Two weekends ago, some unscheduled programming butted into an NCAA basketball tournament game for Michigan State University – a prolonged, severe weather storm that swept across the state.
Twelve tornadoes broke out and four people died. While the television broadcast ran crawlers over the game warning of severe weather, MLive meteorologist Mark Torregrossa broadcasted updates for two hours straight, giving people information that helped keep them safe.
Torregrossa is a former television meteorologist, but he wasn’t on TV that Sunday. The platform that made that live presence possible – YouTube – marks an important shift in how we give readers valued weather information, both daily and during violent weather.
“We are at a distinct advantage during severe weather,” Torregrossa said. “We don't have to compete with commercials and other programming when we go live on the internet.”
Until recently, MLive broadcasted its daily Torregrossa forecasts and severe weather updates via Facebook Live. While MLive has broad latitude on what it posts on Facebook, it has little control over who sees what, when: Facebook’s proprietary algorithm dictates that.
“When the Facebook live product was invented, it was the best product available to us” for broadcasting, said Gillian Van Stratt, MLive’s director of audience.
“But the algorithm is making a lot of choices as to what gets through to who, and when you're talking about something as critical as weather … we had to look at what other tools were available.”
Enter YouTube, a site founded on video programming. It offers several advantages over Facebook Live, Van Stratt said: A better video player, an enhanced ability to alert readers with our own push notifications, and a more seamless ability to embed the videos in posts rooted on the MLive site.
That last feature is a big distinction. Facebook Live broadcasts largely stayed within that platform. Our new broadcasts are rooted in posts on www.mlive.com/weather, so viewers can see them in real time or come back later in the day to watch when convenient.
Torregrossa’s daily broadcasts occur between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. but they all stay archived on that page. MLive, via our app, has reliable push notifications to users to alert them when the live forecast is beginning, and YouTube has a comment section that allows people to interact with Torregrossa.
“I feel this is the only place they will have access to ask about their weather situation,” he said. “I try to answer the most important questions. I'm happy because I think it's a better connection on both ends, theirs and ours.”
In addition to bookmarking the www.mlive.com/weather page, fans of our weather updates should download the MLive app and choose what notifications to receive and also subscribe to the MLive channel on YouTube. Download our app here in the or here in .
We have not abandoned Facebook nor the thousands of users there who follow us in our Michigan Weather group. We still share a link to the YouTube daily forecast there, as well as posting other weather-related news.
“It’s a devoted following, so this was never about taking something away from any of those diehards,” Van Stratt said. “He's been very available, and we've been very available.”
The switch to YouTube is, simply, the best way to get Torregrossa’s valuable insights to the broadest possible audience in the most reliable way.
“I want to provide a complete weather update – short-term info for today and tomorrow, and then I can go into important weather changes later in the week or even a few weeks to a month out,” he said. “In the end I want to make sure MLive is the only place someone that's a weather junkie can get this kind of update.”
The move to YouTube live broadcasts enhances that goal. I encourage you to check it out.
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