It has been years since I regularly watched "The Weather Channel," and browsing through the guide the other day, I noticed that there were blocks of its programming now identified as "Weather Underground." When I actually decided to watch it for a few minutes, I noticed that the entire theming of the channel now seems to be oriented more toward the WeatherUnderground property (even down to the #wuusa hashtag) while the "Weather Channel" theming was limited to just the logo at the bottom next to the "mini forecast" icons.

I know there's all kinds of history between recent acquisitions/sales of TWC, WU, NBC/GE, and the like, but I can't say I heard anything about TWC getting rebranded. I wonder if this is a formal notion to leverage the old WeatherUnderground name as a broader weather media platform or if perhaps the TWC name doesn't carry the same "name power" it might have previously. Anyway, the theme change seemed deliberate and I was curious if anyone had heard anything more specific about it.

If their past is any indication of the future, they may be trying not so much to 'rebrand' but to sort of spin off, for lack of a better word. Weather Underground doing the weather, The Weather Channel doing the "when tornadoes attack" crap. There was a period of time when that was most likely what you were going to see when you tuned in and someone (I think DirecTV) called them out on it.

I think the Weather Channel was bought by CNN few years ago.

I think the Weather Channel was bought by CNN few years ago.

The Weather Channel and Weather Underground are both owned by The Weather Company. The Weather Company is owned by IBM (http://www.theweathercompany.com/).

Weather Channel bought Weather Underground in 2012 and then changed the corporate name to Weather Company.

If their past is any indication of the future, they may be trying not so much to 'rebrand' but to sort of spin off, for lack of a better word. Weather Underground doing the weather, The Weather Channel doing the "when tornadoes attack" crap. There was a period of time when that was most likely what you were going to see when you tuned in and someone (I think DirecTV) called them out on it.

Alas, it seems no "classic cable" staple ever survives doing what it started doing - MTV showing videos, TWC doing the weather, TLC doing, well, learning thigns, Food Network airing interesting cooking shows....now it's just channel after channel of crap. And they wonder why people are cutting the cord.

And all that interesting **** is completely unavailable. Sad, very sad.

I loved the early Weather Channel. Always sponsored by Days Inn and Toro Lawn Equipment! They would do a weather segment then the screen would go purple with local weather typed on the screen like in MS-DOS. It was cool.

I loved the early Weather Channel. Always sponsored by Days Inn and Toro Lawn Equipment! They would do a weather segment then the screen would go purple with local weather typed on the screen like in MS-DOS. It was cool.

Here's your daily dose of TWC nostalgia, then...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HOSM-ap6BI

I stopped watching The "Weather" Channel back in 2008-2009 after NBC bought it, and instead of covering severe weather outbreaks it was showing movies, some reality series filmed in Alaska and other junk. Granted, it did cover the 2011 outbreaks quite well, but overall it's a channel I mostly ignore these days. Luckily I get Weather Nation, which reminds me of the old weather channel quite a lot. WN actually covers the weather in all areas of the U.S. and not just New York City or Dallas or Atlanta. You'll regularly see Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Little Rock and those other "unimportant" cities get weather coverage when they cover the southern region, and they do it quite well. Even show a camera on the OU campus quite often. And not just when the weather's bad either.

The Weather Channel and Weather Underground are both owned by The Weather Company. The Weather Company is owned by IBM (http://www.theweathercompany.com/).

I checked it out. The Weather Channel and Weather Company is owned by NBCUniversal.

Well, my understanding is that it's a weird complicated mix. I'm not 100% on the details, but here is my rough summary:

The Weather Company used to be the parent company of The Weather Channel, and The Weather Company used to be owned by a larger group of people, including NBCUniversal. The Weather Channel used to do all the data gathering and processing and other actual meteorological things that was used in their broadcasts, but over time more and more of that work was transitioned over to The Weather Company with The Weather Channel focusing more on the production side of things. The Weather Company branched out beyond just being a cable network, and started to do more work online, with apps, providing information to other companies, etc. Eventually this resulted in the group of owners of The Weather Company selling the company to IBM, but retaining the physical cable channel and licensing back the rights to The Weather Channel from IBM. NBCUniversal (and the other owners) also license the weather data from IBM, but they are in charge of the production and programming of The Weather Channel.

