The Weather Channel
by George Winslow -- Multichannel News, 2/10/2008 7:00:00 PM
A good barometer of the importance of high-definition programming can be found at The Weather Channel, which is in the middle of a $60 million program to produce well over 90% of its programming HD by June 2008.
“About 18 months ago we made a decision to go full blast ahead with HD,” The Weather Channel Cos. president Debora Wilson said. “With the increased purchases of HDTV sets and the rapid take-up of HD programming packages, we knew we had to make a major commitment.”
As part of that process, the company broke ground on a 12,500 square-foot facility in May 2007.
It is also revamping much of its infrastructure; ramping up long-form HD programming with such shows as When Weather Changed History; and moving existing series, such as Forecast Earth, to high-definition.
Since launching a high-definition version of the network last September, “our HD plans have been met with open arms among operators,” Wilson said. “We have completed agreements with the top six operators [Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Charter Communications] and a whole host of smaller operators.”
Making a dramatic move to high-definition in such a short time frame has been challenging. “We are doing all of this while operating a 24/7 network,” said vice president of engineering and IT operations Ross Kalber. “It not unlike changing a jet engine in an airplane while you are flying it at 30,000 feet and trying not to crash.”
The effort’s centerpiece is the new facility located next to the company’s Atlanta headquarters. When opened later this year, it will allow the network to present all of its studio-based fare in HD.
The building was completed in mid-January and vendors are now installing equipment and building sets, Kalber said. Weather plans to launch the service by June, though they are currently two weeks ahead of schedule.
In December, Weather deployed a new master control room. It is also retrofitting another control room that will go online in February, Kalber added. Both of those rooms are in the company’s older Atlanta facility.
“We are also going to an Apple-based production system,” Kalber said. “The price point for the editing system is quite attractive, even in HD, and at the end of the day, it does what it was advertised to do. Unfortunately, I can’t say that about the majority of more traditional television vendors out there.”
Weather will also deploy a new HD satellite truck. But some of the feeds from the field will remain in standard-definition.
“We are not converting every one of our remote operations initially but we have a plan to do that later,” Kalber said.
The new studio will also produce some major changes in the on-screen look.
“We will have a single set that covers the entire studio with some venues scattered around the set that will be used for different shows in different dayparts,” Kalber said.
“Today we use some electronic displays but we do most of our work on a green screen. The new studio will flip that around and really let us leverage the power of electronic displays, both large flat panel displays and rear projection technology,” he added.
Weather has also taken the unusual step of building the new facility according to green guidelines from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design organization.
Trying to get LEED certification hasn’t been easy, given the massive energy needed by most TV studios and the fact that most LEED-certified buildings use large amounts of natural light, something that is anathema to production.
“Our consultants almost laughed at us when we first brought up the idea,” Kalber said. “We haven’t been certified yet, but we’ve been able to achieve significant energy savings that will reduce our energy bills by about 20% and we are confident that we can get the LEED certification.”
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