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80-534: NBC Weather Plus was an American weather-oriented digital multicast television network owned as a joint venture between NBCUniversal and the local affiliates of the NBC television network. The service, which was broadcast in standard definition , was carried on the digital subchannels of many NBC affiliates and on the digital tiers of cable providers (through a local affiliate). NBC Weather Plus primarily competed with cable network The Weather Channel , as well as

160-549: A consortium of NBC Universal, and private equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital . Shortly afterward, on October 7, NBC Universal announced that it would phase out Weather Plus by New Year's Eve of that year, after the NBC affiliates expressed a desire to shut the service down. Though NBC cited its purchase of The Weather Channel as a factor in the shutdown, it was stated that the network's closure would have occurred even if

240-478: A different "L-bar," which cycled through current conditions, 24-hour and five-day forecasts for 50 major U.S. cities. Prior to the announcement of Weather Plus' shutdown, the network had planned to revamp the "L-bar". The redesigned graphic was adopted by at least one former Weather Plus affiliate, WKYC-TV in Cleveland , Ohio , following the closure of Weather Plus when it reformatted its weather subchannel into

320-426: A given area and surrounding areas within the affiliate's viewing area or state; regional and five-day forecasts; and almanacs (featuring the day's observed high and low temperatures) were also provided during the local segments. The forecast segment seen in place of the local forecasts on the national feed (which was streamed on the network's website where a local Weather Plus feed was not available for streaming, and

400-411: A half-hour program focusing on educating viewers about weather, and featured segments from NBC News and NBC affiliates relating to climate. That program was part of the network's FCC-required E/I programming. During severe weather events, national segments, at the affiliates' discretion, could be replaced with either news simulcasts or a constant radar display; in turn, this coverage could be picked up by

480-505: A local format, before the station converted the subchannel into a local radar loop, and later True Crime Network . Digital multicast television network Typically run on a lesser budget, national multicast services often rely on archive and imported content and are tailored to allow advertisers to reach specific demographics. Most of their revenue is derived from national advertising. The first multichannel broadcast in Australia

560-587: A more intense storm). Infrared pictures depict ocean eddies or vortices and map currents such as the Gulf Stream which are valuable to the shipping industry. Fishermen and farmers are interested in knowing land and water temperatures to protect their crops against frost or increase their catch from the sea. Even El Niño phenomena can be spotted. Using color-digitized techniques, the gray shaded thermal images can be converted to color for easier identification of desired information. Each meteorological satellite

640-777: A much better resolution than their geostationary counterparts due their closeness to the Earth. The United States has the NOAA series of polar orbiting meteorological satellites, presently NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 ( POES ) and NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 ( JPSS ). Europe has the Metop -A, Metop -B and Metop -C satellites operated by EUMETSAT . Russia has the Meteor and RESURS series of satellites. China has FY -3A, 3B and 3C. India has polar orbiting satellites as well. The United States Department of Defense 's Meteorological Satellite ( DMSP ) can "see"

720-800: A national network by the Federal Telecommunications Institute in December 2017, making it mandatory for satellite TV providers to add it to their lineups. For most of the 2000s, digital multicasting in the United States remained less used. One of the earliest successful uses of subchannels was to broadcast automated weather information. The first such subchannel was the 69 News Weather Channel, launched in February 2001 by WFMZ-TV in Allentown, Pennsylvania , with

800-495: A network of transmitters serving most major U.S. markets, launched kids channel Qubo and health and wellness service Ion Life . Weigel launched MeTV , which had formerly only been a local service in Chicago and Milwaukee, on a national basis in December 2010; four years later, it was the most widely distributed multicast network. It remains the most-watched; in 2021, it had an average prime time audience of 752,000, nearly double

880-447: A number of changes over its predecessors in support of its mission to gather data for weather forecasting and climate monitoring. The MTG satellites are three-axis stabilised rather than spin stabilised, giving greater flexibility in satellite and instrument design. The MTG system features separate Imager and Sounder satellite models that share the same satellite bus, with a baseline of three satellites - two Imagers and one Sounder - forming

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960-723: A scatterometer and a radio-occultation instrument. The satellite service module is based on the SPOT-5 bus, while the payload suite is a combination of new and heritage instruments from both Europe and the US under the Initial Joint Polar System agreement between EUMETSAT and NOAA. A second generation of Metop satellites ( MetOp-SG ) is in advanced development with launch of the first satellite foreseen in 2025. As with MTG, Metop-SG will launch on Ariane-6 and comprise two satellite models to be operated in pairs in replacement of

