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 miss the good old days when you could see the local weather parameters updated every second or so on the local cable networks. As far as TWC, I can take it or leave it, but I rarely go there to find weather info. WeatherNation is pretty good. The main reason I have DirecTV is so my wife, who is Korean, can get Korean over-the-air programming. This service is so popular, that DirecTV even has a Korean customer service phone number, and occasionally sends her (snail mail) mailings in Korean.
The last year, when I’ve wanted to see TWC, iit has been carrying programming suited better for National Geographic, Science, or History channels. Uverse could lose TWC and I would not notice it.
Currently TWC channel is showing, “Secrets of the Earth – Tides”, “Secrets of the Earth – Volcanos”, “Highway Thru Hell”. Three hours to Weather Central.
BYE BYE TWC.
Gone with the Wind.
If any of these “climate catastrophists” still believe in the global warming fraud/hoax after the polar vortex episode this winter, I’ve got some beachfront property in Nevada to sell them.
The weather channel is entertainment. They have some great educational pieces but it is a news/entertainment media. Life saving information I don’t really think so. If you are depending on that channel for this you are going to be disappointed. You NEED a weather radio or use your smartphone which can go with you for TRUE life saving information. Mandating we keep an entertainment channel in a line up is just wrong. Weather Channel why don’t you figure out what it takes to improve your product for the money like all other businesses instead of trying to force people to spend money for something they don’t feel they need.
jai mitchell says:
January 11, 2014 at 5:30 pm
Oh you poor thing, Jai. Is it just to top up your beliefs, daily?
Willis is an ‘old sea dog’. Loves the coast guard stuff.
TWC is in the same category as National Geographic Magazine: Every time I succumb to the dramatic pictures and try it again, I end up feeling like a sucker. They ladle up steaming gobs of stewed horse-apples, then ask “do you want sprinkles with that?” No longer subsidizing their advocacy of junk science when I pay my Direct TV bill is just fine with me, though I’ll miss a few individuals whom I think would be better off elsewhere. Sorry, Joe.
I like Highway thru Hell and it’s all I watch on WTV. The real drama of working class people like me dealing with real weather versus the trucking industry that keeps Canada going gives me hope for humanity. At least for the beer-drinking portion of us.
When the Weather Channel started it was a meteorologist’s dream, model runs, expert analyses, jet stream projections, intelligent case studies, thoughtful historical retrospectives. Now it’s a circus of stupid dumbed down idiocy. Please, let’s put it out of its misery and replace it with the Joe Bastardi Show.
We called DirectTV yesterday morning to find out the skinny on this, and the customer service representative’s supervisor returned the call, left a message, told us DirectTV is renegotiating their contract with The Weather Channel, and had no plans to drop TWC.
We were taken aback by the suddenness of this situation on TWC – right out of the blue with a few days notice. TWC channel asking the public to call their congressional representative was a bit of a stretch IMHO. Using the public as a pawn in their business deal was a bit much, and I hope they are learning something from all the feedback they’ve gotten from a SKEPTICAL public on their agenda-driven programming and “reality” programs.
If Congress is to be involved in the weather-climate issue, it had better be in the context in a full-court press in understanding the true nature of the power of solar activity in forcing weather and climate, and they better start kicking the money-grubbing CO2 losers out of government forever by defunding that failed “science” across the board NOW.
I noticed a month or so ago DirectTV brought WeatherNation TV into their lineup. They have a long way to go… TWC is useful for weather in the morning and a few hours in the evening – that’s it. Who has time to wait for a weather report through huge blocks of time for these “reality” shows.
TWC’s “Deadliest Space Weather” series was a big disappointment. The deadliest space weather happens here on Earth, and TWC can’t or won’t make the proper connections between our weather/climate events/levels and the cause of it all, solar activity events/levels.
Paul Douglas, founder/CEO of WeatherNation is also a kool-aid drinking global warming-climate change propagandist. Give it time, and he’ll have his channel spewing forth the same agenda-driven drivel often seen on the TWC.
