This pretty well sums up why:
DirecTV: Received "numerous" complaints 40 percent of @weatherchannel programming reality TV: http://t.co/dQ4t8qZX7g
— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) January 11, 2014
That, the constant drum of global warming hype, and the ridiculous naming of winter storms combined with an advertising heavy schedule pretty much drives away most reasonable thinking people.
My friends, John Coleman and Joe D’Aleo, co-founders of the Weather Channel never set it up to be that way, but over the years, it lost its way from their original vision.
See my interview with both of them here on the 30th anniversary.
Now what do I watch on DirecTV? The new far better replacement, WeatherNation TV on channel 361, which is close to the vision of the original TWC founders Coleman and D’Aleo.
Of course, TWC isn’t taking this lying down, they’ve started a Twitter war.
DIRECTV doesn't know the cost of dropping The Weather Channel, but you do. Take action: http://t.co/lNvwjyPSqf pic.twitter.com/HmH21yOehv
— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) January 11, 2014
The third comment is telling.
http://twitter.com/cshenkel/status/421992414744559618
As is this one:
@weatherchannel way to use human suffering to prove your point.
— Todd Amerman (@Paytodd1) January 11, 2014
@weatherchannel You clowns going to give this storm a stupid marketing name too?
— Young Ideas (@DickYoungsGhost) January 11, 2014
But alas, all this looks to be nothing more than saber rattling in contract negotiations.
http://twitter.com/DIRECTVService/status/422036228569968640
UPDATE:
DirecTV issued the following statement to the Washington Post:
We remain in discussions with The Weather Channel on how to provide its service to our customers at the best value since people now use so many other ways to retrieve weather-related information. We launched WeatherNation (DIRECTV channel 361) as an alternative to provide 24/7 hard news weather coverage in response to numerous customer complaints that more than 40 percent of The Weather Channel’s programming is dedicated to reality television shows. DIRECTV also offers city-by-city weather coverage on more than 1,400 local broadcast stations and on DIRECTV’s emergency channels in times of severe weather.
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I usually get current conditions and forecasts from the National Weather Service for my area or the Oklahoma Mesonet.
Might not be a pretty as some commercial sites, but as reliable.
Great example of the Weather Channel’s global warming hype & alarm published today:
http://www.weather.com/health/climate-change-causes-infectious-disease-increase-korea-cdc-says-20140110
which claims that cases of infectious disease in Korea increased by 20,000 cases between 2012 and 2013, due to the 0.07C global warming during that time
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2012/trend
Hunter,
Tried to get History on the History Channel lately?
Luckily they have given us H2 which does air the old History shows (for now) and the Military Channel is great for war stuff.
Shoot, even CNN & MSNBC are reality shows a good chunk of each day, and just short of the entire weekend.
Even disregarding their global warming hype, they lost all chance of my sympathy the moment they asked Big Brother to beat those meanies up for them.
Addison says January 11, 2014 at 11:59 am
” Hiring Sam Champion didn’t help things. ”
So that’s where he went from ABC …
.
If you’ve got a Windows 8 (or 8.1) computer, give the Bing Weather app a go. Live tiles with weather updates, and really nothing beyond forecasts and current conditions. On Windows Phone, I’ve got The Weather Channel, since that’s what I had since WP7. But, looks like there’s a Bing Weather app there, too, which is probably better. I’ll be giving it a go here soon. Never need to watch a TV again for weather, and rarely even need to go to a website.
Wondered how Climate Central’s “TV Mets” program to push linking of local weather to Climate Change and “leverage the power of trusted messengers” to “make Americans feel the power of what’s really happening to the climate” was working out. http://www.cakex.org/directory/organizations/climate-central
Maybe they went right to the top. I see they had an audience with the Meteorologist in Chief http://www.climatecentral.org/news/woods-placky-joins-geeks-for-white-house-hangout-16951
No wait… credit courses for TV Mets. Ben Santer teaching them about tree rings: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2013/10/southwestern-u-s-tv-mets-attend-full-day-weatherclimate-workshop/
All expenses paid trips to Denver: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2013/11/tv-mets-to-be-invited-to-march-weatherclimate-workshop-in-denver/
But reality is that people watch less and less television, and of that only the things that really matter.
I’m afraid weathermen as we used to know them are in decline. Many stations replaced them with airhead bimbos with big … lungs… and occasional speech disorder when it comes to technical terms.
Myself? I watched news on TV yesterday, and it was after a week or so. Most of my colleagues are cancelling their subscriptions, one after the other.
So – who gives a remote?
Global warming is about as real as the “magnetic men” that bend over backwards so the “metal” won’t fall off. Sticky situation for the Freaks on Nature. Highway Through Hell just froze over. Storm Chasers have caught one. Weather Caught on Camera is at least real. Maybe Prospectors can data-mine a new vain (pun intended) of temperature data.
Perhaps they can move the first church of GAIA with EWTN and TBN and the other religious channels.
@Hockey Schtick;
So that’d be ~285714 case per degree, and while we are being silly let’s extrapolate that one year trend out a hundred years to seven degrees, so that’ll be 2 million by 2113, right? But wait, that’s each year, so let’s integrate that. Wow, 101,000,000 people! Yikes! That’s more people than currently live in Korea!
