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History of The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television channel owned by Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios that focuses on national and international weather information - although in recent years, the channel has also incorporated entertainment-based programs related to weather on its schedule. This article details the history of the channel, which dates back its founding to around 1980.
Prior to the channel's launch, the original concept for providing continuous weather reports to the public over television stations stretched as far back as the late 1950s and early 1960s on the varying incarnations of CATV. Through those systems, which typically brought in up to a dozen stations to the viewer from across the region, twelve slots on a cable dial would frequently leave a few vacancies.
To take advantage of the unused bandwidth early cable providers devised a system where a single black and white camera, often one that had seen former service in local news production but was unused after an upgrade, would be placed on a rotating pedestal, capturing various dials and gauges on different stations. These channel feeds (to which the camera would pan automatically, remaining in a given view for a few seconds before moving on) largely featured the time, temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, and wind chill factor. Slides with the day's complete forecast, brief news headlines, and community events often drawn up by the station's art department rounded out the package. This was à similar system to that used by early devotional channels for the "Stations of the Cross" during the Christmas season.
The Weather Channel itself was the brainchild of veteran television meteorologist John Coleman (former chief meteorologist at WLS-TV in Chicago and Good Morning America forecaster), who took his idea to Frank Batten, the then-chief executive officer of Landmark Communications. A major part of the plan for the new network was that it would be able to provide localized weather information to its viewers. This would be done through the use of specialized computer units, known as WeatherStars ("STAR" being an acronym for "Satellite Transponder Addressable Receiver"), which would be installed at the headends of cable providers that agreed to carry the channel. These WeatherStars were able to insert current local conditions, forecasts and weather warnings over the national feed, with the weather data being received from the vertical blanking interval of the TWC video feed and via satellite, which is then transmitted to the WeatherStar unit; the WeatherStar systems would also be capable of adding or removing segments seen during each local forecast segment, and providing other forms of non-forecast data (primarily local contact and address information for businesses advertised on the channel's national feed, which the STAR unit overlaid on a static graphic seen after certain commercials). The Weather Channel, Inc. was founded in Atlanta, Georgia on July 18, 1980.
The Weather Channel launched on Sunday, May 2, 1982. Programming began with an introduction to the channel by Batten and Coleman, which led into an inauguration ceremony that launched the channel's first official broadcast at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time that evening, anchored by meteorologists Bruce Edwards and André Bernier. The channel originally focused on strictly providing weather reports and other meteorological information for the United States and other countries. The Weather Channel originally gathered its national and regional forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its local forecasts were sourced from the various National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices around the country. After only one year in the role, in 1983, John Coleman was forced out as the channel's president and CEO; at that time, he returned to his previous occupation as a television weather anchor, first becoming employed at WCBS-TV in New York City.
The original Weather Star I model often interfered with the channel 2 signal at the cable headend; this issue was fixed with the upgrade to the Weather Star II in January 1984. The channel later rolled out Weather Star III, the third-generation STAR unit, to cable providers – which began upgrading to the system in early 1986; the Star III included additional hardware improvements, and also added several extra forecast and observation features.
On June 29, 1986, The Weather Channel switched to an anchor format, and was relaunched as The New Weather Channel. Meteorologist Charlie Welsh said "Good afternoon everyone and welcome to The New Weather Channel. We're covering the weather for you everything you do". The campaign included a custom lyrical theme (which was remixed in 1989) – two versions of which were created: a full one-minute theme that was rarely seen on-air, and a more commonly seen 30-second version. In 1989, the channel introduced Prime Time Tonight, a three-minute segment that appeared eight times daily from 7:57 to 11:27 p.m., which served as guide to programs airing on other cable channels and provided airtime information and video clips.
1990 saw the introduction of the first Weather Star 4000 models, which similar to the Weather Star III, originally generated only text-based products. Radar imagery was added to the units in June of that year, with graphical backgrounds being introduced in July, making the 4000 the first STAR to be capable of generating graphics and the first to incorporate the channel's logo in the forecast segments. Also in 1990, The Weather Channel began including snow condition reports at five minutes after the hour.
