IBM selling The Weather Channel and the rest of its weather business

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 354 points – IBM selling The Weather Channel and the rest of its weather business
cnbc.com

IBM selling The Weather Channel and the rest of its weather business::IBM will sell The Weather Company to Francisco Partners, a tech-focused private equity firm, for an undisclosed sum, it announced Tuesday.

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In before a fascist wannabe billionaire buys the weather channel just to destroy any credibility it has and hijack the climate change debate. Even change the name of weather channel to something like “Y”.

Let the enshittification begin.

You reminded me of this story from 2018 when the Trump team tried to put someone in charge of government weather data so that they could shutdown free public access, allowing private companies to use it and commercialize it

“ One particularly alarming thread explored in Lewis’s reporting follows the ongoing efforts of Barry Myers, the chief executive of AccuWeather and Trump’s pick to run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to privatize the agency’s practice of collecting and analyzing data that helps generate weather warnings meant to keep all of us, and not just those who can pay for it, safe.”

https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/the-coming-storm-michael-lewis-audiobook-review.html

https://qz.com/1341347/michael-lewis-audiobook-the-coming-storm-is-public-weather-data-at-risk-of-privatization

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Steve Bannon is sadly already ahead of you:

The two networks’ shared ownership has alarmed some meteorologists, who say that WeatherNation is helping to legitimize the extreme viewpoints aired on Real America’s Voice, occasionally sharing its forecasts on the political network; at times the networks feature the same advertisers. These critics also argue that in its own coverage, WeatherNation fosters climate change skepticism by shunning any mention of the established links between human-driven climate warming and the disasters the channel covers, thus discouraging viewers from considering the consequences of climate change

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/20/weathernation-real-americas-voice-bannon/

If paywall:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230221114035/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/20/weathernation-real-americas-voice-bannon/

Another article with tons of linked sources: https://checkmyads.org/branded/how-proctor-gamble-ended-up-funding-steve-bannons-war-room/

I've watched WN on a regular basis since 2014. That's the year I cut cable and WN was the only streaming option I could find. I was also sick of The Weather Channel and the non-stop drama being pumped out of their studios.

WN may or may not be linked with RAV / Steve Bannon but I simply don't care. They do weather and that's it. It's on when I want (always), gives reasonably accurate predictions, and there is zero political BS or unnecessary drama.

The article has it correct, the WN is basically a modernized version of TWC from two decades ago and that's all I need / want it to be.

We can talk about GCC, I'm no denier, but I don't need to be having that conversation while I'm trying to find out what today's weather is going to be. If refusing to put GCC coverage front and center is wrong then every weather app on every smartphone in America is guilty of the same thing.

This timeline is disturbingly absurd, making it increasingly likely that we could indeed face such a situation.

The Weather Channel tv channel isn't owned by IBM and isn't part of this deal

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