1040-524: A second imager satellite will operate from 9.5-deg East to perform a Rapid Scanning mission over Europe. MTG continues Meteosat support to the ARGOS and Search and Rescue missions. MTG-I1 launched in one of the last Ariane-5 launches, with the subsequent satellites planned to launch in Ariane-6 when it enters service. In 2006, the first European low-Earth orbit operational meteorological satellite, Metop -A

1120-766: A similar digital multicast network, The Local AccuWeather Channel . The network also provided content for both NBC News and MSNBC's programming; Weather Plus staff also appeared on most of the networks’ programs (although Today mainly used certain meteorologists from the network as substitutes for the program's separate weather anchors). In 2006, after MSNBC moved its operations to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City 's Midtown Manhattan district (integrating its operations with NBC News), Weather Plus moved into fellow sister network CNBC 's Global Headquarters in Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey. In addition to

1200-506: A trained analyst to determine cloud heights and types, to calculate land and surface water temperatures, and to locate ocean surface features. Infrared satellite imagery can be used effectively for tropical cyclones with a visible eye pattern, using the Dvorak technique , where the difference between the temperature of the warm eye and the surrounding cold cloud tops can be used to determine its intensity (colder cloud tops generally indicate

1280-462: A valuable asset in such situations. Nighttime photos also show the burn-off in gas and oil fields. Atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles have been taken by weather satellites since 1969. Not all weather satellites are direct imagers . Some satellites are sounders that take measurements of a single pixel at a time. They have no horizontal spatial resolution but often are capable or resolving vertical atmospheric layers . Soundings along

1360-518: Is classified in accordance with ITU Radio Regulations (article 1) as follows: Fixed service (article 1.20) The allocation of radio frequencies is provided according to Article 5 of the ITU Radio Regulations (edition 2012). In order to improve harmonisation in spectrum utilisation, the majority of service-allocations stipulated in this document were incorporated in national Tables of Frequency Allocations and Utilisations which

1440-446: Is designed to use one of two different classes of orbit: geostationary and polar orbiting . Geostationary weather satellites orbit the Earth above the equator at altitudes of 35,880 km (22,300 miles). Because of this orbit , they remain stationary with respect to the rotating Earth and thus can record or transmit images of the entire hemisphere below continuously with their visible-light and infrared sensors. The news media use

1520-411: Is what has given humanity the capability to make accurate and preemptive space weather forecasts since the late 2010s. In Europe, the first Meteosat geostationary operational meteorological satellite, Meteosat-1, was launched in 1977 on a Delta launch vehicle. The satellite was a spin-stabilised cylindrical design, 2.1 m in diameter and 3.2 m tall, rotating at approx. 100 rpm and carrying

1600-547: The .2 Network , was announced and signed up affiliates but never launched amid the Great Recession . These subchannels offered stations the ability to expand their advertising inventory and offer lower prices on the secondary services. In addition to services signing up national affiliates, some station groups were beginning to experiment around this time. CBS explored, but never launched, a complementary secondary channel, dubbed "CBS 2". In 2007, Ion Media , which owned

1680-550: The COSPAS-SARSAT Search and Rescue (SAR) and ARGOS Data Collection Platform (DCP) missions. SEVIRI provided an increased number of spectral channels over MVIRI and imaged the full-Earth disc at double the rate. Meteosat-9 was launched to complement Meteosat-8 in 2005, with the second pair consisting of Meteosat-10 and Meteosat-11 launched in 2012 and 2015, respectively. The Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) programme launched its first satellite in 2022, and featured

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1760-499: The E. W. Scripps Company acquired Katz Broadcasting for $ 302 million. The purchase was notable for adding four diginets: the women-focused Escape (now Ion Mystery ), the men-targeted Grit , Bounce TV to serve the Black market, and the comedy channel Laff . Scripps saw an opportunity to reduce the proportion of advertising on these services that was direct response and toward more expensive general-market advertising. The deal

