“A historic storm deserves historic coverage,” Mike Shipley, KSDK news director, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Tuesday.
With severe winter weather moving into St. Louis this week, stations were “all-hands-on-deck.”
The storm was unpredictable and kept news crews on their toes as it slowly moved into the area on Monday before becoming severe Tuesday morning.
KSDK (NBC), KMOV (CBS), and KTVI (Fox) offered weather updates throughout the day on Monday and then went into wall-to-wall coverage on Tuesday morning, preempting regularly scheduled programming and staying with local news into the afternoon.
“In a situation like this, we staff the same way they do snowplow drivers–12 hours on, 12 hours off,” said Sean McLaughlin, news director of KMOV.