TV and Severe Weather: Stations Save Lives

[Commentary] During emergencies, it was impressive to see Raycom Media-owned Alabama television stations spring into action with life-saving information for our communities as the storms approached and then with wall-to-wall coverage of the aftermath.

In an effort to fully understand our viewer’s needs in the wake of the storms, the senior management at Raycom Media commissioned me to do a survey in our three affected DMAs as well as Tuscaloosa, the area with the most damage. We learned that 71% of adults living in these affected areas first learned about the approaching storms through TV. Schools and businesses were closed early in an effort to get people off the roads and 75% of residents were at home when the storms hit. Seventy-nine percent were tracking the storms on TV as they impacted their communities. It is probably not surprising that viewers relied on their local stations more than any other medium for information on the storms. This was true for every age group, including 18-24 year-olds, and was particularly true in African-American households, which relied on television at a higher rate than the population in general.

[McDowell is VP of research for Raycom Media]