One of the hazards of spending decades watching local television newscasts is having little patience with real-world examples of missed opportunities to get the basics right. Since we were on the road this past weekend, we flipped on a local newscast and right from the top we were…disappointed. Here is a breakdown of what we saw and how we'd suggest to do it better,

This situation was a local 11 p.m. newscast in a southeastern market on Saturday night. The severe storms that have marched across the Midwest and into the South since Friday are forecast to arrive locally on Sunday morning. This system has already produced 40 tornadoes and killed over 30 people by the time this newscast goes on the air.

The newscast begins with headlines, and then, from the opening, the anchor leads directly into the meteorologist for the first weather segment. The meteorologist starts talking about the severe weather threat that is forecast to be less than 12 hours away. But the first on-screen graphic shows the current conditions outside at 11 p.m.

Already, we want to yell at the television set in the hotel room.

But we hold our anger and wait for the second weather graphic because maybe their format is always open with currents. Does the second graphic show anything about the severe threat? No, because apparently we needed to see current temperatures for the entire state first. But right after that, we were definitely going to see the severe threat ahead, right? Wrong again, because now we are seeing the current winds on the same state map!

Because we were now looking for something to throw at the television set, we’re not exactly sure if it was the fourth or fifth graphic to appear before we finally saw the live, current regional radar. It’s set wide enough to see a lot of storm activity in neighboring states to the West. We are talking about the storm system approaching. Finally.

Suggestion number one: If you have a severe weather threat in the next twelve hours and you are leading the newscast—then skip telling me the temperature outside right now and get to the severe threat, right off the bat.

The very last graphic shown in this first weather segment was the Storm Prediction Center’s Convective Outlook. This showed much of the East Coast, from Jacksonville, Florida, to Washington, DC, in the yellow-colored “Slight” risk category, including where we are sitting watching this newscast.

At this point, let’s review an important tangent. The SPC’s outlook is confusingly named across a 5-point scale because “Marginal” is the lowest threat level. The next level up is illogically named “Slight.” Then comes “Enhanced,” then “Moderate,” and finally “High” as the highest category of threat. Every time one of these threat maps is shown, it presents an opportunity for the meteorologist to explain that a “Slight” risk is not as low as the viewer might believe. Every single time.

This first weather segment ended with a generic tease promising to “break it all down in my full forecast in about fifteen minutes.” Lest one think that only the meteorologist was guilty of missing an opportunity in this newscast, let’s consider for a moment what might be expected as the first news story to follow this weather segment. You might expect the first news story to be more about this major weather system that had raked across a sizable swath of the country.

Well, on this particular night, and on this specific station--you would have gotten a reader about a teenager stabbed and taken to the hospital in one of the border counties at the edge of the market.

Let’s make this simple. Weather is always the story that impacts everyone. From disrupting plans to being a life-threatening situation, the audience wants as much information about severe weather as they can get. And when the weather has left a trail of death and destruction, it deserves to be covered as the major story that it is—especially when that same weather is in the forecast locally.

We hoped for redemption in the main weather segment and stayed around to watch. And to the weekend meteorologist’s credit, they did a great job of showing the projected wind shear for the next day and how the variance between wind direction and speed at the surface level and the upper levels of the atmosphere could be potentially favorable for the formation of tornadoes. It was the kind of detailed moment put into an easily understandable presentation that we don’t always get in local weather segments. And it almost made up for the admission at the beginning of this weather segment that the second graphic being shown “was the wrong graphic—and it shouldn’t have been there.”

As we looked to find positive things to highlight in this newscast, we were happy to see that they did bring back the meteorologist for the final weather hit at the end of the half-hour (well, almost the end because there was still a long break before SNL would start.) In this third weather hit, a specific breakdown of the different severe weather threats (wind damage, heavy rain, hail, and tornadoes) might be possible in the coming day. And yes, there was a “push" to the station’s weather app so that viewers could keep up with the latest radar on Sunday.

While that was good, and we were glad to see it, what we wanted to hear was the meteorologist assure us that their weather team was going to be on duty all of Sunday, covering the possibility of any severe weather outbreak--and that they would be the first to alert us to help keep us safe. Is that potentially overdoing it a little bit on the brand messaging? Maybe, but it would have made us remember who we should stay in touch with--should the severe weather threat materialize. This was another missed opportunity.

Allow us another tangent here—if you work in an NBC station and don’t recognize that your Saturday late newscast that leads into “Saturday Night Live” has a built-in audience that reliably shows up each week at least for the last five minutes or so, then you may be missing a giant sampling opportunity for viewers who may never otherwise watch your station. Consider making the last three or four minutes of that 11 pm newscast a quick showcase of top stories and weather, targeted to reach those SNL viewers tuning in--rather than a long commercial break between the end of the news and 11:30 pm.

We kept watching to see Saturday Night Live when the second local break in the show featured a tease for the same station’s Monday morning newscast. This featured the weekday morning meteorologist discussing whether “the weekend rain showers might continue until Monday” while showing a seven-day forecast graphic with zero indication of severe weather chances for Sunday. Why? Because this promo had clearly been recorded on Friday and now looked clueless on Sunday’s severe weather threat.

Now, we really don’t want to critique “just one station” here. We have seen countless stations make some of these same bad decisions and miss chances to make a real connection with the viewers. So, understanding a severe weather situation and seizing the opportunity to make key editorial decisions is essential for every station, every day.