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J.B. and ya'll,
 
I don't know about the national news' weather guys, but the local meterologists
used to visit with me about appropriate (ie. non-copyrighted) maps they could
digitize to create their background map.  This was back in B.W. times (before
the WEB).
 
Personally, my choice of which channel to watch is greatly affected by the
maps used.  Unfortunately, I don't always control the remote at my house.
It seems the least charismatic weather person has the best map (it has natural
color physical geography).  Kind of like map librarians :)
We have one guy who uses a map with what looks like a water color wash to
depict relief, but the colors have relation to the actual relief features.
 
Jim Coombs