There are several elevator screens that I see on a regular basis, and these screens are mainly used to show upcoming meeting schedules, pictures from the local area, and such. Somewhere along the way, the people who control the content decided to include a weather forecast on there. However, instead of using a modern approach where the weather info is pulled down live, they’re just taking a snapshot of the forecast once or twice a week, and then leaving the info up there for days.

It’s not hard to see the problem here. If you put up the week’s weather forecast on Monday, things may look a whole lot different by Thursday or Friday. In fact, the last time I saw the screen, it showed that the current day’s weather was about 15 degrees different than the actual temperature.

Granted, I’m guessing that these particular digital signs are rather old and lack any sort of real-time or even periodic connection to the web. But in cases like this, does putting up a weather forecast really add value for the viewer? Probably not. People are accustomed to seeing real-time data for weather, news and sports. So if you don’t have any way to update this info at least once a day, you should just leave it out of your content strategy. You can still show news-style messaging, like a weekly featured story or entertainment update. But don’t tease viewers with content they expect to be up-to-date when it’s likely to be stale by the time they see it.