I welcome the changes. For way too long the Weather Channel has been about fluff and non-weather programming.
I admit I think the Weather Channel does great in severe weather events and their long form programs on actual severe weather events like the program taking you minute by minute through the Joplin tornado are award winning in my book.
Fat Guys In The Woods and even the shows that are semi-weather related, like dropping marbles on a car to simulate hail are pretty much useless in my book. When I have to watch the top 5 weather pictures of the day and a 3 minute commercial break to hopefully get a weather update usually sends me to other sources.
The new Weather Underground show is a channel changer to me. I'm not saying it all has to be hardcore weather but at least have a clock with frequent current updates that are actually about weather.
Sure, that puts The Weather Channel between a rock and a hard place. Clients need bunches of units to reach the whole audience when people are tuning in a few times a day for a few minutes. I understand their need to increase time spent viewing. In radio, All News stations tend to stop for traffic and weather every 10 minutes if not more often. Maybe there can be a happy medium for The Weather Channel.
If nothing else, being weather is a good idea when you are The Weather Channel. Then again, HLN is no longer headline news and MTV is no longer Music TV but they don't refer to themselves as News or Music. Maybe TWC instead of Weather Channel might be a nice name instead of using the word Weather. TV listings use TWC after all. That way it could be 'Back to Fat Men In The Wood on TWC'.
