KEY POINTS:
Should we have just one forecaster? Or many?
It's a debate that I've been involved in for years. New Zealand is at odds to every western country I can think of, we have one forecaster and pretty much no competition. MetService, owned by the government
and funded partly by tax payers and partly by advertisers, dominates the New Zealand weather market.
The conservative view is that it's less confusing - to have just one weather provider. "The Government should control important areas such as weather forecasting".
Well I'm not conservative and I couldn't disagree more with that argument. The government forecasters usually play a big role in severe weather events around the world. The Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, the Met Office in the UK, the National Weather Service in America, Environment Canada in Canada - when there's a major storm, all the private forecasters broadast the the Government issued warnings.
Some private forecasters might even prepare their own warnings. But that's usually when the government steps in and the public listens. Every other day the general public usually hear/read forecasts prepared by independent weather forecasters.
In New Zealand this is possible but with our country so small and the radar images controlled tightly by the Government, competition is limited. The conservative argument is that too many forecasts create confusion for the public. But by that definition we're assuming the public is stupid.
If that's the case we should eliminate TV3 News - and NewstalkZB news - as it should all come from the government. Kiwibank, owned by the Government, should be the only bank that has economic predictions - to avoid consumer confusion. In fact we should only have one bank, one courier company, one airline.
Those that actually care about a weather forecast are usually intelligent enough to work out what's accurate. We should have plenty of competition, we've seen it in the telecommunications industry and boy has that seen a huge turn around.
Now don't get me wrong the weather industry is in fact deregulated but because the Government demands a strong commercial return from MetService it creates a strange balance of providing a good service to the public, but at the same time not showing all the cards in your hand to protect certain commercial interests. And of course with each different government, different demands on placed on the state forecaster.
I think competition is healthy. It keeps everyone on their toes. I even enjoy reading some of the grumpy comments on my blogs (RW of Kelburn - wow).
America is the land of weather products. 24 hour weather TV, numerous weather websites - not to mention all the cable news networks that have their own weather centres and their own independent forecasts. When a hurricane hits it's truly insane there! But boy is it fascinating. And the cowboys - the ones who scream "run for the hills" everytime a low forms - very quickly develop a bad reputation because the public are smart enough to realise it and switch off.
A healthy mixture of government and private forecasting is what we need in this country - the two can work together hand in hand with one hugely, hugely important goal in mind - providing the most accurate forecasts for the New Zealand public.
Philip Duncan
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