
The Weather Channel's Secret: Less Weather, More Clickbait - cryptoz
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-09/weather-channels-web-mobile-growth-leads-to-advertising-insights/
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Afforess
I don't understand why anyone would get their forecasts from anywhere but the
NOAA website. The US government provides free, (adfree) and detailed forecasts
which are more accurate than 3rd party forecasts. Most 3rd party forecast
sites artificially inflate the chance of rain and other factors (because a
false negative is better than a false positive, in regards to rain). The NOAA
forecasts do not have this "fake" adjustment in them and are very accurate.
NOAA forecasts also come with the forecast discussion, written by the
Meteorologists which explain the current forecast in a detailed,
meteorological way.

[http://www.weather.gov/](http://www.weather.gov/)

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gk1
I've found wunderground.com to be the perfect combination of clarity and high-
density information. There are no click-bait "related" links there.

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jordanpg
I also prefer their website on desktop, but it is perpetually annoying to me
that you have to pay a yearly subscription to make ads go away in their
Android app.

To WU: I will pay whatever you want, just make it one-time.

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jameskilton
I stopped getting my weather from The Weather Channel a long time ago, when
they became more interested in click-bait articles over just reporting the
weather. Thankfully today we have many alternatives:

[http://www.wunderground.com/](http://www.wunderground.com/)
[http://darkskyapp.com/](http://darkskyapp.com/)
[http://forecast.io/](http://forecast.io/)

And of course [http://www.weather.gov/](http://www.weather.gov/), to name a
few.

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adestefan
The Weather Channel purchased Weather Underground in 2012. WU doesn't push the
sensational stories on their weather pages, but their "News" section is just
as much of a joke now.

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canvia
I didn't realize that. I guess I need to change weather providers again. From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Channel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Channel)

The Weather Company (TWCC Holdings:[1] consortium owned by NBCUniversal
(25%),[2][3] The Blackstone Group, Bain Capital,[4] exact Bain and Blackstone
percentages unknown)

NBCUniversal being Comcast of course.

Thank you for the information.

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bradleyland
Fortunately, the weather aspect of Wunderground hasn't been adversely affected
by the purchase. It appears that TWC treats Wunderground as a separate
property. They have allowed some level of autonomy. The extra funding has
dramatically improved their web presence. Basically Wunderground is TWC's web
property that targets weather geeks.

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brickmort
The Weather Channel is one of the WORST offenders for clickbait ads. The whole
website reminds me of a poorly designed spam wordpress site complete with 'has
science gone TOO FAR? CLICK HERE!' ads.

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mach5
[http://weatherspark.com](http://weatherspark.com) is the only weather site i
hit anymore, its fabulous, putting hourlies in graph form makes the data very
easy to digest, i can't recommend it enough

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taspeotis
The page's <title> is "Weather Channel's Web, Mobile Growth Leads to
Advertising Insights - Businessweek". Ditto for the slug in the URL.

Looks like Businessweek is the pot calling the kettle black.

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onezeno
Not exactly a secret

