Weather wars, sometimes called TV radar wars or Doppler wars, are a kind of sensationalist journalism primarily concerning weather

Weather

Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...

 news. The "war" is typified by competing local TV news stations engaging in technological one-upmanship to increase viewership.

The conflict has included attack ad

Attack ad

In political campaigns, an attack ad is an advertisement whose message is meant as a personal attack against another candidate or political party...

s, notably when WTWO

WTWO

WTWO, virtual channel 2 , is the NBC-affiliated television station in Terre Haute, Indiana. The station is owned by Nexstar Broadcasting Group of Irving, Texas, which operates local ABC affiliate WAWV , through a joint sales agreement with owner Mission Broadcasting...

, a television station in Terre Haute, Indiana

Terre Haute, Indiana

Terre Haute is a city and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, near the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a population of 170,943. The city is the county seat of Vigo County and...

, attacked WTHI-TV

WTHI-TV

WTHI-TV is the CBS-affiliated television station in Terre Haute, Indiana. Owned by LIN TV Corporation, it operates on VHF digital channel 10. Its transmitter is located in Farmersburg, Indiana...

's coverage by name by claiming that WTHI's Doppler weather radar

Weather radar

Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, estimate its type . Modern weather radars are mostly pulse-Doppler radars, capable of detecting the motion of rain droplets in addition to the...

 and staff were inferior to WTWO's. The conflict was later satirized by The Daily Show

The Daily Show

The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...

.

See also

• Collective hysteria
  Collective hysteria
  Mass hysteria—other names include collective hysteria, group hysteria, or collective obsessional behavior—is the manifestation of the same or similar hysterical symptoms by more than one person. A common manifestation of mass hysteria occurs when a group of people believe they are suffering from a...
  
  
• Damsel in distress syndrome
• Fad or trend, this article as a type of
• Herd behavior
  Herd behavior
  Herd behavior describes how individuals in a group can act together without planned direction. The term pertains to the behavior of animals in herds, flocks and schools, and to human conduct during activities such as stock market bubbles and crashes, street demonstrations, sporting events,...
  
  
• Hysteria
  Hysteria
  Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...
  
  
• Infotainment
  Infotainment
  Infotainment is "information-based media content or programming that also includes entertainment content in an effort to enhance popularity with audiences and consumers." It is a neologistic portmanteau of information and entertainment, referring to a type of media which provides a combination of...
  
  , this article depicts a type of
• Media circus
  Media circus
  Media circus is a colloquial metaphor, or idiom, describing a news event where the media coverage is perceived to be out of proportion to the event being covered, such as the number of reporters at the scene, the amount of news media published or broadcast, and the level of media hype...
  
  
• Moral panic
  Moral panic
  A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...