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The Weather Channel now airing game shows

C

crainbebo

Boy, have they evolved. From Storm Stories, to Highway Through Hell, and now Funny You Should Ask? No, seriously, it's on the schedule for weeknights at 8/7c. This isn't a late April Fools' joke.
Byron Allen is basically saying "ah, to heck with those people in tornado warnings...let's see if we can get an audience to love our panel show!" This fiasco is about as bad as their Flick and a Forecast that they did under NBC Universal. John Hope is spinning in his grave.

At least I have AccuWeather available for actual weather across the nation whenever I want.
 
crainbebo said:
Boy, have they evolved. From Storm Stories, to Highway Through Hell, and now Funny You Should Ask? No, seriously, it's on the schedule for weeknights at 8/7c. This isn't a late April Fools' joke.
Byron Allen is basically saying "ah, to heck with those people in tornado warnings...let's see if we can get an audience to love our panel show!" This fiasco is about as bad as their Flick and a Forecast that they did under NBC Universal. John Hope is spinning in his grave.

At least I have AccuWeather available for actual weather across the nation whenever I want.
Click to expand...
To play devil's advocate, an "all weather, all the time" channel that runs 24/7 probably has limited programming options, and as long as they're still broadcasting "weather on the 8s" so people get their local forecasts when needed (though they can just use an app or the web to look it up immediately whenever they want it) and they're broadcasting warnings and watches and providing the usual "wall to wall coverage" of major weather events, I'm not sure it makes a great amount of difference what TWC airs outside of that.
 
Enough people are nostalgic for the WeatherStar 4000 system that the Weather Channel used in the '90s to have created an emulator to provide current weather info while retaining its classic appearance. Maybe they should put it on the air again to fill in gaps in programming, complete with Smooth Jazz music playing in the background.

battaglia.ddns.net

WeatherStar 4000+

Web based WeatherStar 4000 simulator that reports current and forecast weather conditions plus a few extras!
battaglia.ddns.net battaglia.ddns.net
 
Doesn't IBM own TWC these days? That's a strange direction for Big Blue to take the station. (Buying TWC is a strange acquisition for them in the first place.)
 
Why do I need TWC when I can just speak "Hartland Vermont weather" into my phone and get the same forecast, spoken and more succinctly? Do I really need to know that the winds are going to be 5 to 10 mph from the southwest? No, just tell me it's not going to rain and whether I'll need to wear a jacket at night.
 
There was a DAB filler station for a while in some UK cities which ran "Weather 24/7" with voice snippets put together (unconvincingly) by a computer. I also didn't see the point, when there are so many other ways to find out the weather.

 
Weiserguy said:
Doesn't IBM own TWC these days?
Click to expand...

IBM owns the "non-television assets." Byron Allen owns the channel:

deadline.com

Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Acquires The Weather Channel TV Network For $300 Million

Byron Allen continues to expand his Entertainment Studios media holdings with the purchase of The Weather Channel basic cable TV network.
deadline.com deadline.com

The fact is the only time the channel attracts big audiences is during major weather disasters. The rest of the time, the channel could air infomercials, and it wouldn't matter.
 
Weiserguy said:
Doesn't IBM own TWC these days? That's a strange direction for Big Blue to take the station. (Buying TWC is a strange acquisition for them in the first place.)
Click to expand...
The Weather Channel is owned by one-time comedian turned media business owner Byron Allen and his Allen Media Group.
 
TheBigA said:
IBM owns the "non-television assets." Byron Allen owns the channel:

deadline.com

Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Acquires The Weather Channel TV Network For $300 Million

Byron Allen continues to expand his Entertainment Studios media holdings with the purchase of The Weather Channel basic cable TV network.
deadline.com deadline.com

The fact is the only time the channel attracts big audiences is during major weather disasters. The rest of the time, the channel could air infomercials, and it wouldn't matter.
Click to expand...
The serious weather geeks always looked down their noses at TWC, anyway. The older ones still lament the demise of "A.M. Weather," the ultra-nerdy aviation weather show that used to air on many PBS stations for 15 minutes each weekday morning.
 
