BBC backs down on weather maps

The BBC was forced today to backtrack on its controversial new weather forecasts.

The hi-tech forecasts, involving a tilting map of Britain that induced seasickness in some viewers, have proved very unpopular since they were introduced just over a week ago.

The corporation will bring in changes from tomorrow to try to make the expensive graphics easier to understand. Bosses said today the map, shown until now at an angle confusing to viewers, will be straightened up. Scotland and Northern Ireland will be shown the right size and in proportion to the rest of the UK.

More than 4,000 viewers protested in the 10 days since the new forecasts began. Politicians complained that Scotland seemed to have shrunk because the new camera angle showed Britain from a vantage point somewhere in France.

The climbdown also follows a complaint by John Teather, who founded the BBC weather centre in 1991. He said he was "depressed" by the 3D graphics, which did nothing to help viewers understand the forecast.

The BBC trumpeted the "innovative" changes, which cost £1 million and had been years in the planning, as a

radical new way to explain the weather.

But from day one the new graphics viewers complained of being made to feel sea-sick or nauseous by the way the camera panned across Britain's landscape.

The mass of brown and beige on the 3D graphics did not help, either, while great puddles of blue to indicate rain made viewers fear whole areas of the country were under floods.

Mr Teather, whose discontent was revealed in yesterday's Standard and appears to have brought about the rethink, complained: "The white clouds look like mountains. I can't work out what some of it is."

He said his team had considered the graphics, but rejected them as a "flashy gimmick" that also meant forecasts were less accurate, because they relied on a Met Office model that forecasters knew was sometimes wrong.