I credit Stephanie Abrams from The Weather Channel for standing firm in the face of White House and TWC management pressure tactics. She clearly was not going to be buffaloed by the climatologist-in-chief and his “trusty” sidekick Holdren’s efforts to spin the arctic vortex as a CO2 driven global warming event. More and more meteorologists are freeing themselves from the unrealistic expectations of the political “agenda”.
There appears to be a place and need in this world for my “The Electric Weather Channel”. Stay tuned, I’ll be back.
If you don’t like it don’t watch it. I do. If they drop it I will Drop Direct TV.
Just as TWC is overhyping what it would mean to America if DTV dropped their garbage, the endless hype and sensationalism of weather, that 10, 20 years ago was just that, weather.
All this drama is coming from NBC to save their azz for the over paid Al Choker. To save their azz for TWC becoming another channel full of commercials.
Do any of us realize that we viewers, who pay a subsciption fee are paying to watch commercials?
Also, when i need immediate weather info due to locally bad weather, i dont even get a satellite signal……And i pay for this too?….
Enough with Roid rage Cantore’, Cry baby Bettes, Annoying Abrahms, and bimbos who cant seem to put enough make-up on…
Weather divas, who woulda’ thunk’ it…. I dont want to pay a higher subscription fee to pay these morons who use computer generated forecasts anyway. There are only a handful of these drama queens that actually forecast.
Then to boot, new horrendous graphics, music straight out of the elevator, johnny come-lately second rate reality based shows, WTF is going on there?
Wow NBC really knows how to screw up a good thing and let the sh!t roll downhill.
Great business decision DTV. Your paying subscribers are speaking up. Who are you dropping next?…..
I forgot to add, that while i appreciate the attempt at another weather channel on Ch. 361…. It is the Wayne’s World of a weather tv program…. I mean, who’s basement are they filming this show from?….Dtllee, dttlleee, dtllleee as Garth and Wanye would do….
Thanks for WeatherNation on direct tv channel 361. We’ve already switched. Lost interest in TWC a long time ago when they started reality shows and global warming alerts.
Used to run a small cargo airline. Several times, I had pilots tell me the weather was too bad to go flying after they had watched TWC! Always hyping ” the WORST storm of the century!!!” When I would check with US Flight Service, the weather was good enough to go. I flew as an airline pilot for 40 years and only had to actually cancel 3 flights due to weather. TWC is a joke.
Here are some of the weather links I am using lately.
The ensemble forecast from the Global Forecast System (GFS) – temperature anomaly – for the whole world over the next 16 days – animation of every 3 hours.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/gfs-ens/2014011206/gfs-ens_T2ma_global.html
You can zoom-in to any of the continents, North America here. Just the latest GFS model run in this case and not the ensemble.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/gfs/2014011206/gfs_T2ma_namer.html
You can take a polar view. Other models are also available. I would like this to be in nominal temperature as well. Is it accurate? GFS is really the best model and most other models are based off of it.
Intellicast’s Weather Active Map – has tons of features. I particularly like the “Temperature” one in the “Overlay” tab. It is the highest resolution I have ever seen down to something like 1 mile. You can watch warm fronts and cold fronts moving in in extremely high resolution – I’m not sure how it is produced. Others have radar down, but this map has tons of other really good animations. You can zoom in, zoom out and save your location. It requires JavaScript. I’m not sure if this link will work.
http://www.intellicast.com/local/wxmap.aspx
Many of the weather models can be accessed here. Takes some time to learn how to use it, but these are the weather models that your local forecast is based on. I mainly use it for the precipitation forecast going out 5 days (and the model that tells whether precipitation will be rain, snow, or freezing rain) because the rest of it is just not user-friendly. These models are getting really good now.
http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/model-guidance-model-area.php
If someone could put this type of weather info together with just higher resolution numbers and animations that are easy to use, it would be a winner. People are not going to pay or subscribe to it, it needs to run on ad revenue. That is just the way people are and why TV, Radio and the Internet work the way they do today.
I’m a directv customer and the last place I go to get the weather is the weather channel. It’s an interesting place to watch extreme wether events but other than that….