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History of The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television channel owned by Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios that focuses on national and international weather information - although in recent years, the channel has also incorporated entertainment-based programs related to weather on its schedule. This article details the history of the channel, which dates back its founding to around 1980.
Prior to the channel's launch, the original concept for providing continuous weather reports to the public over television stations stretched as far back as the late 1950s and early 1960s on the varying incarnations of CATV. Through those systems, which typically brought in up to a dozen stations to the viewer from across the region, twelve slots on a cable dial would frequently leave a few vacancies.
To take advantage of the unused bandwidth early cable providers devised a system where a single black and white camera, often one that had seen former service in local news production but was unused after an upgrade, would be placed on a rotating pedestal, capturing various dials and gauges on different stations. These channel feeds (to which the camera would pan automatically, remaining in a given view for a few seconds before moving on) largely featured the time, temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, and wind chill factor. Slides with the day's complete forecast, brief news headlines, and community events often drawn up by the station's art department rounded out the package. This was à similar system to that used by early devotional channels for the "Stations of the Cross" during the Christmas season.
The Weather Channel itself was the brainchild of veteran television meteorologist John Coleman (former chief meteorologist at WLS-TV in Chicago and Good Morning America forecaster), who took his idea to Frank Batten, the then-chief executive officer of Landmark Communications. A major part of the plan for the new network was that it would be able to provide localized weather information to its viewers. This would be done through the use of specialized computer units, known as WeatherStars ("STAR" being an acronym for "Satellite Transponder Addressable Receiver"), which would be installed at the headends of cable providers that agreed to carry the channel. These WeatherStars were able to insert current local conditions, forecasts and weather warnings over the national feed, with the weather data being received from the vertical blanking interval of the TWC video feed and via satellite, which is then transmitted to the WeatherStar unit; the WeatherStar systems would also be capable of adding or removing segments seen during each local forecast segment, and providing other forms of non-forecast data (primarily local contact and address information for businesses advertised on the channel's national feed, which the STAR unit overlaid on a static graphic seen after certain commercials). The Weather Channel, Inc. was founded in Atlanta, Georgia on July 18, 1980.
The Weather Channel launched on Sunday, May 2, 1982. Programming began with an introduction to the channel by Batten and Coleman, which led into an inauguration ceremony that launched the channel's first official broadcast at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time that evening, anchored by meteorologists Bruce Edwards and André Bernier. The channel originally focused on strictly providing weather reports and other meteorological information for the United States and other countries. The Weather Channel originally gathered its national and regional forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its local forecasts were sourced from the various National Weather Service Weather Forecast Offices around the country. After only one year in the role, in 1983, John Coleman was forced out as the channel's president and CEO; at that time, he returned to his previous occupation as a television weather anchor, first becoming employed at WCBS-TV in New York City.
The original Weather Star I model often interfered with the channel 2 signal at the cable headend; this issue was fixed with the upgrade to the Weather Star II in January 1984. The channel later rolled out Weather Star III, the third-generation STAR unit, to cable providers – which began upgrading to the system in early 1986; the Star III included additional hardware improvements, and also added several extra forecast and observation features.
On June 29, 1986, The Weather Channel switched to an anchor format, and was relaunched as The New Weather Channel. Meteorologist Charlie Welsh said "Good afternoon everyone and welcome to The New Weather Channel. We're covering the weather for you everything you do". The campaign included a custom lyrical theme (which was remixed in 1989) – two versions of which were created: a full one-minute theme that was rarely seen on-air, and a more commonly seen 30-second version. In 1989, the channel introduced Prime Time Tonight, a three-minute segment that appeared eight times daily from 7:57 to 11:27 p.m., which served as guide to programs airing on other cable channels and provided airtime information and video clips.
1990 saw the introduction of the first Weather Star 4000 models, which similar to the Weather Star III, originally generated only text-based products. Radar imagery was added to the units in June of that year, with graphical backgrounds being introduced in July, making the 4000 the first STAR to be capable of generating graphics and the first to incorporate the channel's logo in the forecast segments. Also in 1990, The Weather Channel began including snow condition reports at five minutes after the hour.