AccuWeather

AccuWeather contracted Broadcast Management Group to provide ongoing broadcast consulting services in the Fall of 2018. AccuWeather, founded in 1962, is a diversified media company suppling state-of-the-art weather forecasting. AccuWeather markets weather products and services to clients worldwide in media, business and government, including 245 of the Fortune 500 companies and thousands of other businesses. The company successfully launched a cable network in 2015 on the Verizon Fios cable system in the New York DMA viewed in 2M homes.

In 2018, the network expanded its distribution nationally with carriage on Direct-TV, adding 20M subscribers. With this growth it required a rethinking of content strategy, production staffing, workflow, production technology and space utilization.

As with all of our broadcast consulting clients, our approach is to first understand the core values and beliefs of the company and use those as guidelines when creating solutions that best fit their strategic and financial goals. In support of AccuWeather’s now expanded national footprint, our broadcast consulting team applied the company’s core value of providing superior accurate weather forecasting for its users as the baseline for future network performance. This reputation of providing hyper-local and hyper-accurate forecasts had already been established across all of its existing media platforms and now needed to be at the core of this new national service.

Our initial phase of broadcast consulting was to do a deep dive into the existing network service to see where opportunities existed to increase capabilities and performance levels, while also identifying successes which could be further capitalized on. Areas of production staffing, workflow and technical capabilities were our focus. The resulting analysis was used to create a roadmap of how to move forward in a way that aligns with AccuWeather’s financial and performance goals.

With a defined roadmap, Broadcast Management Group moved into the second phase of this project, assisting AccuWeather with the creation of a new organizational structure and defining headcount requirements for this new national network service. This phase also included identifying the technical upgrades needed for expanded coverage. As a full-service production company, Broadcast Management Group handled all design, installation and commissioning of new technology.

This project, like many others, had the challenge of building out new technology initiatives within the existing operational workflow and space. The training of staff was also engaged during this period of time.  Broadcast Management Group organized internal and vendor-based resources to support the training and on-boarding of new workflows and technology. Finally, creative designs were done for referral and feedback as part of the long-term plan to upgrade the look and feel of the network.

As part of Broadcast Management Group’s passion for creating long-term relationships with our clients, support has begun in the areas of content creation and AccuWeather’s desire to create an OTT network.

Success requires everyone doing their part. Working with the AccuWeather leadership team, we were able to get buy-in across multiple internal groups in support of this important initiative. That internal support is needed in order to insure a positive outcome. Dave Weiler, SVP of Consulting for Broadcast Management Group stated, “Creating a culture where change is thought of as a positive is a key factor to the success any organization can achieve that wishes to increase their market share and advance their brand.”

AccuWeather is set to become the dominate choice for viewers across the nation as it already has for mobile, app and web users.  Broadcast Management Group is proud to be a part of this exciting initiative and its on-going relationship with AccuWeather to support them as they continue to extend their brand and reach.