Fox, never known as a corporate shrinking violet, intends to promote Fox Weather during football telecasts on its broadcast network and via Fox News. Weather Channel, owned by influential entrepreneur Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios, announced months ago it was planning a more intense focus on changes in the environment, citing consumers’ rising interest in climate change. Indeed, the battle for weather aficionados is likely to create a clash. You have your top ten weather apps and hundreds of niche free apps and pay apps.” But the sheer number of weather outlets, she says, “shows you consumers are going from platform to platform for the weather information they want,” and a smart company can gather more of it under one umbrella. Even Berg acknowledges that “the marketplace is overcrowded. Many companies have found a business in weather, including The Weather Channel, which the market-research firm Kagan, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, projects will generate more than $260 million in ad revenue and distribution fees in 2021. “I don’t think the topic of climate change is going way anytime soon as part of the public discourse,” he says. It could even prompt debates about national security as permafrost and ice melt in polar regions. The earth’s changing climate could affect individuals’ health, says Jon Nese, associate head of undergraduate programs at Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, and will probably spur new decisions by major corporations. Extreme weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes and heat spikes are projected to become more common, a phenomenon that could give rise to all kinds of other conditions that consumers will be eager to understand. The weather news cycle is expected to churn as intensely as the one centered on politics. We will have all the best tools at their disposal to understand the forecast, communicate that and make sure that the risk and action taken by the viewer is clear.” It’s not going to be ignored,” says Berg, who acknowledges that Fox Weather’s handling of the issue is “the question many people have.” At Fox Weather, she adds, “we will be reporting facts,” with meteorologists who “came here to build a service for our viewers. “If you’re asking about climate change, climate change is part of our lives. Laura Ingraham, for example, earlier this year warned her viewers of “greeniacs” who want to seize upon “another hyped crisis” to impose severe rules.īerg doesn’t see politics in the Fox Weather forecast. Meanwhile, all three Fox News primetime opinion hosts have on occasion pushed back on proposed climate-change policies from the left. The company has denied those claims, and, In a notable maneuver, the Australian holdings this month planned to run a two-week campaign calling for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Australian news properties controlled by Fox Corp.’s corporate sibling, News Corp., have long been criticized for fostering a rebuke of climate science. Both the Fox broadcast network and Fox News Channel are now among TV’s biggest media assets.Īnd yet Fox’s operating family, the Murdochs, have come under scrutiny in the past for the views some of their properties have promulgated regarding which way the wind is really blowing. Its bet on a fourth broadcast network in the 1980s was initially derided, as was its bid to counter CNN with a news network that featured programing with partisan views. Fox has over the course of the last few decades made a business of building operations in markets previously believed to be overserved. Fox Weather, built with help from Fox News and Fox’s local TV stations, launches at a stormy moment in the field of weather media, and the company’s entry into the space isn’t to be taken lightly. “This is a different product,” says the executive.įox Corp. Red will likely surface when severe weather events take place. As morning becomes afternoon and evening, says Sharri Berg, the executive overseeing the launch, viewers will also see yellow and persimmon. Instead, Herrera and Freeze are surrounded by teal, warm orange and yellow - colors that remind viewers of weather conditions - because the duo and a phalanx of meteorologists are rehearsing what live coverage might look like for Fox Weather, a new ad-supported live-streamed venue set to launch October 25 that will be available via mobile app, connected TVs, and, in some cases, even via digital cable outlets operated by Fox’s local TV stations. There are none of the deep, pervasive Fox News Channel reds to which its viewers have long been accustomed seen here. But that’s where most of the overt connections to the well-scrutinized Fox Corp.
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