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Ohio may not be tornado alley but my local stations do a better job than TWC when severe weather threatens.
(If one them only developed their own “Weather on the 8’s” ….)
We have Cablevision here, so TWC is sticking around here. However, NO ONE in my household watches it. My dad and his fiance turn to News 12 NJ, and I stick with Jon Carr’s Severe NJ Weather on Facebook, Twitter, and the Severe NJ Weather website. I also read NJ Weather Blogs and EPWA, and weather.gov.
But Jon and the EPWA give us warnings WAY ahead of time, and since they don’t have to answer to any bigwigs or sponsors, they hold nothing back. So when we had a bit of snow here on Thursday morning, those of us who follow Severe NJ Weather already knew about it and already planned for it while everyone else woke up shocked to see that it had snowed and iced overnight because NONE of the tv or radio weather reports told them about this. Including The Weather Channel.
Fine w/me. One might guess twc charges excessively for their “services” — which is mostly feel-good or bad emotional junk. All I use is the local forecast/radar, & that’s available on the “Active” button.
I have been tired of TWC for several years now. If you switch there to check the weather, you have human interest stories, specials featuring TWC stars, Prospecting, CoastGuard missions, cute animals, commercials, commercials, commercials. It should be called The Weather Show. I guess it is fine to go to sleep by, as I have done that several times with the drone going. If they stay, they need two separate channels. One for weather, and one to compete with Opra, Lifetime, History, and Learning channel. Naming cold fronts? Really? What was wrong with names like “this cold front” and “next cold front”? I have the National Weather Service on all computers and devices and have to fire them up to check the weather without having to watch abandoned puppies, snow plows for my truck, cold remedies, mattress salesmen, truck commercials, desk organizers, lawyers hawking their trade,, and those were on just now as I was typing and waiting for news on the weather. Adios TWC.
Just saw a “blurb” on TWC clamoring for folks to call DirecTV and demand it be kept as they were going to be dropped on Jan 13th as things stand. That’s just a day away…
I get the impression that DTV is going to let it drop (as have some other channels) for a few days before closing the deal. Personally, I’d rather they just hired there own Meteorologist and put on their own weather channel. I’m sure there’s a lot of info available to keep a 24/7 weather channel full. Heck, just putting up some global weather reports (for folks flying all over, or dreaming of it) would fill a few hours with real weather…
So I expect that about Wednesday we’ll have a real status once the posturing has hit the drop wall.
Truth is.. the weather channel could cancel all of it’s reality shows, stop naming winter storms, and all you miserable fucks will still find something to bitch about…
Over thirty years ago, while stationed at Chanute AFB for forecaster training we used to watch the local news cast of a Champagne Illinois TV station. This was the old days when a married couple could actually own a TV station (in rural America, before Cable this wasn’t all that unusual). It was an affiliate station with 95% of its content coming from one of the Big 3 networks. However, the elderly couple did their own local news. They wrote, produced and staged the local news, weather, and sports. When I watched them they had to be in their mid to late 70s; maybe even early 80s.
The husband did the weather. It was something right out of Comedy Central. The poor old man used magnets to illustrate centers of high and low pressure. While the old man used to talk about the weather in front of the cameras, a High Pressure magnet over Montana would slide down to the Gulf of Mexico. Of a magnet showing rain showers over New England would begin sliding down towards Bermuda. Hilarity followed, as the poor man became very confused.
I would trade in those old weather casts for what TWC and Accuweather (another Alarmist weather organization) dish out.
I think this is pure negotiation on rates- Direct TV will continue to carry TWC.
Maybe the channel did what it had to do to survive- there obviously is going to be only a small minority of viewers who will watch TWC more than 15 minutes a day, but I find TWC’s programming today to be unrelentingly boring, and I am one of TWC’s original and avid viewers from the launch in 1982. I might watch it now 15 minutes every 2 months- I want the weather, I just go to the website instead to read the details of Winter Storm Pablo, or whatever ridiculous name they have given the next Alberta Clipper.