Hurricane

Saturday and Sunday saw the cable news channels go almost wall-to-wall with coverage of Hurricane Irene. With the weather being the focus, it is hardly surprising that Weather Channel was the top cable news channel Saturday in both total viewers and adults 25-54.

That story changed slightly on Sunday, once it became clear that Irene would not be bringing the devastation to New York City. The cable news channels returned to regular programming, FNC ended up taking the crown in total viewers, while Weather still won the key demo.

• Here are the numbers for Total Day viewing on Saturday (6am-2am)

Network	Total Viewers	A25-54
Weather Channel	2.77M	1.16M
Fox News	1.70M	530K
CNN	1.66M	632K
MSNBC	624K	220K

• Here are the numbers for Primetime Saturday (8pm-11pm)

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A few more people have weighed in on whether the coverage leading up to Hurricane Irene’s landfall was “overhyped” or not.

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver does what he does best, taking an analytical approach to argue that Irene received a proper amount of coverage when compared to other hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S. That said, Silver wrote that he does agree with some of the critiques of tone:

There are some things in Mr. Kurtz’s article that I agree with. Certainly the tone and tenor of media coverage could be improved when it comes to hurricanes and other types of disasters. In particular, as you might expect, I think the coverage could stand to be a quite a bit more data-driven and less narrative-driven (if you can call it “narrative” to have some television correspondent mugging for the camera in his Windbreaker from the middle of a storm zone).

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We kept you apprised of the many, many hours of extra news coverage that were added this weekend in preparation for Hurricane Irene — from the cable networks, to the broadcast networks, to the business networks, everyone was in overdrive. Now that the dust has settled — and Irene, by all accounts, was much less severe than expected — we want to know: was Hurricane Irene overhyped?

As predicted, news outlets have begun questioning whether they or their competitors spent too much time and effort hyping Hurricane Irene. While Irene has caused billions of dollars in damage and took at least 20 lives, New York City and the surrounding areas–which were the focus of much of the national coverage–were largely unharmed, save for some minor damage.

NBC’s “Today” ran a segment this morning asking whether Irene was overhyped by the media. To its credit, it did not exclude NBC from the segment, as some networks are prone to do when discussing matters of the media:

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CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” this evening will be dedicated to the hype question, if a preview on CNN is any indication.
Elsewhere:

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New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter was embedded with a Weather Channel team in North Carolina over the weekend, and the fruits of his labor are now available. Stelter was working alongside Weather’s Mike Seidel in the Outer Banks of North Carolina:

“We haven’t missed a live shot in three hours!” he exclaimed while trying to stand up on the battered beach here in his seventh hour of live television reporting. A minute later, he was back on the Weather Channel, where he would stay for a total of 15 hours on Saturday, seeing, feeling and tasting the storm several times each hour as a surrogate for viewers and a guide for evacuees.

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Just a few hours after “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams took the helm of the 1 p.m. hour on WNBC, his ABC counterpart, “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer, dropped by WABC to talk about her experience reporting overnight in New York City.

Sawyer — who said she slept in the ABC News offices overnight — told WABC anchors Joe Torres and Sandra Bookman about her experience visiting NYC’s shelters Saturday night, as the worst of the storm passed through the Tri-State area.

Visit our sister site, TVSpy, to watch the video of Sawyer’s appearance.

The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz writes the first of what will likely be many stories over the next few days declaring Hurricane Irene a triumph of media hype over dangerous substance. Kurtz noted that Irene will end up costing billions of dollars and is responsible for at least 11 deaths at last count, but he still argues that the hype was too much:

Brian Williams is anchoring the 1pm hour on WNBC in New York giving a break to the local anchors who’ve been on the air for more than 24 hours.

“Brian we want to thank you for joining us in our News 4 newsroom,” said meteorologist Janice Huff. “Well it was a journey of four entire floors on the elevator, happy to be here Janice.”

Williams traces his local news roots to WCBS in New York where he was an anchor/reporter from 1987-1993.

Williams also went on WNBC’s 11pm newscast last night too with Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons . “You came down here with what in mind?” asked Simmons. “Spend time with colleagues. Commiserate about the sorry state of our weather,” said Williams. Video after the jump.

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At an early afternoon storm briefing, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was asked about whether he regrets making the decision to go on national TV this morning before going on local radio in New Jersey, for the benefit of the hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans without power, but who might have battery-operated radios. “No,” was Christie’s abrupt answer, before shaking his head and saying, “Next question.” Christie appeared on “Meet the Press,” “This Week” and on the CBS News 11am special anchored by Scott Pelley as well as on national cable news.

New Jersey has only a couple commercial TV stations, including WMGM in Atlantic City. In north Jersey people depend on New York TV while Philadelphia covers South Jersey.

Last month, Gov. Christie got the state of New Jersey out of the TV business, transferring the operations of state-owned NJN TV to New York public TV’s WNET. NJN had been on the air for 43 years. The shutdown meant the layoff of 130 employees.

Later in his briefing, Christie joked about learning about the idea of pool TV news coverage. He’ll be taking a helicopter tour of the state in the coming hours which will be pool material for any broadcaster that wants it. “Like yesterday, I didn’t know about the whole pool coverage thing,” said Christie, before joking about the 2012 presidential race he’s not in: “I have some visitors from Iowa to help assess the storm damage and some from New Hampshire too.”

You know all that talk about preparing for the worst but hoping for the best? That appears to be what’s happened with Irene, now a tropical storm, and moving out of New York City. The storm made a second landfall around 5:30am this morning along the Jersey Shore and a third in New York City as a tropical storm.

The cable networks and New York’s local stations remained in live coverage throughout the night. And there continues to be a lot of resource sharing across the networks: CNBC’s Bob Pisani spotted on the Weather Channel talking about whether the NYSE will open tomorrow, WNBC hits on MSNBC, WCBS and WABC coverage on CNN, and FBN simulcasting FOX5.

Winds are still gusting pretty good, power is out for thousands across the Tri-State, airports and mass transit are still closed, there is flooding in low-lying areas, and Suburban rescues are making the local news. But at the moment, the clouds are beginning to lift in Manhattan as Tropical Storm Irene now moves north. All that hoping/preparing may have worked. (Radar image from 10:21am)