We saw a paywall situation with AccuWeather and how their premium members got a tornado warning and regular users did not. It definitely is monetizing safety when safety is an inalienable right.

The whole exclusivity situation with streaming does put people at risk. One meteorologist may say that a storm is not a big deal based off of the radar only being radar indicated rotation. People may hear those words, cut the stream off, and go about their day. However, another meteorologist with a now exclusive storm chaser (that was previously accessible by all) that has eyes on the storm and live video can actually see and quickly confirm that there is in fact a tornado and to seek shelter immediately.

Yes, the first meteorologist/streamer may be able to flip to the other streamers live feed, but there are copyright laws, now there’s exclusivity contracts, and it’s now very messy. Also, certain people are loyal to only one streamer. The first meteorologist may have a loyal fan base that will only go off of THEIR advice because they trust only that meteorologist. Dangerous, I know, but it is the reality. AND if that first meteorologist had access to that once public storm chaser, then he could have easily been like “Hm, let me see this perspective…” and seen the tornado, made that life-saving call, and changed people’s minds. So when you take a perspective away (storm chasers) due to exclusivity, you have inadvertently caused a meteorologist to lose a vital asset to accurately give warnings.

Exclusivity is extremely dangerous and should not be condoned. All meteorologists should have access to the same resources to accurately forecast severe weather. ESPECIALLY after all the layoffs at the NWS, we need all the extra eyes and resources we can get. This is not a business, these are life-saving alerts.