Subscribe
2 
And in other news...
Nothing happens in New Zealand. Ever.
And yet, against all better judgement, both TV networks feel compelled to provide a full hour of news coverage every evening. And how do they pad out the content, in a country where the biggest news event of the decade was the shearing of a stray, be-dreadlocked sheep? Segment after segment after segment of weather.
Even in the UK, on the day the London underground was bombed 4 times by terrorists, the evening news was a concise, punchy 25 minutes. And for a nation obsessed with talking about the weather, the nightly three minute weather-report provides all the coverage necessary to fuel 65 million Britons with a full day following of inane, water-cooler twitter.
New Zealand, by contrast, in separate segments spaced throughout the nightly news, gives you yesterday’s weather, today’s weather, this evening’s weather, tomorrow’s weather, the day after tomorrow’s weather, the 5 days after that’s weather, followed a blow by blow account of how the day went in each of the 6 biggest cities, and 24 hour birds-eye-view of every town with a population greater than 10 (of which, there are worryingly few).
‘No news is good news’, or so the saying goes. So good, it would appear, that it deserves a full hour of programming every night.
(24 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)
Loading ...
Back to top
Then again we’re one of the few countries of ‘temperate climate’ where people spend a lot of their leisure time out of doors. So people do want to know if it’s going to rain (or stop raining) at some stage.
Of course the forecast’s often inaccurate but hey…
Ah, then my parents observe a moment of silence every hour to listen to the radio weather report just in case the ‘weather people’ have changed their minds.