![]() ![]() The day DirecTV restored the Weather Channel to its lineup in 2014, after having removed it earlier that year, was “one of the happiest days ever,” she told me.Ĭharlie Phillips, a 28-year-old meteorologist and the founder of WeatherTogether, a network of blogs devoted to climate coverage, told me that he began watching the Weather Channel “religiously” after experiencing a downpour in his childhood. In college, she’d follow the channel’s coverage and use her own radar to confirm the experts’ insights. She’d watch Storm Stories, the series about notable, well, storms. As a child, she had been afraid of “a lot of weather things”-thunderstorms and natural disasters, which she stopped fearing only after she began tuning in to the Weather Channel after school. Still, for Nelson, weather programming is a necessity that deserves a greater audience. She admitted, though, that she’s a little taken aback by the idea of multiple streaming services competing for her attention: “I’m not 100 percent sure how many people would subscribe.” “People like the Weather Channel,” she insisted to me over the phone with a laugh. Some enthusiasts, such as the 24-year-old weather blogger Kelsie Nelson, have funneled childhood obsessions into meteorology degrees. ![]() No one better understands why weather’s always on our radar than the weather stans who have built a robust online community of Facebook groups, fan sites, and forums. All it takes is a deviation from the norm-say, when a record-breaking heat wave rolls in or wildfires produce orange skies-for viewers who normally only look for daily highs and lows to make the leap to obsessive analysis about pressure systems and dew points. The accessibility and universality of weather talk can bind a community together: Local anchors can become celebrities in their own right, while photos of lightning storms and first snows populate Instagram feeds and get featured by hometown stations. ![]() Keeping up with weather has always been a ubiquitous and routine activity the elements play a part in how we dress, what we do, where we travel. As more severe-weather events occur, putting more lives at risk, Fox and the Weather Channel are banking on there being an audience for around-the-clock coverage of our skies. According to The New York Times, these impending launches have led to bidding wars over star TV meteorologists, the building of posh new high-tech studios, and debates over the potential influence on public opinion: The prospect of Fox Weather is already worrying many, given the network’s history of climate-change denial. * So does the Weather Channel, which is starting a streaming service it hopes will have 30 million subscribers by 2026-a far cry from Netflix’s more than 200 million subscribers, but on par with smaller streamers such as HBO Max and Hulu. This fall, the network is set to launch Fox Weather, a platform for meteorology programming 24/7, rain or shine. But is the weather worthy of an entire streaming service?įox certainly thinks so. Natural disasters drive big-budget blockbusters. The weather, often derided as a mundane conversation topic of last resort, has actually been a prolific source of entertainment. ![]()
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