DirecTV Combats Weather Channel Price Hikes By...Actually Showing People The Weather
from the you're-really-not-very-good-at-your-only-job dept
The Weather Channel has been well-deserving of mockery over the last few years, whether its for their efforts to sex up storms by naming them (in the process creating a nation of weather neurotics who become hysterical about drizzle), or for an ocean of TV and website content that has absolutely nothing to do with the weather (here's some funny faces, yuk yuk). As such, their recent battle with DirecTV over retransmission fees doesn't find the company getting much sympathy. Especially when the channel tries to argue that people will die without their inane assortment of non-weather-related content.Normally in such retransmission disputes the content company has some leverage over the satellite or cable TV provider because what they're withholding has somewhat irreplaceable value to the viewer (say, like "Breaking Bad"). In The Weather Channel's case, their belief that they somehow held an exclusive over weather forecasting, combined with the fact that they have increasingly gotten worse at their one and only job, has given DirecTV the upper hand in the ongoing feud. After pulling the channel from the lineup back in January, DirecTV continues to battle The Weather Channel in a very simple way -- by simply offering viewers the weather for a change:
DirecTV on Monday unveiled a suite of new weather services for its subscribers, including a feature that allows customers to gain access to local weather information at any time...The satcaster said customers tuned to WeatherNation can press the red button on their remote to access instant local weather conditions and outlook. Later this week, short term and extended weather forecasts by zip code will also be integrated into the live WeatherNation broadcast and run automatically on the channel every 10 minutes.Surely being offered actual information on the weather will outrage viewers who love sitting through a half hour of off-topic infotainment and dreck just to get the snow forecast totals for their neighborhood. Seriously, without The Weather Channel, who'll tell us which celebrities like to hunt or provide recipes for cheesy chicken bites? Usually these retransmission feuds resolve with cable and satellite companies buckling and agreeing to some sort of significant hike (then passed on to you), though with the sort of stuff The Weather Channel has been producing in recent years, it's not clear if customers will want DirecTV to cave.
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Filed Under: business models, television, weather
Companies: directv, the weather channel
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When shooting your own foot isn't enough...
In their attempt to get a bigger slice of the profits pie, they seem to have pretty thoroughly screwed themselves over here.
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Re: When shooting your own foot isn't enough...
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Re: When shooting your own foot isn't enough...
Let me put on my weather prediction cap . . . .
Forecast: Heavy lawsuits with light drizzle of facts and scattered intellectual property claims with light on specifics.
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Re: When shooting your own foot isn't enough...
Honestly thats all we need. Plus who doesn't have a weather app on their phones.
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Oh shoot, did I just commit copyright infringement?
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Re:
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This is why you keep a battery-operated AM radio and spare batteries in your home/car/workplace emergency kits. Much more reliable than a cable or satellite service. (Plus, it's hard to fit the 51" TV in the emergency kit.)
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Our tax dollars at work
The Weather Channel gets their raw data from NOAA. Here you can get it direct from the source, customized by zip code and no commercials.
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Re: Our tax dollars at work
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Re: Our tax dollars at work
Maybe that's because the agency is run mainly by scientists, not politicians.
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Re: Our tax dollars at work
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A simple analogy
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Re: A simple analogy
As MTV is to Music...
As TWC is to Weather...
So is The Science Channel to Science. (Ghost hunters, etc)
So is The History Channel to History. (Ancient Aliens, etc)
And now...
So is CNN to News. Oh how I remember, young ones, how CNN once did actual news.
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Re: Re: A simple analogy
As MTV at one time did actual music as well.
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So, basically...
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There's this wonderful invention that already does this for you. It's called a window. You can look outside and almost immediately determine what the weather is.
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But...
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Weather channel
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Re: TWC
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Weather
With ice storm in Atlanta at least two local TV stations are continuously covering the storm with frequent forecast updates. Since I am in the metro Atlanta area, I need to know what will happen tonight in Atlanta. The local media is doing an admirable job of covering the story so why would I even watch the Weather Channel.
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The Weather Channel and Directv
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Kudos to DirecTV
Never watch it ... could care less if it ever comes back.
I hope they lower my bill a couple bucks a month now that it's gone.
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Re: Kudos to DirecTV
Dang, that's funny.
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Re: Kudos to DirecTV
Really? Exactly how much less could you care and why do you care at all if you never watch it? Or did you actually mean to say you "COULDN'T care less", which is the actual expression and would make a lot more sense given the context of the rest of your comment.
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Re: Kudos to DirecTV
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The old days....
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Re: The old days....
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Weather Underground
http://www.wunderground.com/
Besides more data on a city forecast, you can also find historical data on the site. However, for me the best thing is that they provide access to the network of local monitoring stations. When I want, I can get rainfall totals from 3 blocks away, not just what happened at the airport on the other side of the county.
There's also an API, but I haven't found the time to play with it yet.
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Re: Weather Underground
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Forecast.io
I use http://forecast.io very clean interface with just one token ad.
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Re: Forecast.io
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Old Hat
One problem that DirecTV hasn't solved for all their channels is live rescheduling. When a sports show runs overtime, the DVR's schedule should know that -- so it can record the desired show properly (whether you're trying to record the sports show, or record the following show). This also applied to The Weather Channel's overriding non-weather programming when weather events were happening.
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This isn't anything new
But when they switched to Weather Nation, they didn't have that. It took them a few weeks to get it up and running.
There's a big difference between Weather Nation and the Weather Channel, but the local weather is not new.
(And at #5 - not everyone has a smart phone. Indeed, I imagine one of the main reasons to use DirecTV in the first place is you don't have the option of cable or have decent wireless coverage. Sure, a heavy rain will knock DirecTV out, but anything short of that it works steady enough)
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Good riddance: TWC
Just go to the NOAA web site, type in a zip code and you have all the weather information you could ever need without all the blathering of those TWC goofs
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Re: Good riddance: TWC
You mean the warming 'pause' that's been shown to be because of stronger Pacific winds? You mean the 15-year 'pause' that's a mere flash-in-the-pan?
What next, gonna deny HIV=AIDS, evolution and vaccines?
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I want my TWC
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This take is not accurate
And, yeah, the Weather Channel did show too much of that for a while.
But they actually started reducing that in favor of returning to weather-heavy content some 6 months ago.
And one thing they do well is on-the-spot reporting and very location-specific info.
That's what's not-so-good about the fly-by-night crew that replaced Weather Channel on DirecTv: It's basically a region-wide weather forecast on like a 3-hour loop that doesn't even update. So the level of information detail and current-ness is worse.
And more than that...have you seen it? I think they just do a kind of cheesy Wayne's World kind of job.
All that's to say: I'd lean towards Weather Channel. And if I lived out in the sticks where you can't get cable and Weather Channel was the main reason I wanted DirecTv? I'd be peeved if they dropped it for that low-budget replacement and still charged me the same.
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Direct TV/Weathe Channel
What chutzpa the Weather Channel has to claim we are in earthly danger by not being able to see their version of the weather. They are trying to get congressional legislation to save their tails. In reality the networks and the cable channels should be the ones paying the cable and satellite providers to carry their programming rather than the other way around. The cable providers got their start because of the crummy signals local TV stations were putting out.
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Didn't even notice
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DTV and TWC
MTV = Moronic Television
WN = Weather Nation
That's my version of things.
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