KEY POINTS:
What is it about the weather that turns reasonable adult presenters into simpering idiots? And what on earth did it do to Jim Hickey? Under Hickey's latest incarnation, One News' weather report has transformed into a full-scale segment of the Six O'Clock news. They promo it for heaven's
sake.
Every night The Weather leads in to the news, giving us a taster of what's to come - complete with graphics and overworked explanations from One's weather god himself. Halfway through there's another teaser, plus some good natured banter with the news team after Sport. And that's all before we get to the Real Thing, the weather report itself.
The Real Thing is most irritating of all. Jim trawls up the islands with infuriating insouciance, reading his improbable descriptions of what's to come on the autocue, tripping over his own alliteration ("singed southern ski slopes") exhorting people in places as far afield as Clutha to "wake up and smell the daisies" and savouring the Maori place names. I particularly admire the way he pronounces TooPo, Ro-to-or-rua and Kaicowra.
For the first few months of his latest reign - possibly due to a hatred of big cities born of living in New Plymouth - the time given to the weather was directly related to the number of people not living in an area. More residents = less time: fewer people = a long and lingering forecast.
For example, Buller (pop 9263 or 0.3 per cent of the population) seemed to get minutes, sometimes a photo. Meanwhile Auckland (pop 1.3 million or a third of the total population) got five seconds of forecast before a skittery Jim headed to Australia and the Pacific Islands to let us know whether to expect sunshine or rain in more interesting places. Auckland's share has recently been extended to more like 10 seconds. Wow.
His latest stunt (obviously designed to make us sit up straight and pay attention) is to sometimes run the forecast up the country - Dunedin to Kaitaia - and other times, in the same bloody bulletin, the other way round - East Cape to Invercargill. Worse, much worse, is his undisguised delight in telling Aucklanders that we are in for a filthy weekend.
Meanwhile the channel does its best to turn Jim in to a celebrity. Last week the goodbye banter centred round his bid for free tickets to some rugby game before Hickey wishes us a wet weekend with his endearing one-armed salute: "Karen's back tomorrow and it all turns to custard - it's the blonde thing." Answered Wendy Petrie who takes the blonde-bashing much too well, "What does New Plymouth want in return?"
What we need is a forecast that tells us what to expect in the various regions of the city as they do over on TV3 where, thankfully the weather is still, simply, the weather. As any Aucklander will tell you, the weather in Albany is different from Waitakere, and different again from Manukau and Waiheke.
For all that I guess the weather is the winner on the night. They can try to make Jim Hickey bigger than the forecast, with banter, exciting adverbs, trademark winks and waves, but they can't disguise the fact that he often gets it wrong.
How about another new segment, Jim, scoring each night's report the day after?
