The Weather Channel Companies (TWCC) announced on July 2, 2012 an agreement to acquire Weather Underground, a leading provider of Web based weather data. The transaction, terms of which were not disclosed, was announced by TWCC chairman and CEO David Kenny and Weather Underground president Alan Steremberg. The acquisition is expected to close in several weeks.
I am excited about embarking upon this new chapter in our company’s history. Having the infrastructure, resources, and content of The Weather Channel Companies will enable wunderground to create some great new products, and improve the quality and reliability of our existing content. We will now be called Weather Underground, LLC, and will maintain the wunderground.com web site as it is.
— Dr. Jeff Masters (one of Weather Underground founders)
The Weather Channel — the popular cable channel with 24-hour weather information — was founded in part by Chicago’s own WLS-TV meteorologist John Coleman, when he brought the idea of a cable weather channel to Landmark Communications while working as a Good Morning America meteorologist. The Weather Channel, Inc. was founded in Atlanta, Georgia on July 18, 1980, and went on the air on May 2, 1982. The Weather Channel is based in Atlanta and is seen in more than 100 million U.S. households. TWCC also operates Weatherscan®, a 24-hour all-local weather network; The Weather Channel Radio Network; and The Weather Channel HD. TWCC properties reach 60 million monthly Web consumers (weather.com and Desktop) and 32 million monthly mobile users (mobile Web and applications) and offers the second most popular mobile app on all smartphones. WSI, headquartered in Andover, MA, primarily provides business-to-business weather services, particularly for the media, aviation, marine and energy sectors.
The Weather Channel is still controlled by Landmark, which is now known as Landmark Media Enterprises. The Weather Channel Companies (TWCC) is owned by a consortium made up of NBC Universal and the private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital.
Weather Underground is the world’s first online weather service with a commitment to develop comprehensive and reliable weather information, and has a reputation for clearly organized weather data and weather information without fluff.
Weather Underground reaches 21 million users and weather provider including partners such as Google, The Associated Press and CBS. Weather Underground’s state-of-the-art technology monitors conditions and forecasts for locations across the world. With more than 19,000 users contributing local observations from personal weather stations, Weather Underground is able to provide up-to-the-minute weather conditions for the most finely targeted areas. In addition to serving free online weather information to millions of unique users every month, Weather Underground delivers custom-designed weather page solutions to an array of businesses and media clients – both online and in print.
“Everyone in the weather space is familiar with the strength of Weather Underground and its innovative method of presenting weather data. Weather Underground will add a great complementary, brand to our portfolio, a brand with a distinct, loyal, and active user base that will enable us to reach a unique segment of users,” said TWCC chairman and CEO David Kenny. “Most importantly, this acquisition will grow the weather expertise that is central to everything we do and will result in better forecasts and weather data for users on all of our platforms.”
“Becoming a part of The Weather Channel Companies will enable us to strengthen what our users love about wunderground.com, our apps and our blogs,” said Weather Underground president Alan Steremberg. “We see this as a great opportunity to grow.”
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