undermine Irv, distract him with flirting, and even makes a remark about his nose being big right before he goes on air, but it's all for naught. He's competent in a way she never was, doesn't get distracted by her looks, and doesn't care about his own appearance—even using his nose as a joke rather than being self conscious. Plus he's is actually popular with the viewers since he knows what he's talking about and Tom says that people actually care about the weather and not just who's presenting it. After she, Dale, and Peggy steal a news truck to report on a forest fire and her antics and near-death experience gets high ratings for Channel 84 and people want to see her on-air again, Nancy... doesn't get her job back as weather girl. But she does get a new job as one of the two news anchors.
- The Mask: Animated Series: In "Rain of Terror", the Mask angrily confronts a weatherman named Fritz Drizzle because he was wrong about the weather. Fritz complains that he could predict the weather better if he had real equipment, but the TV station treats weathermen with no respect. Proving his point, Fritz's boss then walks in and tells Fritz to wear a clown suit to increase viewership.
- The Simpsons: In "Lisa on Ice", the opening has Kent Brockman over-dramatize a heavy snowstorm predicted to hit Springfield ("bearing down like a shotgun full of snow") and cuts to weather reporter Sunny Storm standing in front of a spinning counter announcing the death count is currently zero but ready to shoot right up at any moment; Kent loudly damns the snow. Bart assumes no school, Lisa says the prediction could be wrong, and Bart says he must be right because Sunny is a professional meteorologist—and it cuts to Sunny advertising that he'll be performing at the Laugh and Brew and predicts a 75% chance of hilarity. The prediction is wrong and it's unseasonably warm.
Real Life
- One of the first weather reporters on TV was was an animated lamb called Wooly Lamb in 1941 for New York City's WNBC. This was followed by stations using various characters such as a lion puppet.
- Tex Antone, one of the first weather presenters in the US, did so with a cartoon beside him named Uncle Wethbee, an old-fashioned man with a bow tie, mustache, and a bowl cut. Uncle Wethbee's image was used to advertise almanacs.
- Sonny Eliot
was known for his jokes and clowning during broadcasts when he reported the weather for WWJ-TV in Detroit (1947-1980). This included Portmanteau terms such as "shoggy" for showers and foggy, and the map of Michigan that had Keweenaw on the Upper Peninsula as a squeaky-toy.
- Carol Reed became one of the first weather girls at age 26 in 1952; she had no qualifications other than being attractive and perky.
- Sex symbol Raquel Welch got her early start on TV in 1960 as a weather girl at the San Diego station KFMB. She was only two years out of high school (and married) at the time, and used the position to get a foot in the door towards acting.
- News reporter Diane Sawyer started on the news in 1967 as the weather girl for the local station in her hometown of Lawrence, Kansas. Despite her bad eyesight, she was there for looks and so wasn't allowed to wear her glasses; this meant at times she couldn't even tell which direction she was pointing on the map.
- The NBC Today Show's Willard Scott was hired in 1980 as part of a battle of ratings between the show and ABC's Good Morning America. Scott had previously performed as Bozo the Clown and was the earliest version of Ronald McDonald, and had no meteorological knowledge; he initially started weather reporting with no training in 1967 when a previous reporter quit on a local station. His antics, including wearing outlandish costumes (such as dressing up as Boy George and Carmen Mirandanote ) helped shift the Today Show to the top of the ratings chart in the era.
- Back in The '90s, the (defunct) British cable channel L!VE TV had "Britain's Bounciest Weather", wherein a little person named Rusty Goffe would deliver the forecast while on a trampoline, jumping higher in order to reach the more northern parts of the map. They also had a weather segment with a girl in an evening gown.
- Many Latin American countries still use young and attractive women—often in tight-fitting or skimpy clothing—to report the weather.