Weather Producers, National and Local

What is a weather producer? A weather producer's role is to actively participate in an on-air presentation of a weather segment. They must master a variety of skills including designing and updating animations with weather software, forecasting for their broadcast region, and working with on-air talent, staff producers, and production to create a superb product. Weather producers act as firefighters, putting out challenges that flare up and monitoring all the activities leading up to air time so that the show does not go up in flames. I will introduce the importance of the weather producer. Then, I will give examples from a poll of weather producers about how they found their occupation, their weather backgrounds, and what helps them succeed. I will finish with advice on how stations can benefit from employing weather producer as well as what to do when employing in this role is not an option.