No matter, they'll be on view in the upcoming series of 'Strictly Come Dancing'.

The data is the data - the best data does, and will, come from the Met O. If the broadcaster chose to make a hash of messaging that then the quality will suffer but, again, the best data, and thus the best forecasts, will come from the Met O.

My god, well spotted! You must be the first?

Read it properly. It's the less often seen 'Full Version' where basically dick all is said about the sarf.

Same as Royal Mail getting full privatization which make it worse as Royal Mail are losing mail volume rapidly and if Met go private I wonder if this will get worse and their website would not be free to view all.    How the BBC will able to forecasts without the data from Meto?  Meto is the only organization is this country so BBC are downgrading themselves so why should I pay the full licence? 

Trying to apply [politicised] 'open market' principles cannot work across all public services. It's nothing but short-sighted, dogma-driven ideology.

Thanks Beast, very interesting.

Watching the clip, it looks too much like our regular forecasts, so nothing new here.

I like the format and presentation of the American channel which works, and someone should try to adapt the same formula here. Could see it being very big and a one stop shop for most people. Can see audience figures increase too when there is abnormal weather about.

If I had money, would certainly give this a punt.

Nothing is going to be state owned in the near future. Some people on here will think that's a good thing, but when your only interest is to make money at all costs. It's not often in the best interests of providing service. The met office without doubt is about the most respected weather organisation around the World.

LOL! Don't say that.

At first I was surprised to hear of this, but on reflection i'm not at all.

The BBC is not what it once was and is failing on many fronts to remain the most respected global news service it once was. It is not keeping up with modern technology and meeting the modern day demands of users in the way it's competitors are. Too often news stories have a slant on them in terms of political view point which is not what the BBC should be, and they operate on an outdated revenue collection mechanism, I think the BBC's days are numbered in it's current guise.

The Met Office, be it in it's current tax payer funded state or privatised is an institution that we should be proud of in the UK at the forefront of meteorological research and services - we all know that of course.

I would love to see a weather news and forecasting service provided by the MetO on it's own TV channel, radio station, web service etc hosted by the current presenters and offering a wider look at the weather and related issues.  Lets face it why do we have to wait for the 6pm news or Country File, the modern day consumer expects it on demand now. 

As I have indicated, a weather channel would be a welcome addition to TV programmes over here, where most of the public would tune in and out of if it was good enough.

Beast kindly provided a link where this has been tried before over here, but this appeared to look too much like the usual weather bulletins, and looked quite boring to be honest.

I was thinking the American weather channel format and presentation with advertising to fund it looked good to watch and is a successful business model.

Another thing I would expect to see on the Beeb is weather presenters on certain forecasts being replaced by the newsreader. This already happens on the radio and it is an obvious way of saving money. 

I think that it's the cost of the presenters that the beeb is trying to reduce rather than the cost of the Met office generating the forecasts themselves. Judging by the fact it seems the Met Office didn't even make the shortlist, the BBC must be looking for considerable savings that the Met Office just couldn't go along with and/or deliver

As they have already said, the beeb are keeping the met office prepared SWW's so in order to avoid a nonsense when models disagree it would seem they also have to keep the met Office model output for regular forecasts too

I think there are currently about 20 MetO staff at the beeb and they do all sorts of forecats on BBC news bulletins, World Service, News channel, BBC Radio as well as implanted in Andrew Marr, Countryfile etc which all adds up to a considerable cost.  I think the US model of having local station and network "Meteorologists" attched to the channel might work even though they are basically newsreaders who have "been on the course". Similar to the way sport is covered on the beeb news

I doubt we'll get a dedicated weather channel in the UK as I can't see the business model working (even in the US TWC seems to show re-runs of documentaries most of the time these days)

The Met O and ECM are not publically funded in the way NOAA are so across the pond the forecast products are freely available to a largely private forecasting industry. Indeed there has been debate on whether publically funded bodies should be allowed to issue weather forecasts over there. Interestingly some of the premium forecasters in the US do pay for ECM products which they regard as superior to NOAA. If we are going down the route of the US model then the production of forecast data will needed to be funded out of taxation rather then being partly self financing as now.

I will miss the curves of Georgina ..... hope they don't use CH5 weather providers 

I agree the ECM products are statistically superior. My point was that in many (but clearly not all) cases their superiority isn't enough to justify the £80k to £100k per annum subscription fee. If ECM / MetO offered a competitively priced pick n mix menu of data products I think they would be able to substantially increase their subscription revenue. If all but the most specialist op and ens data was offered for £20k per annum and common variables were sold on a self serve platform I'd expect to see many web site / app / agencies switching across from GFS/GEFS. 

So it's plebs and mobile phones wot done it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/11819164/Met-Office-lost-BBC-contract-.html

Maybe we'll get better writers? This is the current Meto extended forecast for here