This one is way off in left field. The weather related shows, no matter how loosely related , seemed okay but this mining for jade and game shows, come on now! I get the audience is not great when there's no severe weather. I suppose the Weather Channel has the ability to go wall to wall in areas where severe weather is happening but I'm not sure about that.

Even though weather is no longer on the 8s but at :20 and :50, nobody beats their live storm coverage.
 
I've also found out from having Spectrum's streaming package that they don't have the local forecast at any time on the Weather Channel just the national feed. I actually use their streaming channel local now to get the forecast more often than anyhere else.
 
kevtronics said:
Enough people are nostalgic for the WeatherStar 4000 system that the Weather Channel used in the '90s to have created an emulator to provide current weather info while retaining its classic appearance. Maybe they should put it on the air again to fill in gaps in programming, complete with Smooth Jazz music playing in the background.

battaglia.ddns.net

WeatherStar 4000+

Web based WeatherStar 4000 simulator that reports current and forecast weather conditions plus a few extras!
battaglia.ddns.net battaglia.ddns.net
Click to expand...
Holy cow. What people won't think of.
 
crainbebo said:
Boy, have they evolved. From Storm Stories, to Highway Through Hell, and now Funny You Should Ask?
Click to expand...

Wanna know why? Because Byron Allen OWNS that show. His company produces it. So he doesn't have to pay another company for the rights to air it. Since he typically doesn't make much during that daypart, he might as well keep it all in the family. For the most part, cable channels don't program based on their channel name. MTV is a great example.

Funny You Should Ask (2017 game show) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
kevtronics said:
Enough people are nostalgic for the WeatherStar 4000 system that the Weather Channel used in the '90s to have created an emulator to provide current weather info while retaining its classic appearance. Maybe they should put it on the air again to fill in gaps in programming, complete with Smooth Jazz music playing in the background.

battaglia.ddns.net

WeatherStar 4000+

Web based WeatherStar 4000 simulator that reports current and forecast weather conditions plus a few extras!
battaglia.ddns.net battaglia.ddns.net
Click to expand...

Not only have folks developed emulators, there are some who have actually resurrected some hardware and even added some products to the 4000 and Jr.

 
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Much like 24 hour music, the value of that kind of programming at all time, even when no weather of significant note is happening, just isn’t what it was.
 

Weatherscan

weatherscan.net weatherscan.net

Here's another resource for those who miss weatherscan.
 
CTListener said:
Why do I need TWC when I can just speak "Hartland Vermont weather" into my phone and get the same forecast, spoken and more succinctly?
Click to expand...

This argument comes up in so many threads.

By extension, why does anyone need a news station, or music radio, or any other media when they can just ask their phone for it?

I think the answer is, it doesn't have to be a binary choice between getting your content from one place or another. People seem to like getting their content from multiple sources.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
By extension, why does anyone need a news station, or music radio, or any other media when they can just ask their phone for it?
Click to expand...
The answer is: they don't. That's why TWC gave up on 24/7 weather nearly two decades ago.
 
CTListener said:
Why do I need TWC when I can just speak "Hartland Vermont weather" into my phone and get the same forecast, spoken and more succinctly? Do I really need to know that the winds are going to be 5 to 10 mph from the southwest? No, just tell me it's not going to rain and whether I'll need to wear a jacket at night.
Click to expand...
You're right...which is why I only watch AccuWeather for national weather coverage...even TWC's hurricane coverage has way too many commercial interruptions. I stream local stations in the path of the hurricane (or tornado) because they do a much better job than TWC in many cases. Even with Jim Cantore!
 
The Weather Channel has become a cesspool of garbage in the past several years. I don't even bother watching it because it's such trash.
 
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