The Local AccuWeather Channel

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The Local AccuWeather Channel

Type	digital television network cable television network (weather/meteorology)
Country	United States
Availability	National (in select areas)
Owner	AccuWeather
Website The AccuWeather Channel

The Local AccuWeather Channel is a 24-hour, weather-oriented, commercially-sponsored broadcast/cable television network owned and operated by AccuWeather, Inc., which is headquartered in State College, Pennsylvania.

About The Local AccuWeather Channel

The service provides weather-related content to television affiliates for broadcast on cable, digital subchannels, and digital cable by certain broadcast television affiliates in the United States. Some stations also offer the channel via live streaming video on their websites.

The Local AccuWeather Channel has similarities and differences to its main competitor, The Weather Channel and counterpart digital service Weatherscan. The AccuWeather programming lineup provides national and regional video forecasts. In addition, there are AccuWeather travel, sports, and lifestyle segments. Most local affiliates add their own local weather updates and some even include local news and traffic updates. Unlike The Weather Channel, The Local AccuWeather Channel has an L-bar format (which is implemented on Weatherscan and is extremely similar to the former NBC Weather Plus L-bar) so that, even when the video window is playing content such as a national forecast, local information is always available around the periphery of the screen. The channel goes into a special mode when severe weather occurs, like Weatherscan. Several affiliates also break from the Local AccuWeather content when breaking news occurs and the station wants to utilize the subchannel for either extended news and weather coverage, or to push main channel programming to the subchannel. Weatherscan, however, does not feature any on-camera meteorologists, as its content is generated completely by weather computer at the cable headend.

Unlike NBC Weather Plus, the broadcast television affiliates with The Local AccuWeather Channel are not affiliated with one single network. Many of the stations are affiliated with the CBS, Fox, and especially the ABC networks. For the most part, the local stations do not label the AccuWeather service as a so-called "Local AccuWeather Channel". Instead, the local stations choose to have their own names such as "Weather Now". Also, there is no separate logo for the channel. In most places, the channel carries the station brand and either the AccuWeather.com brand or a statement such as "powered by AccuWeather.com." Local affiliates can add content to the Local AccuWeather content that is either weather or other; the most prominent example is in the KNXV-TV GoAZ.tv implementation, which relies less on the weather content and more on traffic maps and text cards featuring road closure information.

There are currently seven NBC-affiliated stations that do not offer NBC Weather Plus but do instead offer The Local AccuWeather Channel: KNVN, KOBI, KOTI are all locally owned; KULR owned by Max Media; and WJHG, WILX and WMTV are owned by Gray Television.

Not all of the stations air the digital channel's complete daily transmission; a few AccuWeather affiliates also air a limited amount of syndicated programming, and may even air regularly scheduled network programming (usually sports) when the main channel cannot. All of the subchannels must also have the required 3 hours per week of E/I compliant programming scheduled locally by the station, as AccuWeather does not produce E/I-compliant programming for their affiliates, unlike NBC Weather Plus, which provided Weather Plus U on their national feed for all of their affiliates.

Local forecasts

Programming

Viewers of the Local AccuWeather Channel can see the local forecasts for their respective area. These forecasts are usually shown after most national forecast segments, and aired as frequently as they are on NBC Weather Plus, airing for two to three minutes eight times an hour. Pre-recorded weather segments featuring local weather information from meteorologists of participating AccuWeather Channel affiliates are shown proceeding weather information. In many areas, a feed of that station's doppler radar may be shown and in some areas, it may be aired with that city's NOAA Weather Radio All-Hazards feed (airing over the radar image instead of airing on a separate Secondary Audio Program channel, while other stations may air the NOAA Weather Radio All-Hazards feed on a separate SAP channel).

The "L" Bar

WPBF-DT2 on the Local AccuWeather platform

Like NBC Weather Plus, the Local AccuWeather Channel uses an "L-Bar" across the left side third and bottom third of the screen to continuously air local weather information, even during commercial breaks. Although, AccuWeather's "L" Bar takes up more space than NBC Weather Plus' therefore making the screen displaying local weather segments and AccuWeather programming smaller. However, information on the AccuWeather Channel's "L" Bar is more broader based.

The left side of the bar is reserved for station identification on the top left (on local feeds, featuring that station's logo (and even web address on some stations)), and the middle left and bottom left are reserved for various things (regional current conditions, advertisements for the local station or for AccuWeather, etc.). Below these two areas are the current time and temperature.

The bottom right portion of the bar displays the forecast for the next 12 hours featuring sky condition and temperature, followed by the five day forecast showing sky condition and predicted high and low temperatures. Also, displayed are descriptive forecasts and forecast UV index values. The cycle for the current condition display cycle for one city, the 12-hour forecast cycle and the five-day forecast cycle runs 10 seconds each. The middle left and bottom right portions of the bar will also feature information on active watches, warnings and advisories when they are in effect. A map showing the advisories for the entire viewing area are displayed on the middle left, the legend displaying the colors corresponding to each advisory on the bottom left, and a descriptive adivsory product with the expiration time of the adivosry and a list of counties/parishes/boroughs in the advisory on the bottom right (though not always airing simultaneously with the watch/warning display to the left).

An L-bar revamp in December 2008 included new styling and the dissolution of the two-box setup in favor of a larger left box able to display more detailed radar and hourly forecasts, as well as AccuWeather and affiliate advertisements. The crawl area and bottom area also have a tweaked appearance.^[1]

On-Air Talent (may be replaced by local talent by the affiliate)

Current

• Amy Aaronson
• Kate Bilo
• Jack Boston
• Jeannette Calle
• Angelica Campos
• Kari Chessario
• Ava Dinges
• Katie Fehlinger
• Jason Handman
• Raychel Harvey-Jones
• Jim Kosek
• Joe Lundberg
• Mark Mancuso
• Paul Pastelok
• Jon Porter
• Jared Plushnick
• Bernie Rayno
• Caitlin Roth
• Nikki Stanzione
• Dr. Joe Sobel
• Lyndsay Tapases
• Mary Yoon
• Eric Wilhelm

Former

• Karah Donovan
• Matt Madigan
• Katrina Voss

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Programming

Segments

Current

• Entertainment Weather with Nikki Stanzione - From a newly redesigned set, Nikki’s unique reports tie together weekend weather and its impact on entertainment options
• Headline Earth with Katie Fehlinger - Headline Earth takes an unbiased look at climate change, bringing global warming back to the basics: the science
• Health Front with Jeanette Calle - Similar to Weather Health
• Travel Talk with Jason Handman - Each week Jason takes viewers to top vacation spots around the U.S.
• Weather Detectives with Angelica Campos - Exploring the files of AccuWeather.com’s weather detectives, Weather Detectives profiles the fascinating science of forensic meteorology

Former

• Weather Health with Katrina Voss - AccuWeather reports on the fact and fiction surrounding the links between the weather and your health

Local Station Affiliates

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References

External links

• The Local AccuWeather Channel
• AccuWeather