Randolph County

TV viewers in Randolph County, Ala., face a constant struggle to get local weather information. The county lies on the edge of the Atlanta and Birmingham stations’ broadcast range and most county residents can rely only on satellite or cable providers for service and that means they get only Atlanta stations, even though they are closer to Birmingham. Their frustration was most recently manifested in their inability to watch the deadly storm system creeping west to east across Alabama on April 27. They had to keep an eye out for news on a ticker running across the bottom of the screen of Atlanta weather stations rather than choosing from among Alabama broadcasts of wall-to-wall tornado coverage.