The Weather Channel is a cable and satellite television channel that is shown in the United States. The Weather Channel broadcasts weather newsshows and recorded weather-related documentaries 24 hours a day. The Weather Channel is most often filmed inside a studio near Atlanta, but some people working there sometimes go out to the place where the storm or weather is happening to film it. The Weather Channel also provides weather forecasts to over 700 radio stations, 50 newspapers, 30 websites, as well as mobile applications for smartphones and tablet computers. The Weather Channel is similar to a channel called The Weather Network in Canada.
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 often leave a few vacancies.
Early cable providers then devised a system where a single black and white camera, often one that was formerly used for local news production after an upgrade, would be placed on a rotating pedestal, capturing various dials and gauges on different stations to which it would pan automatically and remain in a given view for a few seconds before moving on. The different stations featured the time, temperature, barometer, 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 the same system as that used by the early Devotional Channels and 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 8pm that evening, anchored by meteorologists Bruce Edwards and André Bernier. The bulk of TWC programming consisted of a local forecast segment 8-12 times hourly. 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. The first slogan was unveiled: "We Take the Weather Seriously, But Not Ourselves."
However, 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 weathercaster, first becoming employed at WCBS-TV in New York City. Slogan was also updated to "The Cable Television Network for America's Lifestyle." This only stayed for a year, before moved to "Weatherproofing America."
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.
In 3/1986, The Weather Channel launched its fourth slogan: "You Need Us for Everything you Do" and a campaign to promote this. It 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 3-minute segment that appeared 8 times nightly 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.
Largely considered the height of the classic TWC by enthusiasts, The Weather Channel underwent a major graphical revamp (with the introduction of a new slogan, "Weather You Can Always Turn To") on March 6, 1991. Graphic elements included heavy use of gradients and the Caxton typeface. On July 3, The Weather Channel Connection, a toll-free phone service providing weather information, was launched. Originally 1-900-288-8800, the phone number was reassigned in 1992 to 1-900-WEATHER (or 1-900-932-8437), a number was also used to promote the service in on-air and print advertisements. On November 1, The Weather Channel filed for a trademark on TWC, a common shortening of the name that was sometimes seen on-air.
By 1993, The Weather Channel was available to 90% of U.S. households with cable television service. On January 10, 1994, TWC placed an order to build 1,000 units for a new STAR model known as the Weather Star Jr, a budget model developed by Wegener Communications, which builds equipment for cable headends.
1995 brought a variety of changes to TWC, setting the stage for more changes that occurred the following year. Minor graphical tweaks were made, while local forecast segments began incorporating Short Term Forecasts issued by local National Weather Service offices as the "Local Update" (which in turn destabilized flavor lineups and caused the discontinuation of narration). The 30-Day Outlook was discontinued (which was required by National Weather Service). New programs included the introductions of "WeatherScope" (a half-hourly weather discussion) and a special on how weather affected the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7. That year also featured the premiere of "Sky on Fire", a documentary on lightning. The music of Trammell Starks, used on Weatherscan and emergency cases since 2000, premiered at the end of the year with Starks' various other music pieces being used by the channel until early 2012.