Isn’t fake science amazing and terrifying?
2014 has had a remarkable start, it seems like not a day goes by where warmies some where are getting some stick. Just maybe the long suffering silent majority have woken up.
DirecTV’s comment “at the best value” is telling. The point of contention is money. Stick to your guns, DirecTV!
I’d hate to lose them … I love their reality shows, and don’t watch their ridiculous weather commentary at all. I mean, they have things like “Coast Guard Alaska”, “Weather Caught On Camera”, and “World’s Wildest Weather”, what’s not to like?
w.
More or less the same story as Greenpeace.
I live on the central coast of queensland Australia and we get the same nonsense on the weather channel as overseasAfew years ago they would show the daily temperatures with the long term average , until the penny dropped. Our daily figures were always half to one degree cooler than long term , summer and winter . I wonder why/
LOL
I refuse to watch them because of this very reason. More about political agenda than the weather itself.
Schadenfreude Interruptus
I gave TWC up as a bad job long ago. Even their app for android is impossible to use now. Overall, I rated them by dropping them several years ago.
desperation on the cusp of madness:
11 Jan: Guardian: Fiona Harvey: David Cameron right to link floods and global warming, say climate scientists
Myles Allen and Peter Stott say prime minister right to make connection between recent weather and global warming
Myles Allen of Oxford University and Peter Stott of the Met Office said on Friday that the prime minister was right to make such a connection, and that increasing levels of climate change would have substantial impacts on rainfall…
Stott said that efforts to make the attribution of extreme events to the effects of climate change were now a major focus of the Met Office’s climate change research, which involves world-leading scientists and super-computers crunching vast quantities of past and present weather data…
Allen called for more scientific effort to be put into exploring the link between human-caused climate change and extreme weather. He said that it could be possible in future to make a case for the attribution of extreme weather events to climate change, if computer data can be more closely analysed.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/10/david-cameron-floods-global-warming-climate-scientists
10 Jan: Smithsonian Smart News: Colin Schultz: The Cold Snap Wasn’t Actually That Extreme, Global Warming Has Just Made Us Wimpy
The recent cold snap wouldn’t have been so unusual in the past
Seth Borenstein, the Associated Press’ science reporter, has had enough of our whining. Meteorologists are annoyed with us, too, he says, especially those of us who, either snarkily or seriously, whined: “Where’s our global warming nowwww?”
The cold snap that gripped the nation, says Borenstein, wasn’t even that cold. It’s just that, thanks to climate change, we’re now so used to above-average temperatures that one little blip of a return to what used to be known as “winter” has us all riled up…
And, anyway, it’s about to warm up. New York’s looking at temperatures in the 50s on Saturday; Toronto could have a balmy winter high of 43 degrees F.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cold-snap-wasnt-actually-extreme-global-warming-has-just-made-us-wimps-180949322/
Other than the CAGW BS, I enjoy watching some of the other programs but go to Ch. 361 if necessary to obtain the latest weather information.
“watching” the weather channel. Just doesn’t seem right. I “check” the weather on my iphone.
Not surprised by the movement of the Weather Channel to reality programming – they are in the entertainment business and that’s where the dollars are. However, I long ago stopped watching for the weather news, but only for the entertainment value. It’s incredibly amusing to see how much energy they spend on hyping every snowflake, raindrop, hailstone and breeze above 5 mph to paint a picture of impending doom. And global warming!!! Can’t believe they haven’t got a reality show dedicated to that yet. Unfortunately, when it comes to the weather, so many of their on the scene reporters come off as clowns. Also, the move to younger on air personalities turned me off – I miss some of the older, long serving forecasters who gave you a more honest and serious view of the weather.
9 Jan: SMH: Mary Voice: Don’t shoot the climate change messenger
(Mary Voice is a climatologist and lecturer and was formerly head of the National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology.)
There are many opinions, floating around the blogosphere and newspaper opinion pieces, that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lacks integrity and accountability. If this was true to any significant degree, it would be very serious for public policy.
At the same time, it is of paramount importance not to shoot the messenger should that messenger be trying to let you know of something really important.
The climate change panel is a messenger of unwelcome news and, given our human natures, is a classic shooting target – one of the Everly Brothers [from the harmony rock duo] died last week of a smoking-related lung disease, and it reminds me how tempting it was a few decades ago to discount [shoot] the medical research messengers who warned us of the risks of cigarette smoking…
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/dont-shoot-the-climate-change-messenger-20140108-30hgj.html
8 Jan: Forbes: James Taylor: Embarrassed Global Warming Alarmists Sink To Comedic Lows With ‘Polar Vortex’ Excuse
Of course, if global warming alarmists really had predicted that it would cause more frequent and severe cold outbreaks (via Mutant Polar Vortexes, Mutant Teenage Ninja Turtles, Yeti, or whatever), we should see such predictions all throughout the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The problem is, it’s not there. Nowhere. Nada. Nunca. Nein. Nyet…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/01/08/embarrassed-global-warming-alarmists-sink-to-comedic-lows-with-polar-vortex-excuse/
Really, REALLY tired of TWC’s whiny handwringing over gorbal warming (oops…climate change) and the naming of winter storms. The only reason I even turn it on is to get the “Local on the 8’s” forecast for the Mat-Su Valley. Otherwise, meh.