1840-592: The European Commission 's Copernicus programme and fulfils the Sentinel-4 mission to monitor air quality, trace gases and aerosols over Europe hourly at high spatial resolution. Two MTG satellites - one Imager and one Sounder - will operate in close proximity from the 0-deg geostationary location over western Africa to observe the eastern Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, while

1920-995: The Meteosat Visible and Infrared Imager (MVIRI) instrument. Successive Meteosat first generation satellites were launched, on European Ariane-4 launchers from Kourou in French Guyana, up to and including Meteosat-7 which acquired data from 1997 until 2017, operated initially by the European Space Agency and later by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Japan has launched nine Himawari satellites beginning in 1977. Starting in 1988 China has launched twenty-one Fengyun satellites. The Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellites - also spin stabilised although physically larger and twice

2000-532: The solar radiation balance of the tropics. Other dust storms in Asia and mainland China are common and easy to spot and monitor, with recent examples of dust moving across the Pacific Ocean and reaching North America. In remote areas of the world with few local observers, fires could rage out of control for days or even weeks and consume huge areas before authorities are alerted. Weather satellites can be

2080-444: The watersheds of the western United States. This information is gleaned from existing satellites of all agencies of the U.S. government (in addition to local, on-the-ground measurements). Ice floes, packs, and bergs can also be located and tracked from weather spacecraft. Even pollution whether it is nature-made or human-made can be pinpointed. The visual and infrared photos show effects of pollution from their respective areas over

2160-537: The 1962 Defense Satellite Applications Program (DSAP) and the 1964 Soviet Meteor series . TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program , whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched since then. Beginning with the Nimbus 3 satellite in 1969, temperature information through the tropospheric column began to be retrieved by satellites from

2240-470: The Comet subchannel. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, diginets such as NBC-owned Cozi TV began making national distribution deals with satellite, paid streaming, and ad-supported streaming providers that previously had not carried them, further increasing their reach. Further, the use of more efficient generations of MPEG-2 encoders by TV stations allowed for the transmission of additional subchannels from

2320-446: The Earth at a typical altitude of 850 km (530 miles) in a north to south (or vice versa) path, passing over the poles in their continuous flight. Polar orbiting weather satellites are in sun-synchronous orbits , which means they are able to observe any place on Earth and will view every location twice each day with the same general lighting conditions due to the near-constant local solar time . Polar orbiting weather satellites offer

2400-835: The Indian Ocean. The Japanese have the MTSAT -2 located over the mid Pacific at 145°E and the Himawari 8 at 140°E. The Europeans have four in operation, Meteosat -8 (3.5°W) and Meteosat-9 (0°) over the Atlantic Ocean and have Meteosat-6 (63°E) and Meteosat-7 (57.5°E) over the Indian Ocean. China currently has four Fengyun (风云) geostationary satellites (FY-2E at 86.5°E, FY-2F at 123.5°E, FY-2G at 105°E and FY-4A at 104.5 °E) operated. India also operates geostationary satellites called INSAT which carry instruments for meteorological purposes. Polar orbiting weather satellites circle

2480-488: The NFL season. During significant national weather events (such as a major winter storm ), Weather Plus meteorologists conducted live reports for NBC Nightly News to provide analysis (all of these services are now provided by The Weather Channel). NBC Weather Plus was unveiled at the NBC affiliate meeting in 2004. The network debuted on November 15, 2004, with NBC's New York City owned-and-operated station WNBC serving as

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2560-529: The U.S., Europe, India, China, Russia, and Japan provide nearly continuous observations for a global weather watch. As early as 1946, the idea of cameras in orbit to observe the weather was being developed. This was due to sparse data observation coverage and the expense of using cloud cameras on rockets. By 1958, the early prototypes for TIROS and Vanguard (developed by the Army Signal Corps ) were created. The first weather satellite, Vanguard 2 ,

2640-438: The United States's more than 200 television markets. This market favored new services launched by the station groups. The business was also maturing significantly due to the rise of cord cutting , enabling some services to make a profit off advertising. Nielsen's list of top 100 television channels in 2016 did not contain any diginets; in 2018, eight made the list. This led to increased mergers and acquisitions activity. In 2017,

2720-594: The Weather Channel's staff. The Weather Channel's main Atlanta staff also began appearing on NBC News programs, either from the cable channel's Atlanta headquarters, NBC's New York City operations or via satellite on-location during weather events. In early December 2008, the website of Weather Plus was redirected to The Weather Channel's website. The service formally shut down operations on December 31, 2008. While some of its affiliates switched to other networks,

