Jared W. Smith

First, a quick game of What’s Wrong With This Video? Keep in mind, it’s not altered in any way, shape, or form, other than being compressed to a manageable size and put on YouTube.

In terms of Weather Channel history, May 7, 2007 is a day that will forever live in infamy. Sometime in the evening, The Weather Channel shut off the computer-generated narration (the robot voice that I imitate oh-so-well) on the IntelliStar and Weather Star XL units nationwide and switched their Local Forecast playlist to — shudder — vocal music. Is this the demise of the smooth jazz that has marked the 8s of every hour for the last decade? It’s unfathomable. The last known true vocal song to air on The Weather Channel was a Willie Nelson song around Christmas 1983. 23 years later, there have been reports of Nickelback being played on the Local Forecast. Freaking NICKELBACK. And after watching a couple forecasts with the new vocal playlist, it becomes plainly obvious why TWC has played instrumental music — this new stuff just totally overwhelms the presentation! Music for The Weather Channel is designed to simply be background music, because the important part is the forecast, not necessarily what’s in the background (though they play some pretty nice jams, I must say). The common thread, though, is that the music is not supposed to overwhelm — and Chad Kroeger barking out over the forecast certainly does.

I was never a fan of the narration on the Weather Star XL or the IntelliStar, but this is most definitely not the way I wanted to see it retired. Let’s hope TWC is back to their senses tomorrow morning…

Update: As of the 1:08 Local Forecast, things are back to normal. I hope TWC never does this again.