* Stay up to date and prepared no matter the weather with our live radar, weather … Recover hidden weather data collected by the Navy during World War II. On June 25, 2001, The Weather Channel introduced completely redesigned introductions for its local forecast segments and forecast programs, as well as a new slogan ("Live By It"). The move to air movies on TWC had been planned for some time, even before the NBC/Blackstone/Bain acquisition. The old Weather Channel, the one beloved by weatherphiles, was worth $3.5 billion when NBC bought it. [28] Later, Landmark announced it was halting the sales of most of the other properties except for one newspaper; The Weather Channel was the only property sold by Landmark (the company would resume the sale of its other remaining assets beginning in 2012, concluding with the 2014 sale of KLAS-TV in Las Vegas to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group). 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. On March 5, 2009, TWC appointed Geoffrey Darby as Executive Vice President of Programming and Production. [40], On January 14, 2014, DirecTV became the first major pay television provider to drop The Weather Channel, as a result of the channel and the satellite provider being unable to come to terms on a new carriage agreement. The Weather Channel marked the 30th anniversary of its launch in May 2012. In September 2008, TWC launched a new program airing from 4:30am to 5am every weekend, Sunrise Weather, presented by Ray Stagich alongside Mike Seidel on Saturdays and Alex Wallace on Sundays. [20] Between 1999 and 2000, TWC aired weather observation reports from Mount Everest using battery-powered sensors.[21]. "[57][58], As part of the overhaul, The Weather Company would lay off around 50 of TWC's employees (or 3% of the channel's 1,400 staff members), including production, engineering and financial staff, while overall spending for the television channel would be reduced to focus more on the company's internet and mobile properties. 2008 started with uncertainty, as reports surfaced about sexual harassment allegations regarding on-camera meteorologist Bob Stokes. Also in 1999, The Weather Channel launched a spin-off network called Weatherscan Local (now Weatherscan), a channel offering continuous weather information 24 hours a day, which exclusively provided local forecasts generated by specialized STAR units. Radar images: National Mosaic from NCEP (Scroll down to bottom - … Multiple Storms Bringing Impacts Sunday Into Midweek. 1995 brought a variety of changes to TWC, setting the stage for more changes that occurred the following year. On the same night, Chris Warren and Jim Cantore counted down Crystal for a special Top 5. 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. Plans to revive "The Front" as a weather discussion board were proposed and scrapped that year. April 1998 saw updates to "The Front" image campaign; one of the new advertisements specifically mentioned the 36-hour text forecasts (which, at the time, were still supplied by the National Weather Service), but heralded new Local Forecast graphics. The actual value is undisclosed, but was reported to be around $300 million; the channel's non-television assets, which were separately sold to IBM two years prior, were not included in the sale. Under Darby, Abrams and Bettes were reassigned to host Your Weather Today; First Outlook was reduced by one hour to make way for Wake Up With Al, a new weather and entertainment program hosted by Today weather anchor Al Roker; the jazz music long featured during the channel's local forecast segments was also dropped and replaced with instrumental rock music at Darby's request;[33] this particular change was even confirmed by Chris Geith, the only remaining jazz artist whose music was featured in the forecast playlists, who stated that TWC had sent out a request proposing the creation of production music branded with a common signature for the 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 website is dedicated to the memory of Major Oscar Singer, author of  During the proceedings, it was revealed that Melissa Barrington, who co-anchored alongside Stokes before Andrews was assigned the duties, was also harassed by Stokes. The different stations featured the time, temperature, barometer, wind speed, wind direction, and wind chill factor.