Weatherscan — BrandWiki

Weatherscan

Overview

Weatherscan

country	United States
area	Nationwide (available on selected cable providers)
headquarters	Atlanta, Georgia
language	English
picture format	480i (SDTV)
owner	Landmark Communications (2003–2008) Weather Group Television, LLC (2008–2018) Entertainment Studios (now Allen Media Group) (2018–2022)‡R1R‡
parent	The Weather Channel, Inc. (1999–2012) The Weather Company, LLC (2012–2018) Weather Group Television, LLC (2018–2022)
sister channels	The Weather Channel Local Now Entertainment Studios Networks
founded	March 1998
launch date	July 28, 1998 (as a national feed) March 31, 1999 (as a localized service)
closed date	December 12, 2022‡R2R‡
former names	Weatherscan Local (1999–2003)

Weatherscan (previously Weatherscan Local from 1999 to 2003) was an American digital cable and satellite television network that offered uninterrupted local weather information. A spinoff of The Weather Channel (TWC), the automated service—which based its format on the local forecast segments that have been a mainstay of its parent network since TWC launched in May 1982—provided viewers with a continuous loop of current observations, and routine and specialized forecasts for their respective area in a graphical format; the segments were generated by a customized WeatherStar unit installed at the cable provider's headend (originally running on the WeatherStar XL, before upgrading to the first-generation IntelliStar starting in 2003).

Weatherscan—which was primarily intended for digital cable subscribers, although it was carried on basic cable tiers and, from 2011 to 2015, to subscribers of satellite provider Dish Network in selected markets—was originally launched as a national feed on July 28, 1998, under the ownership of Landmark Communications (founding owner of The Weather Channel), and began operating as a localized service on March 31, 1999. The network and other TWC assets were sold to a consortium of NBCUniversal, and private equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital in 2008, and later to Entertainment Studios (now Allen Media Group) in 2018; Weatherscan ceased operations on December 12, 2022, largely the result of declining national distribution over the previous decade.

History

Initial launch as a national feed

In March 1998, Landmark Communications announced plans to launch a spinoff of The Weather Channel that would provide customized weather forecasts to digital cable subscribers; Landmark signed an agreement with Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) to distribute the service on the provider's Headend in the Sky (HITS) digital cable multiplex service starting that summer.[3] Weatherscan launched on participating TCI systems on July 28, 1998; as the Weather Star XL (a fifth-generation STAR model that was built for proprietary use by both The Weather Channel and Weatherscan) was still under development at the time, the channel initially operated as a national feed—similar in concept to the automated forecast segments intended for TWC's satellite viewers that aired during the network's local forecast slots—featuring current temperatures and 48-hour forecasts for seven designated regions (Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, South Central, North Central, Northwest and Southwest) and the contiguous United States, three-day "at a glance" forecasts for 35 major US cities (each organized by region), and national and regional composite radar/satellite loops.[4][5][6][7] After Weatherscan Local launched, the national feed remained available for distribution to some satellite providers and to smaller cable providers that could not afford a secondary and more technologically advanced Weatherscan STAR unit to run a localized feed of the service. (This feed was removed from most headends in 2001, and was fully discontinued by 2003 with the roll-out of the newer IntelliStar units.)

Conversion to localized service

Weatherscan officially launched its localized offering on March 31, 1999, originally consisting of five distinct automated weather information services. The first to launch with the initial rollout were Weatherscan Local (the primary service, offering a complete local weather segment every two minutes) and Weatherscan Radar (featuring a continuous 75 mi Doppler radar loop, along with severe weather alerts when warranted).[8][9][10] The three remaining feeds launched over the course of a month later that spring: Weatherscan Plus (featuring activity-specific forecasts for golf, skiing, boating, beachgoing, and business and leisure travel) debuted on April 30, 1999, followed by the launches of Weatherscan Plus Traffic (providing routinely updated traffic information along with the products featured on the main Weatherscan Plus product playlist) and Weatherscan Español (a Spanish-language version of Weatherscan Plus allowing for the inclusion of regional or international weather information) on May 31.[11]

In May 2000, Weatherscan Local folded its various services into one singular feed, based around the customized segment concept behind the Weatherscan Plus service; the specialty products featured on Weatherscan Plus and Weatherscan Español would instead be offered to cable affiiates as optional packages to provide viewers with more comprehensive weather information, while Weatherscan units also received themed backgrounds based on the regional culture (customized for densely populated areas, smaller markets and suburbs, coastal and desert areas).