With the purchase of The Weather Company, IBM acquired the website, the apps, all the data gathering and processing infrastructure, and Weather Underground. The Weather Company does pretty much all the actual data crunching and forecasting, with the fancy Watson computer being leveraged to do a lot of the crunching, and licenses that data out to many people. The Weather Company retained the rights to all their former brands, which is why weather.com, TWC app, and The Weather Channel all have the same The Weather Channel branding, even though they are operated by different owners. Weather Underground also continues to operate their own brand inside The Weather Company, including a separate website. They also produce their own programming which is licensed to and aired by NBCUniversal on The Weather Channel.

tl;dr

The Weather Company owns the rights to The Weather Channel brands and does all the actual weather related data crunching.
NBCUniversal owns a cable channel, and licenses The Weather Channel brand and data from The Weather Company, and produce their own programming.
The Weather Company owns Weather Underground.
The Weather Underground produces their own programming, which is licensed to and aired on NBCUniversal's channel.

I checked it out. The Weather Channel and Weather Company is owned by NBCUniversal.

Dig a little deeper. NBCUniversal (and the other owners) sold to IBM and now leases the data and Weather Channel name/branding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Company

Weather channel seems to have devolved into as much of an advocacy channel for climate change and pontificates how we need to return to a preindustrial agrarian existence to "save the planet" or parish in the near future.

I do have to admit, their show, "SOS: how to survive" is worth a watch if you have any interest in such, OTher standards such as, "Weather goes viral" are a vast wasteland. . .

I have the app on my phone so I know what to wear tomorrow. I don't need the channel. One of these days, I'm going full streaming and will no longer subsidize channels that I never watch.

Its not surprising that the weather channel has trouble finding enough interesting content for the entire day. People have plenty of places to get weather news from. That just leaves the weather channel's only option is to be a science channel, but there is already a Discovery Channel for that along with its sister stations. Even Discovery Channel has had to resort to showing reality tv type of shows these days.

Here's your daily dose of TWC nostalgia, then...
[snipped video]


And there are fans who go so far as to recreate the Weatherstar format:

https://youtu.be/qu5_WbG_8sw
https://youtu.be/vlOqgZnRmPw

Buncha these videos. Even an archived stream, and *bloopers*! Bloopers are a thing with the old 3 and 4000, I guess. I remember that this old format continued on some smaller cable systems after Cox changed to the shiny new one (though still with the great smooth jazz); I would go to a friend's and their provider would have the old format when flipping channels, and it was like going back to 1985 in 1998.

The Weather Company owns Weather Underground.
The Weather Underground produces their own programming, which is licensed to and aired on NBCUniversal's channel.
Weather Underground has been going downhill in its offerings this year. It quit having a NOAA weather station net. It will cease uploading weather webcams on Dec. 15. Other services provided are more unreliable than ever. What it needs to discontinue is Flash and use a more modern way of providing weather data. Apparently, WU can't make money with voluntarily provided weather data from across the country and probably figures developing it's own programming is more profitable.

Byron Allen buys TWC.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/funnyman-byron-allen-buys-the-weather-channel-for-dollar300-million/ar-BBKzqY7?li=BBnbfcL

Byron Allen buys TWC.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/funnyman-byron-allen-buys-the-weather-channel-for-dollar300-million/ar-BBKzqY7?li=BBnbfcL

TWC is a mess. They keep a TV at work focused on it constantly and it borders on the unwatchable.

The golden age of TWC was when their primary focus was weather. Now, they've got all the other non-weather shows on, and it's ridiculous at times. I've seen them having reality shows on while there are tornadoes occurring. The best thing TWC could do is go back to what they were in the 90s and early 2000s.