Weatherscan
Weatherscan was an American digital cable and satellite television network that offered uninterrupted local weather information. A spinoff of The Weather Channel, the automated service—which based its format on the local forecast segments that have been a mainstay of its parent network since TWC launched in May 1982—provided viewers with a continuous loop of current observations, and routine and specialized forecasts for their respective area in a graphical format; the segments were generated by a customized WeatherStar unit installed at the cable provider's headend.
Weatherscan—which was primarily intended for digital cable subscribers, although it was carried on basic cable tiers and, from 2011 to 2015, to subscribers of satellite provider Dish Network in selected markets—was originally launched as a national feed on July 28, 1998, under the ownership of Landmark Communications, and began operating as a localized service on March 31, 1999. The network and other TWC assets were sold to a consortium of NBCUniversal, and private equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital in 2008, and later to Entertainment Studios in 2018; Weatherscan ceased operations on December 12, 2022, largely the result of declining national distribution over the previous decade.
History
Initial launch as a national feed
In March 1998, Landmark Communications announced plans to launch a spinoff of The Weather Channel that would provide customized weather forecasts to digital cable subscribers; Landmark signed an agreement with Tele-Communications, Inc. to distribute the service on the provider's Headend in the Sky digital cable multiplex service starting that summer. Weatherscan launched on participating TCI systems on July 28, 1998; as the Weather Star XL was still under development at the time, the channel initially operated as a national feed—similar in concept to the automated forecast segments intended for TWC's satellite viewers that aired during the network's local forecast slots—featuring current temperatures and 48-hour forecasts for seven designated regions and the contiguous United States, three-day "at a glance" forecasts for 35 major U.S. cities, and national and regional composite radar/satellite loops. After Weatherscan Local launched, the national feed remained available for distribution to some satellite providers and to smaller cable providers that could not afford a secondary and more technologically advanced Weatherscan STAR unit to run a localized feed of the service.Conversion to localized service
Weatherscan officially launched its localized offering on March 31, 1999, originally consisting of five distinct automated weather information services. The first to launch with the initial rollout were Weatherscan Local and Weatherscan Radar. The three remaining feeds launched over the course of a month later that spring: Weatherscan Plus debuted on April 30, 1999, followed by the launches of Weatherscan Plus Traffic and Weatherscan Español on May 31.In May 2000, Weatherscan Local folded its various services into one singular feed, based around the customized segment concept behind the Weatherscan Plus service; the specialty products featured on Weatherscan Plus and Weatherscan Español would instead be offered to cable affiiates as optional packages to provide viewers with more comprehensive weather information, while Weatherscan units also received themed backgrounds based on the regional culture. The XL and IntelliStar units developed for Weatherscan were configured differently from The Weather Channel's domestic units, operating on custom software to generate content for the Weatherscan service, which features different graphics schemes, and the capability to incorporate additional forecast products and display weather information on a continuous basis.
In August 2000, Landmark reached carriage deals with Comcast to offer Weatherscan Local on its digital tier in selected markets. Distribution of the network expanded further in February 2001 through deals with TCI successor AT&T Broadband and Cox Communications. In December 2001, Weatherscan Local began expanding its distribution to additional Comcast markets and entered into a carriage deal with Charter Communications; by the end of that year, Weatherscan was available to an estimated 3.3 million cable subscribers. In 2003, Landmark began replacing the proprietary Weatherscan XL units with the newer sixth-generation STAR model, the IntelliStar, which debuted on the network on February 28.
On July 7, 2008, Landmark announced it would sell The Weather Channel, Weatherscan and related assets to a consortium of NBC Universal and private equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital—later incorporated as The Weather Company—for $3.5 billion.
On June 29, 2011, Dish Network became the first satellite provider to offer Weatherscan on their lineup, filling the channel slot previously occupied by the short-lived network The Weather Cast, which was created to replace The Weather Channel on its lineup during a May 2010 carriage dispute with the satellite provider; the DIsh Weatherscan feed, which was formatted similarly to the cable version, provided regionalized weather information for cities within of a given metropolitan area..
