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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.
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 NBCUniversal 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 media market).
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 , 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.
In a September 2022 letter to the National Content & Technology Cooperative (NCTC), of which most of the network's remaining cable affiliates were members, Weather Group Television announced its intention to discontinue Weatherscan in the service's remaining markets no later than December 9, 2022, with a preference to cease offering it sooner rather than later. The company cited declining viewership, the wide availability of local weather information online and on , and the aging first-generation IntelliStar equipment as the main reasons for its decision to discontinue the service, After 23 years, Weather Channel’s iconic computerized channel is shutting down - ARS Technology (Published October 7, 2022) which were also cited as what ultimately led to larger pay television providers deciding to drop the channel, limiting carriage of Weatherscan to small to mid-size cable affiliates from December 2017 onward. The remaining providers with operating Weatherscan IntelliStar units exercised their options to either offer in-house local weather services, switch to similar national networks like AccuWeather Network, WeatherNation and Fox Weather; or eliminate the channel space entirely. Weatherscan was officially discontinued on December 12, 2022, three days after the original end-of-service date, when the last unit (located at a Suddenlink Communications headend in Beckley, West Virginia) was believed to be decommissioned on that day.
The WeatherStar XL and IntelliStar units developed for use by Weatherscan utilized a different configuration than the domestic units utilized by The Weather Channel, featuring different graphics sets and additional weather products as well as being programmed to continuously provide weather information 24 hours a day (a feature not implemented on the domestic STAR units until the 2013 introduction of the "Weather All the Time" concept on all IntelliStar 2 models). Each forecast loop began with an introductory screen providing the network and cable provider identification, and the name of the assigned forecast city, leading into the playlist. As with The Weather Channel's domestic STAR fleet, Weatherscan's XL and IntelliStar units were able to display a crawl (at the bottom third of the screen, which occupied the space filled by the provider ID spot from 2000 to 2003, and the regional weather and advertising crawls from 2005 onward) detailing watches, warnings and advisories issued by the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) for the local area where the unit's headend is based. (From 2000 to 2003 and from 2015 onward, instead of local NWS alert products, the crawl—which utilized different color schemes based on alert type: red for warnings, yellow for watches and orange for advisories and special weather statements—generated boilerplate hazard text directing viewers to watch The Weather Channel for additional information.)
Certain segments were introduced utilizing TWC's proprietary Vocal Local narration feature (which assembles pre-recorded audio tracks to narrate local forecast segments including current conditions and descriptive forecasts on the parent network) introduced with the WeatherStar XL fleet; these narrations were voiced by TWC staff announcer Amy Bargeron until they were removed from most routine segments on November 10, 2015. (Narrations by veteran TWC meteorologist Jim Cantore and an updated warning tone were concurrently added for severe weather alerts to match those featured on the IntelliStar 2 fleet to comply with FCC requirements that critical alerts be read aloud, which the first-generation IntelliStar was incapable of providing as it lacked second audio program (SAP) support.)
Although Weatherscan, unlike The Weather Channel, did not employ any on-air talent, the service's Weatherscan XL and IntelliStar units optionally had the capability to provide audio forecasts presented by a Weather Channel meteorologist. Local advertising on Weatherscan was primarily limited to the text-based Local Ad Sales (LAS) crawls that have been a mainstay of The Weather Channel's forecast segments since its inception as well as sponsorship tags; however, affiliates had the option of running one-minute-long conventional video ad breaks in the form of the channel's forecast/datascreen-based 'Local Avails' segment with 24-hour and five-day at-a-glance weather forecasts in horizonal form and its local radar on the right corner over a small squeezed-back video window on the left for advertised businesses under the current conditions on the near bottom-left, unlike TWC, every ten minutes starting at ten minutes past the hour. In the event that the STAR unit experienced errors generating the playlist, the main Weather Channel feed aired in place of Weatherscan's regular programming until the unit began rebooting.
When the localized version of the channel launched in March 1999, utilizing WeatherStar XL units to generate the forecast segments, Weatherscan originally utilized a similar product and graphical layout (featuring distinctive backgrounds specific to the channel) and Lower Display Line (LDL, showing current conditions and text-based local business and cable provider advertisements at the bottom one-tenth of the screen) as that seen on the domestic XL units; the main Weatherscan Local feed's programming consisted of the same products featured in the two-minute product "flavor" lineup offered at the time on The Weather Channel's local forecast segments.
In May 2000, coinciding with the network receiving a new distinctive graphics set, Weatherscan Local restructured its segments to be built around customizable specialty weather packages that featured graphical and map-based forecasts centering on various lifestyle activities (golfing, boating and beachgoing, gardening, skiing, travel and outdoors) available to cable affiliates. (National and regional maps included in some of the packages were derived from those featured on The Weather Channel's television and online services at the time.) The primary segment lineup (featuring current conditions, forecasts, almanac data, and satellite and radar imagery) was rechristened as the "Core Package", accompanied by three new optional routine forecast packages: the "Mini-Core Package" (a limited-product variant of the "Core"), the "Extra Local Area Package" (featuring current conditions and forecasts for up to three nearby cities) and the "Spanish Forecast Package" (a limited-product translated segment intended for markets with larger HIspanic/Latino populations); routine forecast segments came in both one- and two-minute lengths (the latter running in approximate quarter-hour intervals). In addition, the LDL's observation summary feature was concurrently removed, although local ad crawls were retained. Cable affiliates had the ability to select up to five specialty packages (some of which were seasonal with no set date for their inclusion in the playlist, as they were manually added and removed by STAR technicians) to be displayed along with the default "Core Package" and any additional routine local product packages. The number of product packages were pared down (from 16 to 12) and rudimentary observation summaries were restored (along with the addition of a similarly condensed forecast summary) in the form of an Upper Display Line (UDL) in February 2003, as part of a graphical revamp coinciding with the introduction of the original Weatherscan IntelliStar units.
