Stormy Weather Brings Bright Ratings to Network

A massive storm like Hurricane Bonnie represents the Super Bowl and Academy Awards rolled into one for the Weather Channel--the cable network that uses the promotional slogan, “If hell freezes over, you’ll hear it here first.”

The Atlanta-based operation has already charted a ratings spike in response to the storm, with viewing levels rising sharply on Saturday and Sunday. Based on figures from Nielsen Media Research, the channel averaged nearly 250,000 viewers each night last week, an increase of more than 50% compared to the corresponding period a year ago.

“As an organization, our mission is to prepare people and warn them,” Joe Conboy, the channel’s vice president of program operations, said Tuesday. “For us, this is as big as it gets.”

Despite thousands of weather enthusiasts (known internally as “trackers”) who tune in on a regular basis, viewing of the network inevitably peaks when the weather turns dangerous. The channel’s audience record was established in 1996, when Hurricane Fran prompted more than 2 million homes across the United States to watch during a 15-minute span.

While ratings data from this week remain unavailable, anecdotal evidence--as well as what the channel said was an unprecedented number of 44.1 million hits on its Internet Web site Monday--suggests the audience is continuing to swell.

Not only does the Weather Channel experience increased viewing during major storms, but other media outlets come calling. CBS-TV’s “This Morning” and ABC-TV’s “Nightline” have aligned with the channel as part of the latest weather alert--the latter planning to link up with one of the three highly sophisticated satellite truck crews the Weather Channel deployed along the North Carolina coastline. A syndicated programming service will also feed information from the channel to television stations.

“It’s exciting,” said Steve Lyons, a meteorologist who spent four years at the National Hurricane Center before joining the cable network this spring. “There’s a lot of responsibility--if you say something wrong, you can really foul people up, but you can help them out as well.”

Based in an 8,500-square-foot forecast center opened last year, The Weather Channel staff includes more than 80 meteorologists. Introduced in 1982, the channel became profitable within a few years and is now available in nearly every home with cable (about 65 million households), reaching several million more via satellite dishes. It is owned by Landmark Communications, which also owns the Travel Channel and several newspapers.

Lyons, a former UCLA professor and weather forecaster at a Ventura County TV station, got bit by the weather bug himself growing up locally as a surfer in Garden Grove. Dispensing weather news live, Lyons admitted he still struggles a bit trying not to confound his audience with scientific jargon, at times compromising by saying the technical terms, then translating them for viewers.

Because of the demand for the most recent storm news, forecasts are updated constantly using data from the National Weather Service, more than 1,500 reporting sites and a state-of-the-art computer system. “You sort of have to recalculate everything every time you get new information,” Lyons said.

As yet, all-news channels such as CNN and MSNBC haven’t provided extensive live coverage of the current weather system. As a CNN spokesman put it, referring to President Clinton’s latest political crisis, “The storm that we’re monitoring right now is the storm in Washington.”

Weather Channel executives cite a wide range of people who view the network, including travelers and those who want to check on the weather where a loved one resides.

While the daily coverage might seem routine relative to a breaking story such as a hurricane, staffers say they don’t approach their jobs that way.

“We never think of it quite like that,” Conboy said. “Since we do this for a living, we try to enjoy it all.”