In less than 7 hours, DirecTV will drop The Weather Channel unless the two companies can strike a deal regarding the carriage fees that TWC charges in order for its channel to be shown on a cable or satellite provider's lineup. The Weather Channel is demanding that DirecTV ups its carriage fee one more cent per subscriber per month in order to continue broadcasting the weather behemoth's programming.
DirecTV refused.
This sort of tango between television networks and cable/satellite providers is nothing new, but this one is particularly nasty. The Weather Channel launched a website called "Keep The Weather Channel" that implores viewers not to "let DirecTV control the weather." The website tells viewers to call and write to both DirecTV and members of the United States Congress (what?) to demand that the satellite provider pays the extra penny per customer per month.
DirecTV launched a counter website called "
DirecTVpromise.com" which provides the satellite provider's stance on the dispute. DirecTV's position is that The Weather Channel is asking for too much money while simultaneously cutting back on its weather coverage. The website goes right for the jugular and hits them on their ridiculous amount of reality television programming:
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.
With roughly seven hours left on the clock, it doesn't look like DirecTV is going to budge. As mentioned above, DirecTV is shooting across TWC's bow by airing their direct competitor -- WeatherNation -- exactly one channel above where The Weather Channel currently sits in the lineup.
WeatherNation is a network started by meteorologist Paul Douglas that essentially emulates what The Weather Channel was back when it was actually about the weather. WeatherNation is the first real threat to TWC's three decade monopoly on television weather, and this dispute may provide an opportunity to finally break TWC's stranglehold.
The Weather Channel asserts that they're the most critical life-saving channel on television, and that people will most certainly die if DirecTV follows through with its threat to remove the station from its lineup. This is bunk. Local television stations do a much better job providing emergency weather information during events like tornado outbreaks. There are countless severe weather warning apps that nudge alerts to your phone the second a warning is issued. The National Weather Service -- the Federal organization that actually issues severe weather watches and warnings -- operates a country-wide NOAA weather radio system.
In localized weather emergencies, The Weather Channel provides little more than a warning scroller along the bottom of the screen, and maybe a passing mention by an on-air presenter. During the bigger outbreaks, actual meteorologists like Dr. Greg Forbes track storms for the entire area under the gun for tornadoes (which often spans many states), whereas local stations can focus on individual storms and give viewers more accurate geographical locations than a national station.
While TWC insists that they're the most important channel out there, what they neglect to mention is the massive consumer blowback against its slow but steady diversion away from the weather and towards tangentially-related reality programming like "Highway Thru Hell" or "Prospectors." This is a point hit on by DirecTV in its negotiations with the channel, and a sore spot for weather enthusiasts and casual viewers alike.
Roughly 12 hours of The Weather Channel's programming each day is actually dedicated to weather-related programming like Weather Center or Wake Up With Al. The other half of the day is dominated by reality shows that have very little (if anything) to do with the weather other than the fact that the filming takes place outdoors. It's gotten so bad that when TWC decides to cover severe weather events, they apologize for preempting their reality programming to do so.
Their weather programming itself leaves a lot to be desired. Much of it is hyped (see: winter storm names) and downright patronizing. They've dumbed down their weather forecasts so that people with absolutely no knowledge of weather terminology can understand the forecasts. Back in the 1990s, they would educate their viewers instead of talking down to them. I've lost count of how many times I've heard an on-camera presenter say "it's going to rain over here" or "look on the leftern side of your screen" when referring to a weather map.
A screencapture of weather.com from August 18, 2013, showing the irrelevant stories on the site's front page. The top story ("Formed OVERNIGHT") was about a storm that occurred over thirty years ago, but the headline was designed to scare you into clicking.
The channel's long-famous website, weather.com, has taken a parallel turn for the worst. The six top stories on weather.com right now are:
- Don't Let DIRECTV Control the Weather: Take Action!
- Viewer Response to DIRECTV
- Longest Bridge in the World?
- 25 States Hit With Fast-Spreading Flu
- Best Places to Sleep Under the Sea
- The Secret Life of Bed Bugs!
Not one of them has to do with the weather. Not one. When you go to your local weather forecast page on their site, you're bombarded with about thirty different boxes and graphics above and to the side of your weather forecast. The headlines scream "Dire Situation Getting WORSE" and "The Phenomenon That Made THESE!" -- pure clickbait that have nothing to do with your local weather.
The forecast itself has a "Love!" and "Ugh!" button so you can register your joy or disgust with the current weather. The forecast itself, when you can get to it, is actually pretty sound. In a quick project that I did this past fall and posted over at the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, The Weather Channel's forecasts are close to the accuracy of the National Weather Service. It's a shame that quality forecasts are drowned out by the Huffingtonpostization of their website in order to drive page clicks and ad revenue.
The winter storm names debacle is another embarrassment in and of itself. As I've mentioned before, The Weather Channel created winter storm names not to better keep track of the storms that form (do you remember where you were when Brutus hit?), but it's an elaborate (and free!) social media advertising scheme. The Weather Channel is the only network calling these storms by a name. It is not a standard practice in the United States to name winter storms. The channel itself has no solid criteria for assigning names -- they only say that the storm has to affect a highly populated area with some amount of snow or ice.
When you refer to Winter Storm Nemo on Facebook or Twitter or in conversation, you're giving The Weather Channel free advertising. People are tuning into the only television network calling it by the name they heard.
The Weather Channel is losing its integrity. It is a shell of its former self. We talk about political DINOs and RINOs, but The Weather Channel seems to be unashamed of its transformation into a WINO: Weather In Name Only.
The Weather Channel used to be a respected institution. They are the reason I love the weather as much as I do today. I watched the channel religiously when I was a little kid, and I learned a great deal of what I know now because of what they aired back in the mid to late 1990s.
But that was fifteen years ago.
After NBC and Comcast bought TWC in the mid 2000s, they turned into a weathertainment machine. They've betrayed the trust they built with their viewers, and now they're trying to exploit their legacy to turn a profit. It's understandable; it's a company. Their whole purpose is to make money. But remember that when Jim Cantore pops up in a commercial and tells you that you might die in a storm if DirecTV drops The Weather Channel.
I often criticize AccuWeather for providing crap weather forecasts and failing to own up when they're wrong. The Weather Channel actually creates decent weather forecasts. They just don't provide them anymore.
Don't let The Weather Channel fool you. They're not there to keep you safe anymore. They need to adapt or die, and they refuse to do either. TWC's parent companies chose to milk the network for maximum profits, so by all means, let the invisible hand of the free market sweep them aside. It's for their own good.