Frank Batten Put the Weather Channel On the Radar of Millions
Everybody talks about the weather, but Frank Batten did something about it.
Mr. Batten, who died Thursday at 82, created the Weather Channel, fulfilling an ancient human curiosity about all things meteorological as cable television was emerging.
The national forecasting network, which includes reports of local weather conditions, is available in an estimated 101.7 million U.S. homes, second only to Time Warner Inc.'s TBS, according to the media-research firm SNL Kagan.
"It serves basic human needs rather than trendy interests," Mr. Batten once said.
But ubiquitous and necessary as it may seem today, the forecast for the Weather Channel was anything but sunny in its early days.
The network began as the brainchild of John Coleman, at the time the weatherman on ABC's "Good Morning America." Mr. Coleman sought funding from Mr. Batten, chairman of Landmark Communications Inc., a Norfolk, Va.-based media firm whose properties included TeleCable Corp., an early cable company he had founded in 1964 that had about 250,000 subscribers in 14 states.
The Weather Channel negotiated a free-content agreement with the National Weather Service and launched in 1982 from studios in Atlanta -- the location chosen in part because the weather there was generally mild.
Mr. Batten said at the time that he invested in the concept because his existing cable customers flipped to channels offering rudimentary weather information -- usually just temperature and precipitation -- more frequently than they did to news or sports.
But advertisers didn't cotton to the concept. Even its own managers spoofed it by inventing a fictional network called the Time Channel: "The exact time whenever you want it!" Within a year of its launch, the Weather Channel was hemorrhaging money and Mr. Batten predicted he might shutter it amid a cable industry shakeout.
As detailed in Mr. Batten's memoir, "The Weather Channel: The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon," the network was saved when other cable operators agreed to pay a monthly fee of between three and five cents per viewer. More programming content helped cable operators remain attractive to bankers...
... During the 1960s, he acquired a number of other newspapers and television stations, and founded TeleCable. At its height, the company employed 10,000 people and had revenue of nearly $2 billion. Mr. Batten also served as chairman of the Associated Press from 1982 to 1987.
Mr. Batten retired as chairman of Landmark in 1998, turning the reins over to his son, Frank Batten Jr...
Read entire article at The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Batten, who died Thursday at 82, created the Weather Channel, fulfilling an ancient human curiosity about all things meteorological as cable television was emerging.
The national forecasting network, which includes reports of local weather conditions, is available in an estimated 101.7 million U.S. homes, second only to Time Warner Inc.'s TBS, according to the media-research firm SNL Kagan.
"It serves basic human needs rather than trendy interests," Mr. Batten once said.
But ubiquitous and necessary as it may seem today, the forecast for the Weather Channel was anything but sunny in its early days.
The network began as the brainchild of John Coleman, at the time the weatherman on ABC's "Good Morning America." Mr. Coleman sought funding from Mr. Batten, chairman of Landmark Communications Inc., a Norfolk, Va.-based media firm whose properties included TeleCable Corp., an early cable company he had founded in 1964 that had about 250,000 subscribers in 14 states.
The Weather Channel negotiated a free-content agreement with the National Weather Service and launched in 1982 from studios in Atlanta -- the location chosen in part because the weather there was generally mild.
Mr. Batten said at the time that he invested in the concept because his existing cable customers flipped to channels offering rudimentary weather information -- usually just temperature and precipitation -- more frequently than they did to news or sports.
But advertisers didn't cotton to the concept. Even its own managers spoofed it by inventing a fictional network called the Time Channel: "The exact time whenever you want it!" Within a year of its launch, the Weather Channel was hemorrhaging money and Mr. Batten predicted he might shutter it amid a cable industry shakeout.
As detailed in Mr. Batten's memoir, "The Weather Channel: The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon," the network was saved when other cable operators agreed to pay a monthly fee of between three and five cents per viewer. More programming content helped cable operators remain attractive to bankers...
... During the 1960s, he acquired a number of other newspapers and television stations, and founded TeleCable. At its height, the company employed 10,000 people and had revenue of nearly $2 billion. Mr. Batten also served as chairman of the Associated Press from 1982 to 1987.
Mr. Batten retired as chairman of Landmark in 1998, turning the reins over to his son, Frank Batten Jr...