I just noticed something... the new (meaning newer than the DirecTV local forecast) national local forecast LDL must be extremely annoying (not to mention totally useless) to viewers now, being visible just from Sacremento to Washington, D.C.
You have to understand that this product was developed back in 2008, and the day prior to its release, the (at the time) IntelliStar-generated LDL stopped appearing on the LFs, and when the LF slides finished, the last product was a view of the satellite/radar for the last 3 hours covering 4 regions of the nation. As for the newer satellite LF, you also have to know that DISH customers see the national forecast at all times, so having conditions for 46 major cities across the states seems reasonable.
I never understood why they don't extend the DirecTV forecast out by another several seconds just to fill the entire local forecast segment. Cable viewers don't get national radar and satellite views, so I don't know why the DirecTV viewers have to.
I absolutely agree with you. In fact, before it came out (but the news was made), I was expecting to see a similar lineup of that to the IntelliStar (such as local radar and air quality). As for the radar, I really think there could be both a national and a local radar screen. However, the only radar images existent in TWC's database are completely watermarked and I doubt TWC would want to publish their local radar images ("Classic map" on weather.com) without watermark.