"My Name is Earl", "The Office" and "30 Rock". Three of the most-watched, top-rated, award-winningest shows on television. An entire hour and a half wiped out last night because one tiny tornado touched down somewhere around Weatherford and hail got bigger than nickels.

I’m sorry, folks, but I’m from Oklahoma, where it’s not unusual to turn on the television any given evening and see a county or few covered in red because of tornado warnings. And let me assure you that I am terrified of tornadoes — if one is heading my way, I want to know. But even in Oklahoma, where the TV meteorologists are just as hungry for ratings, unless a tornado is on the ground and ravaging a portion of the state, you get to watch your shows with nothing more than a map in the corner and a banner with streaming updates. They wait until the commercials to break in.

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I am perfectly fine with missing my favorite shows for the sake of the safety of millions of people. I am not fine when it’s for the sake of news stations’ ratings. And I did hear that last night’s Dallas Stars game, which aired on KDFI 27, did not get interrupted by the weather fervor.

To add insult to injury, a friend told me that on yesterday evening’s news (which I don’t watch, for all of the reasons stated implicitly above as well as other obvious reasons) they announced that anyone who wanted to watch their Thursday night lineup could do so on hulu.com.

Yes, some of us do watch TV shows on television, and it’s convenient, especially if two shows come on at once and you can’t Tivo both. But for shows like "The Office", which I normally watch with a group of friends, I’d rather watch it on my television — so TV news stations, please don’t use hulu.com as an excuse to obliterate a perfectly good hour and a half of television for a not-so-threatening line of storms.