Meanwhile, he’s working behind the scenes 13 hours a day, chain smoking and drinking eight to 10 Tabs a day. Coleman, the $250,000-a-year talent with “Good Morning, America,” will begin appearing on The Weather Channel In September. government forecaster, formerly the National Weather Service’s No. Starting tonight, that satellite will be cable subscribers’ window to weather, with reporting day and night by 27 meteorologists in three-piece suits -including John Hope, 41 years a U.S. Landmark paid $10.5 million last July for a transponder lease on that satellite 22,300 miles up. Flesh and machine come together on the second floor of an office building not far from where Sherman paused in his march through Georgia and pitched camp in 1864.įrom 2840 Mount Wilkinson Parkway in northwest Atlanta, The Weather Channel’s signal flies across fiber-optic cables no bigger around than a human hair to machinery (uplink, they call it in the cable business) which relays the pictures to an RCA Satcom III-R satellite. These weather specialists have been working with seven fully independent computer systems (an eighth is on the way), transmissions from four weather satel-lites and sightings of 80 radar stations in the outpouring of the National Weather Service com-puter near Washington, D.C. In 11 months here in leafy old Atlanta, Coleman brought together 120 people. According to Coleman, television is the principal source of weather information for 77 percent of the population. “I think we have something hypnotic, seductive in The Weather Channel.”Ĭoleman expects the average viewer to take The Weather Channel in 15- to 20-minute doses. But believe me, there is a passionate need to know more about the weather out there. “There are weather junkies as there are news and sports junkies,” Coleman said. No other cable network - not all-news, not all-sports - had such a vast audience at the start. But not until on or about June 1.Įven without Tidewater’s subscribers, The Weather Channel will be available to 4.1 million homes wired for cable from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore., from Miami, Fla., to Anaheim, Calif. The 86,000 customers of Cox Cable in Tidewater will have The Weather Channel in their basic cable package of $7.50. It’s gonna do terrific,” Coleman said here before flying off to Las Vegas to help Batten launch TV’s first round-the-clock weather programming. “If The Weather Channel lays an egg, I will feel rotten. Landmark’s cable television subsidiary, TeleCable Corp., owns 20 cable systems with 315,000 subscribers in 15 states - the nation’s 14th largest cable system. He will be in Las Vegas tonight, on the eve of the National Cable Association’s annual convention, as Frank Batten pushes the button to sign on The Weather Channel.īatten is chairman of the board of Landmark Communications, the Norfolk company which publishes The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star newspapers and which is betting $25 million on Coleman’s hunch that America wants and needs an uninterrupted flow of live weather forecasts on cable television. Twenty-four hours of live weather, seven days a week on cable television.Ĭoleman is president, part-owner, super salesman, founder, head cheerleader and guiding light of The Weather Channel. Starting at 8:30, meteorologist Coleman gets his very own channel. The kid with the sweet tooth finally has a candy store of his own. “Give me more time for the weather, please.” Later in Peoria, Omaha, Milwaukee, Chicago and on the ABC network with “Good Morning, America,” Coleman said it again and again. Not enough, Coleman told his superiors in Champaign. E-Pilot Evening Edition Home Page Close MenuĪTLANTA - When meteorologist John Coleman first worked in television 29 years ago, he delivered 18 minutes of weather every day to the people watching WCIA-TV in his hometown of Champaign, Ill.Ī miserly 18 minutes of weather forecasting in a 24-hour day.
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