A lot has been said and written about the lengthy weather cut-ins during severe weather this season. I have received comments from friends, foes and family. I can truly say I do understand your point of view but let me take a moment here to explain our point of view and answer some of the questions that come up during these events.

Why do you go on for such a long time? We only do “wall-to-wall coverage” for tornado warnings. For severe thunderstorm warnings we do rely on crawls and the scheduled cut-ins. However, the threat to life and limb increases significantly with tornadoes. For these weather events we go on the air and stay on the air until the warning has expired or has been cancelled. In all tornado events this year, so far, we have had multiple tornado warnings. In other words one warning has been followed by several others, keeping us on air for hours. We do this because one of the principle tenets of our broadcast license is to keep our viewers safe. Sure we can run a crawl but by the time a crawl is written and airs once or twice, this life-threatening storm will have moved several miles, possible even changing course. We have found that the best way to keep people out of harms way is to stay with them during these episodes. Also, since people tune in at different times we want everyone to have the most up-to-date information. Yes, it does seem to be repetitive except for the viewer being directly affected and it is for those people that we are on the air.

Why do you talk about storms so far away from me? Our viewing area is large. We take care of 33 counties; 21 in Kentucky and 12 in Indiana. Large county or small, close or far away, metropolitan or rural, any life saved by advance warning anywhere in our viewing area makes it worth it.

You never used to do this years ago. Many years ago we did crawls and a cut-in or two. Many years ago, the number of deaths and injuries from these storms was greater. Remember those TV interviews with a resident whose house was blown away and their quote, “We never got any warning”. That criticism stung as much as anything but the point was well taken. We decided over 15 years ago that we were going to be there for them and you.

You just pick certain programs to interrupt. No program is exempt. We covered up the entire second half of the Capital One Bowl game on January 2nd for the tornado in Hardin County. For those that have lived here for any length of time might remember the tornado outbreak in early June of 1990 when I pretty much took over the Saturday night Crusade for Children’s Extravaganza. B.J. Thomas has never forgiven me.

I realize that I’m not going to convince anyone who has their mind made up but I do think you deserve to know what our philosophy regarding severe weather coverage is and that it won’t be changing anytime soon.

Thank you for your continued patience.