Sunday, June 26, 2005
TWC: Its best hours are often some of its viewers’ worst
Source: Broadcasting and Cable The Weather Channel is profiled in this
article in B and C. There are some pretty good quotes from Weather Channel Network President Patrick Scott. Scott tells B and C, "When a hurricane takes over the news, we become the news event," says Weather Channel Network President Patrick Scott. The Weather Channel is there when the weather gets rotten and dangerous, from tornadoes to snow to hurricanes. It is an odd position, though: success due to catastrophe.
“What we feel good about is the preparedness and safety message,” says Scott. “I don’t think there are many media that can genuinely claim to have saved lives. So yes, it’s ironic that what is our highest viewing period is an absolutely awful period in the personal lives of the people affected. "
Weather Channel’s on-camera field meteorologists—the people Scott describes as “at the sharp end”—must often do just the opposite.
“I had Jim Cantore telling me stories about sleeping in a room, fully clothed in his oilskins, and the window blows in, and there’s a foot of water on the floor,” Scott says.
Back in the Atlanta studio, “people come here wanting to film mayhem and madness, and in fact it’s actually pretty calm,” he adds. (But when things are rotten, hurricane expert Dr. Steve Lyons sleeps on a cot during days of 24-hour duty.)
There’s better on-air follow-up as well, a new wrinkle. “We used to just kind of follow the storm,” Scott says. Now “we do much more now about what happened afterward. It is still part of the weather story.” MORE
# posted by ATN @ 10:39 PM 