On September 27, 2005 (as early as September 22 for areas of the Southeastern U.S. in the path of Hurricane Rita), the Upper and Lower Display Lines were replaced by a multi-panel "L-bar" datascreen (containing a persistent network ID and the current date and time on the upper left, current observations on the middle left, and a compact radar loop screen and the provider's logo or sponsorship tags on the bottom left of the vertical sidebar; and a panel showing the descriptive 48-hour and graphical daypart and five-day forecasts, and separate crawls for local ads, and observations and forecasts for major regional cities and airports on the bottom right two-thirds), confining the main panel (with slight modifications to the 2003 faux-letterbox graphics set, and accompanied by a permanent segment rundown bar) to a smaller but prominent window at the upper middle of the screen.
| Detailed summary of current weather observations for the local area, consisting of sky condition; actual and apparent temperature (heat index or wind chill values when applicable), and other pertinent data (wind speed/direction/gusts; dew point (1999–2000 and 2003–2022); barometric pressure; humidity; cloud ceiling (1999–2000) and visibility (1999–2000)). |
| Text- and icon-based summary outlining current temperatures, weather conditions, and wind speed/direction at up to eight nearby locations near—or sometimes, including—the primary observation site. Unlike the domestic IntelliStar iteration, the WeatherScan IntelliStar units did not receive a map-based version of this product. |
| Map-based summary of current temperature and sky conditions for seven to ten regional cities within a radius of the STAR's headend location. |
| Multi-page text product describing the forecasted weather conditions, temperature, wind and, when applicable, precipitation probabilities and amounts for each corresponding period over the next 48 hours (originally 36 hours from March 31, 1999, to February 16, 2005); the segment (which mainly covered the primary forecast area, but also featured on an alternating basis for certain surrounding cities covered under the Extra Local Area package) was updated usually around 3:00 a.m. or 3:00 p.m., with intermediate updates occurring when applicable. The forecasts were sourced from the National Weather Service's local Zone Forecast Products until November 2001, and by The Weather Channel thereafter (the transition to in-house forecasts on Weatherscan took place months prior to the switchover on the domestic STAR units), allowing for more specific temperature and wind speed values and custom references to hazardous weather conditions. Unlike the domestic IntelliStar units, the descriptive forecasts never received a graphical or icon-based illustration of the expected sky condition. |
| Outlined the forecasted weather conditions, temperatures (temperature progression over the timeframe was indicated by accompanying the numerical values), and wind speed/direction over a 12-hour period; the product was updated at the first hour specified (usually spread out in two- to three-hour intervals) in the graph. |
| Originally provided forecasts for the three-day period (showing icons and text descriptions indicating the forecasted sky condition, and expected high and low temperatures) starting the day after the conclusion of the 36-hour period covered by the descriptive forecast (if shown on a Saturday, for example, the forecast period would run from Tuesday through Thursday); beginning in March 2000 on the WeatherStar XL, the extended forecast timeline was increased to five days (starting with the current or, when updated during the late afternoon hours, following day). |
| Originally formatted as an astronomical almanac (featuring only sunrise and sunset times for the next two days, and moon phase data for the local area) derived from the domestic STAR iteration, the product was revised in February 2003 to incorporate temperature averages and records for the current date for the nearest reporting site. (The sun and moon data was calculated by and permanently stored in the STAR units.) |
| A continuous loop of National Weather Service NEXRAD radar imagery compiled over the course of three hours (originally two hours until 2001), covering a radius of the STAR's headend location. Coinciding with the feature's addition to domestic IntelliStar units, the product's color table was revised on January 23, 2007, to detect different precipitation types (rain/ground clutter, snow and mixed precipitation) among the radar returns. Normally running 20 seconds within the Core and Mini-Core packages, a separate one-minute standalone radar segment was added in July 2005. |
| A regional composite of visible satellite and radar data, showing the movement of weather systems and precipitation over a five-hour period; this product often alternated with the Local Doppler Radar during the Core and Mini-Core playlists. |
| A 20-second continuous regional loop of National Weather Service NEXRAD composite radar imagery over a five-hour period. |
| A 20-second continuous loop of geocolor visible satellite imagery, showing the movement of weather systems within the region over a ten-hour period. |
| Introduced in April 2002 on the WeatherStar XL, this product featured a summary of National Weather Service-issued watches, warnings and/or advisories in effect for the local area, listed by alert type and time/date of expiration. (Tornado warning and severe thunderstorm warnings were shown exclusively on the lower-third alert crawl.) |
An emergency playlist, which began at the next playlist cycle following the issuance of a warning (limited to tornado, severe thunderstorm or flash flood warnings) affecting the area and ran until the warning expired (or one hour after issuance for warnings exceeding that length), during which most regular segments (specifically the Extra Local Area and applicable specialty packages) were suspended. The severe playlist—primarily utilizing a distinct gray and red graphics scheme from 2003 to 2022—began with a special "Severe Weather Message" introductory screen (appearing every three cycles), accompanied by either of the following playlists:
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The product was presented in two formats throughout its existence:
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In August 2024, due to hightening tensions in Weather Ranch. Some members, including the domain name owner left to form Mist Weather Media. The simulator was split into different versions, one made by Weather Ranch (which is endorsed by the creator), and one by Mist Weather Media.
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