Education Backgrounds of TV Weathercasters

Abstract

Abstract In the early days of television, most weathercasters lacked formal training in meteorology and instead relied on forecasts from other sources. Over the decades, degreed meteorologists became more common. A third category has recently emerged: people with certificates in broadcast meteorology from Mississippi State University (MSU). This certification and the related broadcast meteorology degrees from MSU provide weathercasters with an understanding of meteorology without advanced calculus or differential equations. This study makes no judgment on how a weathercaster’s education background might affect their on-air presentations but notes these courses are required by most guidelines for meteorological degrees, as well as the American Meteorological Society's Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM) program. This study conducts a unique survey of television meteorologists using the education history listed on their station's website or LinkedIn. The backgrounds of 421 meteorologists were examined with the equivalent of a 94% response rate. Overall, 21% had a broadcast meteorology degree or certification from MSU, 64% had a traditional meteorology degree from MSU or another institution, 2% minored in meteorology or had military training, and 12% listed no or a partial education background in the field. Another way of viewing the data is that the MSU broadcast program alone has nearly as many graduates as the four largest traditional programs combined in our sample. These results were further broken down for various subsets of weathercasters, resulting in statistically significant variations by market size, region, ownership group, and gender.