Weather Channel Tackles Criticism For Airing Too Much Fluff, With New Ads Attacking Competitors For Airing Too Much Fluff
from the windy-glass-houses dept
Last year, we noted how The Weather Channel's tendency to air a higher volume of fluff and nonsense was harming the company's leverage and negotiating power when demanding higher rates from cable operators. DirecTV, you'll recall, responded to The Weather Channel's demands by simply pulling the channel and replacing it with weather services that, well -- actually reported the weather. Amusingly, many users found this to be an improvement over the channel's usual approach to reporting the weather: funny pictures of buffalo, photos of "sexy beaches," or programs like "Prospectors."Having not learned a valuable lesson, last month The Weather Channel made the same demands from Verizon, which, like DirecTV before it, simply responded by replacing the weather channel with AccuWeather and directing users to apps that actually forecast the weather. Initially, The Weather Channel tried to claim Verizon was toying with the public's safety. It then launched a website aimed at generating outrage among viewers, urging them to contact Verizon and complain.
Except, given the growing disdain consumers have for a company that has increasingly stumbled away from its core mission, none of this appears to be working. As such, The Weather Channel has come up with a great new idea: mocking other weather organizations for focusing too much on fluff, and not enough on the weather. In a letter to employees, The Weather Channel CEO David Kenny calls Verizon "reckless" and urges employees to cancel all Verizon services. He then tears into AccuWeather for focusing on hippos during a recent tornado emergency in Oklahoma:
"We saw that last Wednesday night, when we featured live coverage from Oklahoma. Interestingly, Accuweather took a shot at the NWS for calling the tornado potential “low” that day, yet the Accuweather network itself, as you can see in the image below, was not even covering weather during Oklahoma’s severe outbreak. Here’s their coverage on the left:Yes, that's a channel that has been mercilessly mocked for years about its tendency to air fluff, attacking other channels for airing too much fluff. For good measure, The Weather Channel decided to up the ante and launch a new media and print campaign that also mocks AccuWeather for showing hippos when a tornado struck Oklahoma:Yes, hippos swimming."
"In 168 hours of week, the amount of programming they have devoted to real weather is really small,” Myers said. “People need to judge what that means." "People need to ask themselves what The Weather Channel is so afraid of,” Myers added. “They’ve had a virtual monopoly for 30-some years. They almost lost with DirecTV , and they have lost with Verizon. Competition is good, and it offers people choice and strengthens products."The Weather Channel does slowly appear to be learning that you don't have much negotiating leverage when nobody thinks your product is very good. Serious coverage has ramped up slightly and its website's dumbest videos now at least have some tangential connection to actual weather forecasting. Still, it would be nice if The Weather Channel could learn this lesson without the heavy dose of head-spinning hypocrisy.
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Filed Under: fluff, tv, weather
Companies: accuweather, direct tv, verizon, weather channel
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Will wonders never cease.
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Convinced of their own importance
Returning to the core mission... what a concept! Early CATV systems, to a one, featured an almost DOS-like black and white screen showing time, temp, wind speed and direction at the cable head end; and once the National Weather Service started a teletext-like data service, you could read a regional forecast, too. Unsophisticated as it was, it was nonetheless the most popular channel on the system at times.
In the last year or two, before Verizon made the switch to Accuweather, I found myself watching fifteen minutes of giant tow trucks, Alaskans, or (of course) giant Alaskan tow trucks just to check a forecast. Now, the Alaskan tow truck channel has gone away, there's weather all the time (like a 46" wall-mounted smartphone!), and life is simpler.
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Re: Convinced of their own importance
TWC is irrelevant and disposable. I get better realtime coverage by watching the blogs at Weather Underground (who contributors are quite often very weather-savvy).
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A Weather Channel in the world of apps and smart phones is redundant. They are re-branding, changing their image, because in fact, that's the only way they can compete as a TV channel. Nobody is buying cable packages for a weather report.
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Sorta amazed it's still a thing
Second, this is the same Weather Channel that, on multiple occasions, has given an up-to-the-minute forecast of 0% chance of precipitation for my rather small Zip code when I can see a deluge outside. No love lost for those weather witches.
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I can't wait...
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Re: Sorta amazed it's still a thing
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I'm all in favor of cable/satellite companies dropping them in favor of outlets that actually talk about the weather. But I do wish there were a few other alternatives... AccuWeather has left a bad taste in my mouth ever since they tried to take the NWS data out of public domain.
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OK, if you're planning a barbecue then checking the weather might be useful but the rest of the time who cares?
If it's wet it's wet. If it's cold it's cold. If it's hot it's hot. You still have to go about your day.
There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes.
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Re:
But it's a pretty big country, and it has a lot of different weather. "Going about your day" in a blizzard, a hurricane, a tornado warning, or any other kind of severe weather isn't always as simple as zipping up your jacket (or not). If you live in a place where looking out the window gives you all you need to know about the day's weather, then congratulations. A lot of other people don't.
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Re:
I don't know if it was the personal vision of one person or a few, or years of incredibly bad market research (astonishing, I know) but when they're flashing a few seconds of actual weather at me once an hour instead of giving me my local data and access to weather across the States and the rest of the globe that can be useful and important to anyone, they've failed. When before they only had to spend on the core information and had more eyeballs. But if they felt like they just weren't doing as well as they once were on cable, then they should have dropped the model and concentrated on the net.
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The ROI of Fluff
Is the ROI for the fluff really that much better than simple weather monitoring with periodic reporting? That's what makes me scratch my head, especially considering the results so far.
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I think if the vision would have stayed focused on providing good, accurate, reliable weather information then they would still have a prominent place in the market, and probably rightfully so.
But once it starts becoming about how much ad revenue is to be had, instead of how best to serve your customers, that's the beginning of the end.
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A reason why
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Re: A reason why
In other words, we're just laughing at them now.
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Re:
"There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes."
Where can I find hurricane and tornado-proof clothing?
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Re: Re: A reason why
Their weather product is dead and their fluff is crap. Maybe they should focus on one thing and do it well instead of doing a horrible job at two things.
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Today I rely on the internet and view radar on line. NWS provides all alerts needed. When I want to see the weather, that is what I want to see. I'm not interested in sideshows and happily have missed this further degradation of what was once at the beginning a fair service at best.
There is nothing they provide I am interested in that I can't get on line. They have become irrelevant and I get along just fine without them.
The big joke is they think their service valuable enough to want to be paid for it.
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Need more be said - or expected with a combo like that behind it?
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People should also judge how terrible that sentence is.
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Re:
On a scale of one to ten, it's really horrible.
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Being in the eye of the storm that day....
The real story is shit like "Siloam Springs Emergency people didn't sound the tornado sirens for the tornado warning because he didn't want to scare people"...
and
"The only tornado shelter for Fayetteville is all the way down in Greenland, and although that shelter is supposed to be opened as soon as a warning is sounded for the county, it took phone calls to the county sheriff (who told people to call back in 20 min...which was right as the storm was going to be hitting), and outrage on social media in order to get the shelter opened prior to the storm hitting".
The Weather Channel was 15 minutes ahead of the local news stations, and I was only streaming from my phone.
Sorry. Just putting it out there how dumb this whole story is.
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Knees
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http://www.programvb.com/2017/03/2-channel-frequency-mbc-2-hd.html
http://www.programvb.com/2017/ 03/channel-frequency-mbc-max.html
http://www.programvb.com/2017/03/channel-frequency-mbc-max-hd.html
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INNABILITY to forecast WEATHER
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