Dish Network Drops The Weather Channel

[Cody Clair]

Satellite TV provider Dish Network says it will drop The Weather Channel from its lineup when their contract expires at at midnight in favor of its own, proprietary weather station called Weather Cast.

The network describes Weather Cast as "a new 24-hour weather service featuring live round-the-clock weather reporting, interactive forecasting, and real-time national storm tracking."

It claims it is starting the network as a reaction against The Weather Channel's move "away from weather reporting to a mix of movies and other entertainment-focused programming."

"The Weather Channel has been serving the American public for more than 28 years and viewers trust and rely on it as their weather authority," Weather Channel spokesman Shirley Powell said in a statement. "Despite negotiations over the past several months, DISH has chosen to be the first distributor to drop The Weather Channel rather than pay the standard industry rates others in the industry have already agreed to pay. We are disappointed with their decision and hopeful that we can still reach an agreement with DISH Network and bring this highly valued network back to its customers. In the meantime, we are urging our viewers to contact Direct TV or their local cable or telco provider to receive The Weather Channel. "

Source http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/20/dish-network-dropping-wea_n_584157.html

 

[Joe Nield]

It seems that TWC is fighting a losing battle. I'm sure they've seen a ratings bump from V2 (I've actually watched a little for the first time in years), but that's not going to be around forever. If Dish is offering a way to get a quick forecast and radar look without putting up with all the ancillary crap, I doubt many of their subscribers will even care about losing TWC.

 

[Coy A. Wilhelmy]

Movies

"On October 30, 2009, the Weather Channel began airing weather related movies on Friday nights. The first was The Perfect Storm, followed by March of the Penguins, Misery and Deep Blue Sea[13]; this caused criticism from many viewers and those in the media, who have criticized The Weather Channel for deviating from its format of running weather information 24 hours a day and as some of the films were not directly tied to weather. After December 2009, these weekly movies were discontinued for the time being in favor of running Weather Center, which already aired in the entire primetime slot during the rest of the work week. Despite the controversy, the Friday night film block resumed on March 26, 2010 with Into Thin Air: Deaths on Everest under the title "Flick and a Forecast." The Weather Channel meteorologist Jen Carfagno co-hosts the shows every Friday night. The controversy further escalated on Friday, April 30, 2010, when The Weather Channel went ahead with airing the 1992 film Wind (a film about yachting that had little to do with weather, contrary to its name) at the same time a tornado outbreak was occurring in Missouri and Arkansas. Meteorologist Jim Cantore publicly stated on his Twitter profile that he was "misled" into believing the channel would cancel the movie in favor of tornado coverage and issued a public apology for the snafu.[14] TWC continued showing the movie while it was giving special "dual-feed" updates to Intellistar units in the area, But with the affected area being rural and having legacy STARs (WeatherSTAR XLs, 4000s etc.), or satellite which do not have the dual-feed feature that Intellistars do, this was part of what led to the snafu."

- Maybe this had a little something to do with it.

 

[john.sibley]

I have Dish. TWC won't be missed.

 

[B. Hey]

Good thing I have Directv. But shouldn't TWC be about the weather and not movies! Isn't that why you tune in is to check out the weather?

 

[Jeff Passner]

Nobody watches on Friday night.... it's about ratings. Unless there's a hurricane about to hit Florida no one watches. TWC is in trouble. I can't believe it's still on in this age of the weather info everywhere.

 

[rdale]

Good thing I have Directv. But shouldn't TWC be about the weather and not movies! Isn't that why you tune in is to check out the weather?

So you're glad you have DTV so you can watch TWC - but you're upset that TWC doesn't do weather 24x7? Something doesn't jive

I've heard good things about this new network. And no Friday movies!

 

[Joel Wright]

Watched it a little bit earlier. They were showing radar images that were well over 3 hours old. Hopefully it's some early bugs that will be worked out.

Definitely has potential though. Their presentation is pretty decent, and the fact that they will actually present weather information 24/7 is fundamentally way ahead of TWC.

 

[Keith B. Brown]

Thank God for small favors. I usually don't rant, but TWC has become so ridiculous I can't even believe they can still call themselves The "Weather" Channel. It was bad already, but after NBC took it over, what a joke! It has become the commercial channel, punctuated by a few mostly meaningless segments about things that have little to do with the weather, followed by movies during tornadoes and severe storms. Not to mention the silly comments the OCMs make and their guy chasing in the field (not Forbes) that seems to have no idea what he is looking at most of the time or where to be when chasing. Too bad I don't have DN.

 

[Matthew Havin]

FYI... Weather Cast is on a tape delay. This is why content is 3 hours old at times.

 

[Jason Foster]

LMAO that dish actually thinks they are going to compete. Especially considering the future partnership between comcast and NBC. I'm sure comcast will be sure to do what's necessary to quash any hopes for dish. Dish has such limited resources, I wonder if there is even a chance for them to make much out of this. I would suspect that some networks will drop weather networks all together and just farm it out to accuweather or weatherdata or something like that.

A wait and see....

 

[D. McGee]

Here is a blog from the founder...

http://pauldouglasweather.blogspot.com/

 

[Jacob Ferden]

LMAO that dish actually thinks they are going to compete. Especially considering the future partnership between comcast and NBC. I'm sure comcast will be sure to do what's necessary to quash any hopes for dish. Dish has such limited resources, I wonder if there is even a chance for them to make much out of this. I would suspect that some networks will drop weather networks all together and just farm it out to accuweather or weatherdata or something like that.

A wait and see....

Couple of things: First off, the NBC thing, IMO, is not that relevant because NBC has been a joke / dead horse for a while now. Look back at their underperforming Olympics coverage, the Tonight Show debacle, and a number of other examples.

As far as Dish vs. Comcast, obviously Dish does not have the resources to compete head-to-head with them. But I question what Comcast is planning on doing with TWC once they have control of that entity. I would almost be willing to bet that they'll just decide to phase it out completely, or scale it back to something more like what NBC Weather Plus used to be.

 

[Jim Zandonai]

A while back I think I started a thread on the TWC movie thing..bad move no doubt. If dish sticks to their guns it will be a first to drop something that big. I agree with them on their assesment of TWC. It has gone way down from its former self. Its' former HGTV look and now to the ‘Today’ show look didn't help. However, lately possibly because of V2 and the recent severe WX they have done a great job covering the events with Dr. Forbes and Cantorie. BUT will it continue is the question ? I know nothing about WeatherNation though besides what I recently read. I would love to see a alt. feed like TWC2 with Forbes and Cantorie but its all about ratings and viewers and $$. TWC was trying to reach millions of casual viewers and its not geared for people like us in general..with the exception of recent events/coverage. Interesting move though.TWC would take a hit from losing Dish but it still has Cox and Comcast cable and DTV.

 

[Joe Dorn]

RIP TWC, bye bye DSS, hello Dish...