Customer Reviews

The Weather Channel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although I agree with others that tighter editing would have eliminated repetitions and the photos provided should have offered a better visual presentation of the channel's development and (especially) its operations, I still rate this book as highly as I do for several reasons. First, Batten (with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank) provides a compelling analysis of the challenges and problems he and his associates had to overcome to achieve the improbable business success of "a media phenomenon." Also, after having read this book, I had a much better understanding and appreciation of the value of what the Weather Channel now offers in this so-called "Age of Information." What if advanced warnings about severely inclement weather had been easily accessible in years past? How many lives would have been spared from natural disasters such as the hurricane which devastated Galveston Island in 1900?

For many people I personally know (including my wife), the Weather Channel is "must viewing" at the beginning and end of of each day. For them and countless others, it is the modern day equivalent of a crystal ball. For business travelers, which clothing to pack? For parents, what should the children wear to school? For those about to be involved in an outdoor activity (e.g. a Little League game, family picnic, or round of golf), "what's it going to be like?" Of course, born and raised in Chicago, I know how unpredictable the weather can often be. Years later, while living in Boston, I recall an elderly woman who called the meteorologist at a local television station to complain that "I now have four inches of `partly cloudy' in my basement!" In this book, Batten brilliantly achieves two major objectives: To tell a unique "business success story," and in process, thereby to explain why the Weather Channel has become so important to so many people.

I've been a friend and admirer of the author for almost thirty years. But I can be objective enough to say that you won't read a better business book this year than The Weather Channel. It tells an amazing story: how a very small company, centered around the newspapers in Norfolk, Va., and Greensboro, N.C., took a gigantic risk. Competing with the largest communications companies, Landmark Communications started one of the first national cable channels. And almost failed (you can't come closer to failing than this one). And, in the end, succeeded gloriously.
Though the impossibly modest author almost paints himself off the stage altogether, you will also meet one of the most decent and admirable executives in American business, Frank Batten. Because Mr. Batten's company is private, almost no one knows of this remarkable man. Although he's reticent about himself (a life-threatening and life-altering cancer that occurred at the time of the Weather Channel launch is dismissed in a paragraph),you'll understand how lucky the citizens of Norfolk and Greensboro have been to have him in charge of their newspapers the last 40 years.
This is a book about business, not weather. But if business interests you at all, it's a hell of a book.

This book is a business story of how The Weather Channel became one of the leading media brands in the nation. It is not a "behind the scenes at TWC" tale, although a few pages in the "afterword" give readers a brief glimpse at how it all comes together on air.

The most fascinating parts of Batten's story are the tales of how TWC came to be in the very beginning, from the early company history, to the initial concepts and business plans of the late 1970s and early 1980s, to the 1981/1982 start-up, to the birthing pains caused in part by a messy corporate divorce with one of the founding partners. The book also provides an interesting glimpse into how the cable TV landscape was first settled by pioneers like HBO, ESPN, WTBS/CNN and, of course, TWC.

The latter half of the book deals with many of TWC's forays in the 1990s, including the highly-successful weather.com website, as well as several international ventures). But the final chapters lack excitement or drama.

The book has 264 pages, and it's not a hard read. I think the same story could have been told more effectively in about half the space, leaving out many of the details. The authors of this book focus almost exclusively on the TWC dealings and strategies at the corporate and operational levels. A better story could have been told by weaving in more perspectives from other TWC people, namely the on-camera meteorologists, some of whom have been with TWC since the very early days. Combine the best elements of this book (the first half of the story, in particular) with a real 20 years of "behind the scenes", and you'd have a compelling tale that would appeal to audiences beyond the book's target audience (TWC die-hards, business students, weather and media professionals).

Finally, the book provides 16 pages of full-color photos, but none appears to be older than 1998. Why didn't the authors add photos from the early days? Those of us who have been TWC fans for many years would have appreciated seeing some of the old faces, old graphics, and old technology that have made The Weather Channel the familiar and trusted friend it is today for millions of people.

Despite its flaws, I recommend the book for those who are interested in TWC specifically, or in the media or weather businesses in general.

This is an interesting book, using the Weather Channel as an example of the birth of specialized channels in the early cable market. Now we take the plethora of channels available to us as a given (57 channels and nothing on), yet in the early days it was a fight to get a new channel carried over cable systems. The Weather Channel succeeded through a strong idea, people that believed in it, and being on the cutting edge of technology. While I expected this to be a straight story of the birth and growth of the Weather Channel, I was surprised to find that it was that, as well as a musing upon communications, and what makes a successful channel, and a successful company. The actual history is only a bit over half the book. The rest looks at the technology involved, and the lessons of leadership, and new ventures. Finally it concludes with some interesting first person stories of experiences in the building of the channel. An interesting read. Not exactly what I expected, but still a fascinating glimpse behind getting a specialized cable channel up and running, and successful for 20 years.

