User:Ccc/twchistory

This article is a combined record of the history of The Weather Channel as a company and channel from an early concept to its current form.

Pre-launch (up to May 1982)

The earliest concepts for weather-related channels date back to the late 1950s on local CATV systems. One such concept, Weather Scan, consisted of a dashboard of weather dials, such as those for temperature and atmospheric pressure, with a mounted camera that would pan to show each dial on the dashboard. This concept may have been the inspiration for the future Weather Channel's sister network, Weatherscan.

The concept for The Weather Channel as it is known today was developed in the 1970s by one of its future founders, John Coleman, well-known at the time for his position as a meteorologist on ABC's Good Morning America. He took inspiration from Home Box Office, Ted Turner's networks, and later, the foundation of ESPN, which were using rapidly-developing space satellite technology to broadcast throughout the country. Initially more of a joke than anything else, Coleman began to take the idea seriously, especially as he realized that the costs of running such a channel would be significantly lower than other types of channels given the freely available nature of weather data from the National Weather Service. At the time, Coleman envisioned the network under the name Satellite Weather Service, and went as far as to produce and distribute handmade promotional flyers using this name at the 1977 National Cable Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada.

1998 refresh and Weather Star XL era (March 1998 - June 2001)

Also in March 1998, The Weather Channel partnered with Tele-Communications Incorporated (TCI), which was the largest cable provider in the United States at the time, to launch a new sister network for custom weather forecasts. By March 15, it was revealed that this new network was among the channel proposals considered for TCI's expanded digital cable service, Headend in the Sky (HITS).

During the week of May 18, 1998 it was revealed that The Weather Channel's proposed sister network would be included on TCI's new HITS lineup under the name Weatherscan by The Weather Channel. On July 28, 1998, Weatherscan launched on TCI HITS; at that time, it was simply a national feed consisting of a loop of national city forecasts and regional maps. However, a localized version of the channel was in the works, and by November, The Weather Channel had begun to beta test the Weather Star XL, the next generation of its localization technology, on The Weather Channel itself.

On August 23, 2000, Atmospheres, TWC's first primetime long-form series, premiered. The program was centered on weather and its impacts on everyday life, with segments featuring rescue stories, exotic locales, individuals who worked in extreme weather conditions, and unique weather stories.

Live By It era (June 2001 - August 2005)

The IntelliStar 1 (top) was a major advancement in The Weather Channel's ability to deliver graphically advanced and more localized weather information displays (2003-2005 appearance at bottom).

NBC sale and HD transition era (June 2008 - November 2013)

A new graphical and programming update, popularly dubbed Weather All the Time, and known within the network as Enhanced, was slated for November 2013. This new update, as the name suggested, would ensure that viewers could view their local weather information at any time, even during commercials and long-form programming.

It's Amazing Out There era and IBM/Entertainment Studios sales (November 2013 - August 2019)

2014-era appearance of The Weather Channel, showcasing its L-bar design, use of the font Akko, and flat design.

On November 12, 2013, The Weather Channel launched its sweeping changes to the network.

On October 28, 2015, it was announced that IBM would acquire most of The Weather Company's assets, primarily digital ones, which included the company's weather data, its mobile applications, Weather Underground, and perhaps most visibly, weather.com. The amount paid for these assets was not disclosed. The acquisition took place on January 29, 2016. IBM would also acquire the name and logo of The Weather Channel itself but would allow the network, which was not acquired in the deal, to continue to use the branding and weather data under a long-term agreement.

In response to the sale of the weather.com domain to IBM, The Weather Channel launched a new website, We Love Weather, in April 2016, with the intention of targeting general fans of weather in addition to fans of the network.

In early April 2018, TWC announced via email and on We Love Weather that the company intended on making changes to the timing of Local on the 8s, reducing the segment to two times per hour with the stated intention of allocating more time to live weather coverage. Backlash to the changes erupted on We Love Weather, with fans and common viewers alike expressing frustration with what they viewed as an unrequested change for the worse. Nonetheless, despite almost no positive responses from forum users, staff members rushed to respond to the users with prewritten statements defending the change that were often criticized for being repeated to each user.

Recent developments (August 2019 - present)

On August 20, 2019, The Weather Channel underwent its first major graphics revisions since the Weather All the Time update in November 2013. The new update revised the network's LDL color to a darker blue LDL that dropped use of the L-bar concept and utilized Roboto as the primary on-air typeface. Some usage of Akko, the network's previous typeface, can still be seen to this day, especially on the maps seen on the national version of Local on the 8s, but the typeface and graphical changes were otherwise applied across the board on both the network's national feed and IntelliStar 2 units.

We Love Weather, TWC's website for fan outreach, began to show signs of failure near the close of 2020 and the early months of 2021. For roughly a year and a half prior, the community forums had become a breeding ground for controversy, and posts to the site by TWC employees had slowed. As time passed, the fate of the site became more obvious. On December 20, the last video uploaded to the site would be uploaded; then, on December 23, the last episode of the Weather Geeks podcast posted to the site would be posted. No new articles would be posted to We Love Weather after December 30, 2020. On January 6, 2021, the last user-submitted photo was uploaded to the site; then, on January 7, the We Love Weather community forums would be restricted to registered users only. This action foreshadowed the complete closure of the forums by February 1. Despite these developments, the site would remain visible to the public for over two more years.

Sometime around the weekend of February 12, 2023, the We Love Weather site was finally shut down after being inactive but publicly available for just over two years.

On August 22, 2023, IBM announced that it would be selling The Weather Company and its assets to Francisco Partners with the intention of focusing on its cloud and artificial intelligence services. This acquisition completed on February 1, 2024.

See also

Writeups

• History of The Weather Channel fandom

Timelines

• Timeline of The Weather Channel
• Timeline of Weatherscan