Decline and shutdown
At its height, Weatherscan was available in many major U.S. markets, though its national distribution was never as widespread as that of parent network The Weather Channel. Many cable providers offered Weatherscan on their digital tiers, although a few carried the network alongside TWC on their basic service, often giving them non-adjacent channel assignments.Verizon FiOS dropped Weatherscan and The Weather Channel from its lineup on March 10, 2015, after the two parties were unable to come to terms on a new carriage agreement and coinciding with a separate carriage agreement that brought AccuWeather Network to its systems. Verizon representatives cited the main driver of letting the agreement lapse being that many of its customers received weather information on the internet and mobile apps; FiOS replaced Weatherscan with WeatherBug's set-top "widget" in some of its markets. This was followed on June 24 by Dish Network's removal of the regionalized Weatherscan feed in selected markets in favor of TWC competitor WeatherNation. Comcast began removing Weatherscan from its cable systems in October 2017, with its remaining markets having dropped the network by December 10 of that year.
On March 22, 2018, Entertainment Studios announced it would acquire The Weather Channel's television assets from The Weather Company. The actual value was not disclosed, 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.
The successor parents of The Weather Channel's assets had done little to upgrade Weatherscan after the network's September 2005 graphical update, even as TWC began upgrading its domestic STAR units to the second-generation IntelliStar fleet starting with the rollout of the original IntelliStar 2 units in July 2010; however, the network continued to be offered to cable providers for several years afterward. While the domestic first-generation IntelliStars were decommissioned on November 16, 2015, and replaced by newer IntelliStar 2 models, Weatherscan continued to run on its original proprietary IntelliStar units until the service's shutdown. Additionally, because technical constraints with the early-2000s-era IntelliStar technology in use made upgrades to the format infeasible, Weatherscan was never presented in high definition, unlike most American television news and weather services operating by the time of the network's shutdown. Many of these remaining first-generation IntelliStars were starting to experience the effects of slowly failing capacitors, as their motherboards were manufactured during the capacitor plague era of the early 2000s, and most of these proprietary Weatherscan models were not expected to remain sustainably functional within the next few years. Addressing issues with these aging units ultimately became impractical as Weather Group Television technicians stopped providing technical support or replacement units for the network's cable affiliates as early as 2021.
In a September 2022 letter to the National Content & Technology Cooperative, of which most of the network's remaining cable affiliates were members, Weather Group Television announced its intention to discontinue Weatherscan in the service's remaining markets no later than December 9, 2022, with a preference to cease offering it sooner rather than later. The company cited declining viewership, the wide availability of local weather information online and on mobile apps, and the aging first-generation IntelliStar equipment as the main reasons for its decision to discontinue the service, which were also cited as what ultimately led to larger pay television providers deciding to drop the channel, limiting carriage of Weatherscan to small to mid-size cable affiliates from December 2017 onward. The remaining providers with operating Weatherscan IntelliStar units exercised their options to either offer in-house local weather services, switch to similar national networks like AccuWeather Network, WeatherNation and Fox Weather; or eliminate the channel space entirely. Weatherscan was officially discontinued on December 12, 2022, three days after the original end-of-service date, when the last unit was believed to be decommissioned on that day.
In light of Weatherscan's closure, many fan-based spiritual successors take its place. Attempts to simulate the design of Weatherscan by hobbyists date as far back as 2003. For Weatherscan's most recognizable design that lasted until its shutdown, real-time projects date as early as 2018, kickstarted by a program based mostly off of JavaScript. Multiple contributions to said program were made over time, bringing way to newer projects that are currently accessible and maintained, along with open archival efforts of the original software. In addition, individuals in possession of the original hardware have gathered the necessary resources to revitalize the Weatherscan software, often being exhibited at Vintage Computer Festival events.