TV Weather Compromised?

The possibility of a Time Warner Cable and Comcast merger may spell bad news for WeatherNation and other competition of The Weather Channel which has long been the dominate TV weather station. An article in The Washington Post brings to light just how powerful The Weather Channel has become:

“The Weather Channel has become a dominant force in the private sector weather market, most notably since it purchased the website Weather Underground as well as Weather Central in 2012. The Weather Company also owns the data provider Weather Services International (WSI), as well as its website, Intellicast.”

The competition between the two companies greatly increased when WeatherNation replaced The Weather Channel in the DirecTV lineup. However, The Weather Channel fought back by using its power to try and regain control. WeatherNation recently started a petition to block the merger of the two cable companies. A segment of the petition is stated in the article by The Washington Post:

“On December 17, just a day after WeatherNation appeared in the DirecTV lineup, the petition states: “The Weather Channel (through WSI) engaged in what seemed an attempt to use its leverage over a critical input to stifle the new competition.”  At that time, WSI, a data vendor that many local and national media organizations use to disseminate weather information, sent a draft to WeatherNation demanding a subscription increase of 57.5 times the amount that WeatherNation had previously been paying.  The price hike was “astonishingly unreasonable” and “would have driven WeatherNation out of business,” the petition states.”

Unsurprisingly, there has been a fair share of backlash between the two companies. The Weather Company CEO David Kenny belittled WeatherNation by saying:

“[DirecTV] is trading safety for increased profits and replacing the experience and expertise of The Weather Channel with a cheap startup that does weather forecasting on a three-hour taped loop, has no field coverage, no weather experts — certainly not any on par with The Weather Channel network’s industry-recognized experts.”