Old Wind in New Bottles

The Weather Channel seeks to turn yesterday's tornadoes into today's high drama with Storm Stories

BILL BURKE NEEDS MORE FAIR-weather friends. President of the Weather Channel Companies, Burke depends on what his marketing folks call the weather engaged: people who watch the Weather Channel in fair weather or foul, through all the pollen counts and hypnotic green radar maps, often for hours on end. But the weather engaged, according to the channel's research, make up only about 40% of its audience, so viewership lurches from flood to drought: a couple of million viewers in severe weather, a few hundred thousand during normal periods. If you watch the Weather Channel merely to get your weather, you are...

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