I'd like to predict the future, but I am psychically challenged, so the next best thing is The Weather Channel. I'm a single mother with three children, I work at two (other) jobs and until recently, I was a graduate student. That is enough chaos for anyone. One of my money-saving schemes was to not subscribe to cable tv, although I had enjoyed it in the past. It made things much easier at home-work time. But when two of the kids left for college, I splurged and had cable installed. What grabbed my attention the most? The great recent movies on the premium channel, the Soprano's, the endless round of sports? History Channel, Discovery Channel, cooking shows or home remodeling how-tos. No, it was The Weather Channel. It became my guide. What to wear to work, what to bring to that football game. When to take a short car trip. I especially learned when NOT to take a vacation in those hurricane plagued Outer Banks. The Weather Channel simplifies my life. It is the first thing I watch in the morning, the last thing at night. I sneak peaks in-between and check the website. I feel closer to my sons when I know how much it's snowing in Ithaca, or raining in Philadelphia. And the kids love it. My surfer doesn't have to check the ocean, he can tell by watching "TWC". He tells me "The high tide is at 6:30 and there is a south-wind so there should be waves." Inspiring! Frank Batten and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank explain the why and how of starting a cable network that seemed to have only niche appeal. Intelligent programming and savvy public relations have turned it into a "must have" for the 21st century. Buy this book and admit you are a weather junkie!

What a shame - could have been a great story. Really a bit more about Mr. Batten and Landmark Communications than the title suggests. While there is nothing wrong with that, more about the people who grew the business and how they actually did it would have been interesting. Many of the people who made great sacrifices and fought to build the business and brand are not even mentioned. Who did the marketing research? Who made the programming changes? Who created the brand image campaigns and advertising? Who wrote the strategic, marketing and programming plans that led to the growth in ratings and revenues. Who showed that reducing the frequency of local forecasts would actually result in ratings increases? Why are ratings off and what is being done about that? What a shame.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who regularly tunes into The Weather Channel for their weather forecasts. It's a fun read and great look at how this cable channel began and how it was run back in the early years of cable TV. It's a story that few people know about. The founder of TWC takes readers through all of the early struggles he had in the beginning and shows how the small start-up cable network became a media giant with millions of followers that have become die-hard fans. This is far from a CEO-memoir--it's truly an amazing story. Take this book to the beach with you this summmer!

For those thinking about buying this book. One word of caution, it is NOT specifically about TWC. It is more about creating a business from the ground up and ignoring critics, blah, blah, blah. I was hoping for a behind-the-sences type of book on TWC, but this is not the case. A pretty dull book IMO, but a great book if you're a business person.

I'm so old that I remember when Cable TV promised to give commercial-free programming in return for the customer's subscription fee. That seemed like a great idea and I've often wondered why -- and how -- it disappeared so quickly. Batten's book certainly answers that question.

This book, which could use some careful editing and does not speak well for current literary standards at the Harvard Business School Press, tells a fascinating story of the building of a little empire. Batten's insights on leadership are intriguing, too, and he certainly doesn't hesitate to point out areas where he feels he could have done better. All of that will be helpful to the reader who wants to learn about building a business from "scratch."

It's encouraging to see how the weather channel has evolved. We can hope they'll soon improve on some of their current shortcomings. One I find particularly annoying, for example, is "your local weather" "on the 8s" which never has my local weather but instead gives me the weather in Chicago, Atlanta, Boston and other major geographic points -- a ridiculous time-waster, at the very least, to someone deep in the Nebraska woods! More useful would be a temperature map of the regions surrounding those areas.

The subtitle: "The Improbable Rise of A Media Phenomenon" is a bit misleading. I can't imagine how such an idea -- that is, the idea of presenting nationwide and even worldwide current weather on television -- could possibly NOT have occurred to someone once satellite images were available. The improbability, it seems to me, was that noone would come up with the idea.

But media phenomenon it is and although the book isn't a phenomenon, it is an intriguing look at building a modern business and should be especially useful to budding entrepreneurs.

I know the senior author and the Landmark newspaper in Norfolk well. At least I thought I did. This book was an eye-opener about Frank Batten, Landmark,and The Weather Channel. Although the story is clearly facinating from a business and weather junkie perspective, its main lesson is how Landmark deals with its own people. Giving key employees responsibility and trusting their decisions is backed with a piece of the financial action. This message eclipses all of the financial, media, and marketing information about the amazing development of The Weather Channel. The book is a refreshing story of business success based on individual player's skills and the stellar reputation of a relatively small privately held communication company.