Decline and shutdown

At its height, Weatherscan was available in many major US markets (reaching an estimated 22 million cable subscribers by February 2005[22][23]), though its national distribution was never as widespread as that of parent network The Weather Channel. Many cable providers offered Weatherscan on their digital tiers, although a few carried the network alongside TWC on their basic service, often giving them non-adjacent channel assignments. (Most of the network's cable affiliates listed it under the boilerplate ID "Local weather" or other identifiers on their interactive program guides, including in areas where it was carried on the same channel as TV Guide Channel's scrolling program guide.)

Verizon FiOS dropped Weatherscan and The Weather Channel from its lineup on March 10, 2015, after the two parties were unable to come to terms on a new carriage agreement and coinciding with a separate carriage agreement that brought AccuWeather Network to its systems. Verizon representatives cited the main driver of letting the agreement lapse being that many of its customers received weather information on the internet and mobile apps;[24][25]

Programming and content

Weatherscan primarily relied on information sourced from the National Weather Service (NWS) and The Weather Channel; Weatherscan relied on products issued by local NWS Weather Forecast Offices for its forecast products until November 2001, when TWC began disseminating forecast products developed in-house to the former's cable affiliates, less than a year before their rollout to the parent network's "domestic" (TWC-proprietary) WeatherStar units. Traffic information (in the form of accident and construction reports, roadway flow and average travel times for local roadways) was initially presented through the Weatherscan Traffic feed from March 1999 to May 2000; traffic products were restored on the main Weatherscan service in July 2005 through a content agreement between TWC and TrafficPulse that ran until December 2010.

The WeatherStar XL and IntelliStar units developed for use by Weatherscan utilized a different configuration than the domestic units utilized by The Weather Channel, featuring different graphics sets and additional weather products as well as being programmed to continuously provide weather information 24 hours a day (a feature not implemented on the domestic STAR units until the 2013 introduction of the "Weather All the Time" concept on all IntelliStar 2 models).[12] Each forecast loop began with an introductory screen providing the network and cable provider identification, and the name of the assigned forecast city, leading into the playlist. As with The Weather Channel's domestic STAR fleet, Weatherscan's XL and IntelliStar units were able to display a crawl (at the bottom third of the screen, which occupied the space filled by the provider ID spot from 2000 to 2003, and the regional weather and advertising crawls from 2005 onward) detailing watches, warnings and advisories issued by the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) for the local area where the unit's headend is based. (From 2000 to 2003 and from 2015 onward, instead of local NWS alert products, the crawl—which utilized different color schemes based on alert type: red for warnings, yellow for watches and orange for advisories and special weather statements—generated boilerplate hazard text directing viewers to watch The Weather Channel for additional information.)

Certain segments were introduced utilizing TWC's proprietary Vocal Local narration feature (which assembles pre-recorded audio tracks to narrate local forecast segments including current conditions and descriptive forecasts on the parent network) introduced with the WeatherStar XL fleet; these narrations were voiced by TWC staff announcer Amy Bargeron until they were removed from most routine segments on November 10, 2015.[19] (Narrations by veteran TWC meteorologist Jim Cantore and an updated warning tone were concurrently added for severe weather alerts to match those featured on the IntelliStar 2 fleet to comply with FCC requirements that critical alerts be read aloud, which the first-generation IntelliStar was incapable of providing as it lacked second audio program (SAP) support.)

