Wait a minute. Isn’t this the 24-hour channel of weather wonks standing in front of exotic-looking maps? It is, but just as O.J.’s was no ordinary murder trial, this was no ordinary storm–and the ratings showed it. As the blizzard developed last Sunday, more viewers tuned in to the Atlanta-based cable channel than ever before–953,000 households watched, a fourfold jump over its normal audience. That was also twice as large as the ratings for CNN, its cross-town rival in big weather stories. These ratings won’t knock “ER” off its perch. But if Desert Storm fixed CNN’s reputation, and O.J. did the same for Court TV, then the blizzard of ‘96 has put The Weather Channel solidly on the map. “We kicked CNN’s butt,” gushed executive producer Jim Sutherland. “We want to own the weather.”
Well, not literally, but Sutherland has a right to gush. From its start in 1982, The Weather Channel has been pelted with snickers. WIDEN IT RAINS IT BORES, read one headline. The male meteorologists looked like they were wearing outlet-mall suits and the women wore dresses a size too large, critics wrote. All that may have been true, but the viewing public came to want weather on demand. Buoyed by big weather stories, like Hurricane Erin last year, the channel has grown into one of the nation’s “must have” cable channels. Available in over 90 percent of all cable homes, its revenues last year climbed to more than $80 million.
Many viewers have turned into fanatics, some undoubtedly out of an obsession with nature and some undoubtedly because they don’t have jobs. About 20 percent have reported watching for an eye-glazing 30 minutes at a time. After 14 years, TWC is a brand name, selling CD-ROMs, tornado videos and online services.
All this is pretty heady for a channel that annoyingly starts commercials while the anchorperson is still speaking. But a highly sophisticated operation churns out the forecasts. All of the channel’s 27 anchors are meteorologists and, it should be said, are as well dressed and personable as any local weather broadcaster. Remarkably, they do their shtik without a script, and their passion is evident. Stu Ostro recalled that “to see hail bigger than a baseball was a very spiritual experience.” At their disposal is a multimillion-dollar state-of-the-air computer system that lays out varying forecasts; the 65 meteorologists on staff make the final call. Every 10 minutes, 4,000 separate local forecasts–drawn from the National Weather Service–are beamed via satellite to local cable operators.
The channel’s biggest challenge is to get people to watch longer. The fanatics aside, the average length of time a viewer watches The Weather Channel is only 14 minutes. That means the channel must move quickly to cover local, regional and national forecasts. To try to stretch that time, the channel offers features to appeal to specific audience groups, like weather for skiers. And by rapidly dissolving one map or graphic into another, the anchors keep things moving, even if the information being imparted is often the same as 15 minutes earlier. The downside is that all this can induce a trancelike state similar to watching a stock ticker tape. The antidote: the mother of all snowstorms.
