Vivian Brownout

Over the past few months I have watched a lot less of The Weather Channel, despite my ongoing phobia of severe weather becoming more and more frequent.  The problem is simple; it shows too many documentaries.  Any weather information I get from The Weather Channel is though its Web site.  

On thing that seemed off recently was that on those rare occasions I did find an on-camera meteorologist live on The Weather Channel, I'd never see Vivian Brown, a personality on the cable channel for nearly three decades, and I thought maybe it was only because I was tuning in at the wrong time.  I knew she was on sometime in the middle of the day, and I thought that maybe I'd missed her.  Only now have I found out that Vivian Brown left The Weather Channel a while ago.  Well, back in September 2015 . . . 

Ms. Brown  - who, for the record, was on from 12 PM to 3 PM Eastern Time before she left, announced her own departure from The Weather Channel on the air on September 1, 2015, and I was out of the loop.  But then again, I'd already been forced to find my weather updates elsewhere, so how could I have known?  Since I found it odd that I wasn't catching her on TV, I figured I'd Google her.  And that's how I found out she was gone.

I am really disappointed about this.  Vivian Brown was my favorite on-camera meteorologist at The Weather Channel, and one of the few on-camera meteorologists anywhere that didn't put more drama into forecasts for bad weather than necessary.  And, I admit it, I found her very attractive.  So did the fellows on the Vivian Brown Yahoo fan club I belonged to. ("Sweet" was a word we used regularly to describe her.)  She was the second woman I ever featured on my beautiful women picture blog . . . and French actress Fanny Ardant was first only because I feature women alphabetically.  I loved Ms. Brown's professionalism, her demeanor, and her overall style.

Although she did not reveal the reasons for leaving, a lot of  media observers have suggested that Ms. Brown was laid off (right at the same time Al Roker's show on the channel, which is part of the NBC/Universal family, was cancelled) because The Weather Channel is losing money and viewers.  Well, sure, guys, because we want to hear the weather from people we think of as our neighbors and friends, like Vivian Brown, not see useless documentaries about gold prospectors and airplane turbulence!  Maybe if The Weather Channel hadn't turned into a parody of itself - the "Onion" of weather reporting, as New York meteorologist Joe Cioffi has called it - it wouldn't have to cut costs.

Having lost Vivian Brown, The Weather Channel lost a lot of credibility.  If it ever loses Jim Cantore, NBC/Universal should just put the damn channel to sleep.