Although Weatherscan, unlike The Weather Channel, did not employ any on-air talent, the service's Weatherscan XL and IntelliStar units optionally had the capability to provide audio forecasts presented by a Weather Channel meteorologist. Local advertising on Weatherscan was primarily limited to the text-based Local Ad Sales (LAS) crawls that have been a mainstay of The Weather Channel's forecast segments since its inception as well as sponsorship tags; however, affiliates had the option of running one-minute-long conventional video ad breaks in the form of the channel's forecast/datascreen-based 'Local Avails' segment with 24-hour and five-day at-a-glance weather forecasts in horizonal form and its local radar on the right corner over a small squeezed-back video window on the left for advertised businesses under the current conditions on the near bottom-left, unlike TWC, every ten minutes starting at ten minutes past the hour.[12] In the event that the STAR unit experienced errors generating the playlist, the main Weather Channel feed aired in place of Weatherscan's regular programming until the unit began rebooting.

When the localized version of the channel launched in March 1999, utilizing WeatherStar XL units to generate the forecast segments, Weatherscan originally utilized a similar product and graphical layout (featuring distinctive backgrounds specific to the channel) and Lower Display Line (LDL, showing current conditions and text-based local business and cable provider advertisements at the bottom one-tenth of the screen) as that seen on the domestic XL units; the main Weatherscan Local feed's programming consisted of the same products featured in the two-minute product "flavor" lineup offered at the time on The Weather Channel's local forecast segments.[39]

In May 2000, coinciding with the network receiving a new distinctive graphics set, Weatherscan Local restructured its segments to be built around customizable specialty weather packages that featured graphical and map-based forecasts centering on various lifestyle activities (golfing, boating and beachgoing, gardening, skiing, travel and outdoors) available to cable affiliates. (National and regional maps included in some of the packages were derived from those featured on The Weather Channel's television and online services at the time.) The primary segment lineup (featuring current conditions, forecasts, almanac data, and satellite and radar imagery) was rechristened as the "Core Package", accompanied by three new optional routine forecast packages: the "Mini-Core Package" (a limited-product variant of the "Core"), the "Extra Local Area Package" (featuring current conditions and forecasts for up to three nearby cities) and the "Spanish Forecast Package" (a limited-product translated segment intended for markets with larger HIspanic/Latino populations); routine forecast segments came in both one- and two-minute lengths (the latter running in approximate quarter-hour intervals). In addition, the LDL's observation summary feature was concurrently removed, although local ad crawls were retained. Cable affiliates had the ability to select up to five specialty packages (some of which were seasonal with no set date for their inclusion in the playlist, as they were manually added and removed by STAR technicians) to be displayed along with the default "Core Package" and any additional routine local product packages.[12] The number of product packages were pared down (from 16 to 12) and rudimentary observation summaries were restored (along with the addition of a similarly condensed forecast summary) in the form of an Upper Display Line (UDL) in February 2003, as part of a graphical revamp coinciding with the introduction of the original Weatherscan IntelliStar units.

On September 27, 2005 (as early as September 22 for areas of the Southeastern US in the path of Hurricane Rita), the Upper and Lower Display Lines were replaced by a multi-panel "L-bar" datascreen (containing a persistent network ID and the current date and time on the upper left, current observations on the middle left, and a compact radar loop screen and the provider's logo or sponsorship tags on the bottom left of the vertical sidebar; and a panel showing the descriptive 48-hour and graphical daypart and five-day forecasts, and separate crawls for local ads, and observations and forecasts for major regional cities and airports on the bottom right two-thirds), confining the main panel (with slight modifications to the 2003 faux-letterbox graphics set, and accompanied by a permanent segment rundown bar) to a smaller but prominent window at the upper middle of the screen.[40]

Routine products

WS Indicates product is featured on all Weatherscan-customized STAR systems.
XL Indicates product is featured on Weatherscan-customized WeatherStar XL systems.
IS Indicates product is featured on Weatherscan-customized IntelliStar systems.
† Indicates product originated on The Weather Channel's domestic STAR units.

Specialty packages