Weatherman criticises BBC maps

A former BBC Weather Centre boss has criticised the new sunshine-and-showers graphics, saying the corporation has "got it wrong".

John Teather, who set up the centre in 1991, said he felt "depressed" by the new-look 3-D weather map, which did nothing to enhance viewer understanding.

He posted a message - which later vanished - on the
BBC website message boards saying the corporation had shown a "wilful disregard for all that we learnt over the past 25 years, and the loss of the clear responsibility the BBC has to its licence payers".

The message, posted at 9.37 last night, disappeared from the website shortly after it was posted. A BBC spokeswoman was unable to say what happened to it.

In his message on the Forecast Cafe section of the BBC Weather website, Mr Teather said: "I fear now that the BBC weather forecasts have become prescriptive 'thou shalt not show a pressure chart - thou shalt not use weather symbols, thou shalt not show any graphic which will help the viewer understand the forecast'."

The 3-D fly-through graphics were nothing new, he said, his own team had rejected them years ago.

Speaking later, Mr Teather said the BBC said it had conducted research showing the graphics were popular but this was "clearly not true" given the public response. "I thought it was time somebody put the record straight. This is going to annoy them, but that's what I expected," he said. Mr Teather said the project leader and team who oversaw the introduction of the graphics "should consider their positions".

One problem was that the map had to lie back in order for rain to come from the clouds, he said. The flythrough mechanism meant that people could not see every part of the country and had to "wait their turn".

He said: "The BBC seem to have forgotten everything we have ever learned and chucked it out of the window.

There's quite an art to delivering a good, useful forecast and in this case they've failed miserably."

Mr Teather said the white clouds on the graphics " looked like mountain ranges" and everybody knew the land was green, not brown. "I can't even work out what some of it is," he added.

The graphs were also based on a Met Office model that forecasters knew was sometimes wrong. Whereas forecasters previously used their own experience to take information from the model, they now had to talk through what was on screen, he said.

The BBC introduced the 3-D forecasts last week, the first big transformation to its forecasts since magnetic symbols were replaced by computer-generated maps in 1985.

Mr Teather now runs a company called The Weather People with former BBC forecaster Bill Giles, which provides data, forecasting and consultancy services.

A spokeswoman for the BBC said: "We expected it to take a little time for audiences to get used to the new system, but we felt (the map) gave audiences the extra clarity and detail they had told us they wanted from our forecasts. We will, of course, continue to monitor audience feedback."