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Weather Channel: Less Weather

J

Joseph_Gallant

In recent years, the Weather Channel had replaced much of it's live weather programming during prime-time and late-night with long-form programs about weather, the environment, and related topics.

But during this period, they still carried live hour-long "Weather Center" programs at 10 P.M. and 1 A.M. Eastern time (7 and 10 P.M. Pacific).

However, last night (November 11th), these programs were dropped in favor of more long-form programming.

Now, the Weather Channel runs long-form programming from 2 to 5 P.M. and 8 P.M. to 4 A.M. (Eastern time) daily.

I fear this is only the beginning, and that within a year or two, live weather programming may be dropped entirely, with the network becoming 24/7 long-form programming (maybe with local weather on the bottom of the screen), perhaps even accompanied by a change in the network's name (likely being called only by its initials, TWC).

I know that they do offer "Wearherscan", a 24/7 channel that is basically nothing more than a continuous "Local On The 8's", but my cable system doesn't carry it.
 
Unfortunately, in today's age of technology, The Weather Channel is largely obsolete. While it would be nice to get weather coverage from across the world, you can do that online, or using a mobile phone or tablet.

The Weather Channel is a business, and must make money to survive, so they are doing what they can to stay profitable. If more people want long form weather programming, and are willing to watch it for long periods of time, we may see a network pop up in it's place, but for now we'll all have to settle for instant weather forecasts for our backyards from the internet.
 
They'll just direct everybody to weather.com for current weather conditions anyways. It really sucks how Comcast/NBC-Universal has ruined this channel. I still refuse to go by the winter storm names they use. I myself have weather.gov bookmarked (operated by NOAA) as an alternative.
 
I think TWC is still a valid cable channel, but once advertisers come to the realization that they really are not a local, up to date weather source, things may get confusing. TWC does do a good job of offering local weather alerts, and they do a good job of covering major storms. However, most days are mundane, so what do they do? Offer long-form reports on historic storms. Frankly, normal weather is the TWC's biggest problem. How can you make this compelling? And won't most go to their local stations for severe storms? TWC needs to ask all these questions, and I'm sure they have, but there are certainly issues here. Most cable systems still carry TWC, but unless there are some major changes, I'm not sure this will continue. What those major changes are, I'm not sure.

One idea is to switch to local stations when there is severe weather. Don't know the legalities of all that, but it would certainly be more compelling than what is offered now.
 
I thought I would go on there tonight and check info on our first frost of the season, but no, they were showing one of their "programs". I think Weather Nation on a sub-channel does a better job.
 
Sure you can go online for weather but if you want to see actual forecasts, you either have to assemble the info from various sources or go to a place that lets you find out in a few minutes, making good use of your time. Now the Weather Channel is a repeating cycle of the same old programs over and over. I think they have about 40 shows they repeat week after week. Nothing like getting a Coast Guard Rescue in lieu of weather information that is not even live. The model of weather info is not a long form format meaning lots of frequency to grab a nice chunk of audience but it seems these guys are using the MTV model for programming. I can't see these guys making it with what they're doing.
 
I disagree that you can't get a weather forecast online. You can get a good overview from Weather.com, and if you want a local, in depth, look, most local stations now offer your local forecast on demand from the last newscast.
 
Yes, I can get a forecast online but when I'm looking at storms moving in or trying to project what will be happening at a place 5 or 6 hours from now, the Weather Channel showed this in about 5 minutes of viewing time. The last newscast on a TV station, the NWS, WeatherUnderground, etc. and such might allow me to piece it all together but I don't have the time to play weather guy. With the busy weather.com site and weather underground doing such poor forecasting now, accurate forecasts are becoming difficult to find. Try timing a road trip to beat the freezing rain headed toward your destination. Not that easy when you have a 5 minute window of opportunity. Even when the weather channel is not showing long form programming, there's so much fluff, 5 minutes goes by fast. Maybe they need to become two channels instead of just one. Seems the weather channel isn't weather anymore.
 
The Weather Channel is still better at covering tornadoes in the Midwest that happen on weekends than any of the Northeastern news channels but those don't happen everyday
 
Their weather coverage west of the Rockies is almiost non-existant.
 
Boise Engineer commented: said:
"The Weather Channel is still better at covering tornadoes ..."
Not if you stream a TV station in the weather event area (like KOCO in Oklahoma City).
Click to expand...

During this past May's tornado outbreak in Oklahoma City, I was able to watch live coverage from KOCO-5, KFOR-4, and KWTV-9 over the Internet.

In my opinion, all three did an outstanding job and in fact, I even sent an E-Mail to the Television Academy suggesting that these three stations get special Emmy Awards for their coverage, since their broadcasts probably saved many lives.

In my opinion, it was the "Finest Hour" in Oklahoma City television history.
 
There are stretches of Weather Nation that are taken up with "info"-mercials. I think they ran one recently that was a Kevin Trudeau offering, even though Trudeau is facing jail time. I can see him in the prison mess hall hustling a list of things the warden doesn't want you to know.
 
During the Moore OK outbreak I watched KOCO 5 coverage for several hours after the tornado. Great coverage! Kudos to all the folks at KOCO for their work during the tornado outbreak.

-crainbebo
 
Does anyone still get TWC sibling WeatherScan Local? Not available on my system, but I thought it was a pretty nice service when I've seen it elsewhere.
 
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