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The Weather Channel is Seeking Sale


rkolsen

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Bloomberg is reporting that The Weather Companies, owned by Blackstone Group LP, Bain Capital LLC and Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, have hired Morgan Stanley and PJT to look into a possible sale. According to them The Weather Company is considering selling their more profitable digital arm and keeping the broadcasting company. The digital arm includes Weather.com, Weather Underground and Weather Services International.

 

If I were in Blackstone, Bain and NBCUniversal's shoes I'd cut the cable side and focus on digital. From what I understand WSI makes a decent amount of money in service fees for their weather computers. While looking into the cost of a WSI system I found WTVD Meteorologist Steve Stewart's LinkedIn profile which said that they charge around $6,000/month for data and maintenance. I understand WSI does their own forecasting and modeling but don't they also resell raw data that the government gives out for free?

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-19/weather-channel-said-to-hire-morgan-stanley-pjt-to-seek-sale

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The TV end would be a great subchannel opportunity. If it ditched cable and all of the baggage that it has picked up because of it, it can return to its roots of being a place to get the forecast and find out about severe weather. Either a station group or subchannel owner (Weigel?) could pick it up and license the TWC name if the channel itself was spun off.

 

NBCUniversal ran this channel into the ground. With the right owner, it can be saved and become valuable again.

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NBCUniversal ran this channel into the ground. With the right owner, it can be saved and become valuable again.

 

And watchable again, if they drop all long-form programming for continuous 24/7 weather news and information.
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Bloomberg is reporting that The Weather Companies, owned by Blackstone Group LP, Bain Capital LLC and Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, have hired Morgan Stanley and PJT to look into a possible sale. According to them The Weather Company is considering selling their more profitable digital arm and keeping the broadcasting company. The digital arm includes Weather.com, Weather Underground and Weather Services International.

 

If I were in Blackstone, Bain and NBCUniversal's shoes I'd cut the cable side and focus on digital. From what I understand WSI makes a decent amount of money in service fees for their weather computers. While looking into the cost of a WSI system I found WTVD Meteorologist Steve Stewart's LinkedIn profile which said that they charge around $6,000/month for data and maintenance. I understand WSI does their own forecasting and modeling but don't they also resell raw data that the government gives out for free?

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-19/weather-channel-said-to-hire-morgan-stanley-pjt-to-seek-sale

Yes, and no. The modeling that comes out of the noaa/nws isn't designed for broadcast. Go click around Penn State's weather e-wall to see what I mean.

 

I believe, though not 100% sure, WSI and others pay a fee to noaa for the raw numerical data output from the 2 main weather models, the GFS and the NAM. They then run that output through their own computer system which converts it into the graphics the on air mets use as part of their weathercasts. Of course, it still needs to be delivered to the individual subscribing stations, mainly via satellite. So yea, $6000/MO seems a fairly reasonable figure. Some stations may pay less, or more, depending on how many extra "bells & whistles" they subscribe to.

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Yes, and no. The modeling that comes out of the noaa/nws isn't designed for broadcast. Go click around Penn State's weather e-wall to see what I mean.

I believe, though not 100% sure, WSI and others pay a fee to noaa for the raw numerical data output from the 2 main weather models, the GFS and the NAM. They then run that output through their own computer system which converts it into the graphics the on air mets use as part of their weathercasts. Of course, it still needs to be delivered to the individual subscribing stations, mainly via satellite. So yea, $6000/MO seems a fairly reasonable figure. Some stations may pay less, or more, depending on how many extra "bells & whistles" they subscribe to.

I think NOAA distributes a lot of data via satellite for free but that can be delayed. I remember reading that they will give out the FULL stream of data for free but the organization, such as WSI, would have to pay for the racks pace and fiber connection from their data center.

 

Not exactly what I was looking for but here's the fiber data center link http://www.nws.noaa.gov/datamgmt/fos/fospage.html

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  • 1 month later...
NBC needs to dump The Weather Channel at least make it more watchable. In my opinion they did a much better job running NBC Weather Plus than The Weather Channel.

 

Agreed. I still miss our local weather sub-channel (SkyTrak Weather Network). I wonder what it'd be like if WTHR adopted NBC Weather Plus when it was still around...

 

I'll follow this definitely, see how it goes.

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Agreed. I still miss our local weather sub-channel (SkyTrak Weather Network). I wonder what it'd be like if WTHR adopted NBC Weather Plus when it was still around...

 

I'll follow this definitely, see how it goes.

 

At one point, Indy had three 24-hour digital news and/or weather channels: WRTV 6's 6 News 24/7, later HTSN: Hometown Sports and News (WRTV 6.2), WISH 8's Local Weather Station (WISH 8.2) + Forecast 8 VIPIR HD (WISH 8.3) and WTHR 13's SkyTrak Weather Network (WTHR 13.2). Only WTHR 13's is gone while the others still remain.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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