Weatherscan (previously Weatherscan Local from 1999 to 2003) was an American digital cable and satellite television network that offered uninterrupted local weather information. A spinoff of The Weather Channel (TWC), 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 (originally running on the WeatherStar XL, before upgrading to the first-generation IntelliStar starting in 2003).
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 (founding owner of The Weather Channel), 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 (now Allen Media Group) 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. (TCI) to distribute the service on the provider's Headend in the Sky (HITS) digital cable multiplex service starting that summer. Weatherscan launched on participating TCI systems on July 28, 1998; as the Weather Star XL (a fifth-generation STAR model that was built for proprietary use by both The Weather Channel and Weatherscan) 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 (Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, South Central, North Central, Northwest and Southwest) and the contiguous United States, three-day "at a glance" forecasts for 35 major US cities (each organized by region), 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. (This feed was removed from most headends in 2001, and was fully discontinued by 2003 with the roll-out of the newer IntelliStar units.)
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 (the primary service, offering a complete local weather segment every two minutes) and Weatherscan Radar (featuring a continuous Doppler radar loop, along with severe weather alerts when warranted). The three remaining feeds launched over the course of a month later that spring: Weatherscan Plus (featuring activity-specific forecasts for golf, skiing, boating, beachgoing, and business and leisure travel) debuted on April 30, 1999, followed by the launches of Weatherscan Plus Traffic (providing routinely updated traffic information along with the products featured on the main Weatherscan Plus product playlist) and Weatherscan Español (a Spanish-language version of Weatherscan Plus allowing for the inclusion of regional or international weather information) 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 (customized for densely populated areas, smaller markets and suburbs, coastal and desert areas). 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 (in non-legacy TCI markets affected by AT&T's 1999 purchase of the company) 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 (several months before testing began on the TWC domestic models in selected markets).
On July 7, 2008, Landmark announced it would sell The Weather Channel, Weatherscan and related assets (including weather.com, forecasting service provider Weather Services International and a 30% stake in Montreal-based Pelmorex, owner of TWC's Canadian counterparts The Weather Network and MétéoMédia) 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. (Due to Landmark subsequently deciding to suspend seeking buyers for most of its other holdings, The Weather Channel's assets were the only property that the company sold before it began divesting its remaining print and broadcasting assets in 2012.)
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. (This feed was only ever made available to Dish customers in the Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Tucson markets).
Decline and shutdown At its height, Weatherscan was available in many major US markets (reaching an estimated 22 million cable subscribers by February 2005), 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. (Most of the network's cable affiliates listed it under the boilerplate ID "Local weather" or other identifiers on their interactive program guides, including in areas where it was carried on the same channel as TV Guide Channel's scrolling program guide.)
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 (by then known under the Xfinity brand) in October 2017, with its remaining markets having dropped the network by December 10 of that year.
On March 22, 2018, Entertainment Studios (now Allen Media Group) 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 (the NBCUniversal/Blackstone/Bain consortium and Allen) 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 (the Weatherscan units would eventually become the last of the original IntelliStar units that remained operational) 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 (including the more recent xD and Jr. versions), 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.