The Met Office has been in the news again this week, with our contracts for broadcast weather services generating a huge amount of column inches and public reaction.
It’s certainly been heartening to see and hear the level of public support for us. Over the last few days, ‘Met Office’ trended on Twitter and approaching 34,000 people have read our blog. We’ve had over 27,000 mentions of the Met Office on Twitter and lots of comments on our Facebook page. Here’s a very small selection of the feedback we’ve received:
- @metoffice weather app will remain my first choice when it comes to weather reports.
- @metoffice Met Office most highly respected in world. …
- Dont worry @metoffice, you’ll always be my forecaster of choice 🙂 #weather
- .@metoffice Been using your app for quite a while. You provide an amazing service.
- … Behind that lay my respect for the expertise and professionalism of the Met Office and its presenters.
- … I do trust The Met Office and will follow them online …
- … I’ve used the Met Office local weather map for years and find its forecasts almost unerringly accurate. You must also take into account the exceptional volatility of UK weather, and I doubt anyone can better MO for their knowledge and experience in that regard.
Moving from the positives to the negatives – there is some misinformation around.
Firstly about our apps. There’s been some suggestion in the media that our app is not popular. However, our apps have had 12 million downloads and they are rated 4 out of 5 on android and 3 out of 5 on iPhone. Like all providers we are always looking to improve and we hope build on this in the future. Last week we had 128% increase in app downloads and a 94% increase on website hits too.
Secondly in terms of value for money, it has been suggested that the Met Office charges the BBC £30 million a year. This, in fact, is the total of our commercial revenue from a wide range of customers – aviation, energy, marine, retail to name but a few. We receive only a small fraction of that amount for our presenter services to the BBC. Given that our presenters are paid at market rates this has to be great value for money.
For us, though, it’s never been about the money. It’s about serving the nation and ensuring the public benefits from the best weather forecasts and warnings to make informed decisions.
Official blog of the Met Office news team 
The BBC are becoming more disingenuous by the day -I’m afraid to say, having been a loyal admirer for decades. For instance, on their BBC Local Radio Station -Radio Stoke, they issue two differently sourced forecasts, and invariably the temperature forecasts vary wildly on almost every day’s weather news info’.They ‘source’ an ‘expert’ who comes on at ten minutes to the hour every morning, the first at 06h50 ..the last at 11h50 -who give a ‘detailed’ weather forecast, including of course the all important day’s temperature.But a few minutes later in the hourly news bulletin -which includes weather and travel, the expert temperature forecast is complete dismissed, ignored, and a different one is given out -usually a degree or two out with the expert temperature -but sometimes as much as 05C of difference!! I have dates to evidence this.I have complained for two years about this, both directly to the station and also to the ‘Regional Manager’ who is responsible for ‘Local Radio in the Midlands’. But nothing is done. I don’t even get a reply.What do you think is going on here. It all seems crazy to me. And what about the money they’re splashing about on something they have no respect for? To say nothing of how totally bizarre it seems to the listeners. We don’t know which one to take seriously -the ‘expert’s forecast temperature’ -or the Station’s forecast temperature? 05C is a very big difference to those older folk among us, who need to know how many layers of clothing to put on before venturing out. Radio Stoke -seem to take a very cavalier and frivolous attitude to something that requires more gravitas. I blame the management at Radio Stoke directly. He knows what’s going on -but won’t reply to my enquiries.
From: Met Office News Blog To: mickpenning@yahoo.co.uk Sent: Wednesday, 26 August 2015, 16:55 Subject: [New post] A look back at this week’s news #yiv0631957844 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv0631957844 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv0631957844 a.yiv0631957844primaryactionlink:link, #yiv0631957844 a.yiv0631957844primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv0631957844 a.yiv0631957844primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv0631957844 a.yiv0631957844primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv0631957844 WordPress.com | Met Office Press Office posted: “The Met Office has been in the news again this week, with our contracts for broadcast weather services generating a huge amount of column inches and public reaction.It’s certainly been heartening to see and hear the level of public support for us. Ove” | |