With respect to watches, it was bad even when I was growing up. A watch would get hoisted and the storm never materialized, and people would have a bitchfest (friends, family, media) about how wrong the weather people were. The word "watch" connoting a slim probability rather than a certainty never seemed to translate to most folks; they were instead dazzled with the "winter storm" part of the phrase. And now with social media I believe that's gotten much worse, to the point where EC has for the most part shelved it. Headlines with "Special weather" and "winter weather"(rather than storm) I think give them a little more wiggle room re: public perception.