2800-568: The acquisition had not happened. Segments featuring on-camera personalities were discontinued on October 24, 2008. Afterwards until the network formally ceased operations, it ran only a loop of various national satellite , radar and temperature maps accompanied by music, local weather maps inserted by the network's affiliates, and Weather Plus University . With this, the remaining on-camera meteorologists from Weather Plus were referred to on other NBC News and MSNBC programs as only "NBC meteorologists," before eventually being mentioned as being part of

2880-418: The assistance of AccuWeather . In 2004, NBC and its affiliates launched NBC Weather Plus , which was available in its peak from more than 80 stations nationally. Another early subchannel user was The Tube Music Network , which broadcast music videos from 2005 to 2007 before closing for financial reasons. 2008 was a critical year in the shift toward programmed digital multicast services. NBC Weather Plus

2960-551: The audience: in 2018, 7mate led the group with an audience share of 4.1 percent among metropolitan audiences. However, after the Australian Communications and Media Authority permitted the commercial broadcasters to move required children's programming and national drama commitments to their multichannels, ratings and visibility fell precipitously; by 2013, the ABC had more viewers for its children's channels than

3040-591: The best of all weather vehicles with its ability to detect objects almost as 'small' as a huge oil tanker . In addition, of all the weather satellites in orbit, only DMSP can "see" at night in the visual. Some of the most spectacular photos have been recorded by the night visual sensor; city lights, volcanoes , fires, lightning, meteors , oil field burn-offs, as well as the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis have been captured by this 720 kilometres (450 mi) high space vehicle's low moonlight sensor. At

3120-558: The commercial broadcasters combined. The commercial broadcasters also became more reliant on news, sport, and reality competitions on their main channels. Each of the five major broadcasters offers its own suite of multichannels: In 2017, TV Azteca launched a+ (now A Más ), initially conceived as a hybrid regional-national service to be carried on its existing Azteca 7 transmitters in most of Mexico. The new channel—as well as news channel adn40 , aired on Azteca Uno transmitters, achieved sufficient national coverage to be classified

3200-439: The current conditions for Fort Worth Alliance Airport were displayed alongside the forecast for nearby Dallas). The current conditions for a single city cycled for 20 seconds; while the 24-hour and five-day forecasts cycled for 10 seconds. In the case of Sacramento affiliate KCRA , the current conditions cycled continuously and the current time was placed on the right-hand side in the lower-right third. The national feed featured

3280-418: The current time and on some stations, perpetual station identification text on the lower left. The bottom right two-thirds of the bar displayed 24-hour and five-day forecasts for each city (with the 24-hour forecasts also incorporating forecasted precipitation amounts). Similar to The Weather Channel's Local on the 8s segment in the hour after sunset (which determined the usage of daypart-based icons partly on

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3360-578: The eastern Atlantic and most of the Pacific Ocean, which led to significant improvements to weather forecasts . The ESSA and NOAA polar orbiting satellites followed suit from the late 1960s onward. Geostationary satellites followed, beginning with the ATS and SMS series in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then continuing with the GOES series from the 1970s onward. Polar orbiting satellites such as QuikScat and TRMM began to relay wind information near

3440-553: The entire Earth asynchronously), or geostationary (hovering over the same spot on the equator ). While primarily used to detect the development and movement of storm systems and other cloud patterns, meteorological satellites can also detect other phenomena such as city lights, fires, effects of pollution, auroras , sand and dust storms , snow cover, ice mapping, boundaries of ocean currents , and energy flows. Other types of environmental information are collected using weather satellites. Weather satellite images helped in monitoring

3520-705: The entire earth. Aircraft and rocket pollution, as well as condensation trails , can also be spotted. The ocean current and low level wind information gleaned from the space photos can help predict oceanic oil spill coverage and movement. Almost every summer, sand and dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa drifts across the equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean. GOES-EAST photos enable meteorologists to observe, track and forecast this sand cloud. In addition to reducing visibilities and causing respiratory problems, sand clouds suppress hurricane formation by modifying

3600-505: The geostationary photos in their daily weather presentation as single images or made into movie loops. These are also available on the city forecast pages of www.noaa.gov (example Dallas, TX). Several geostationary meteorological spacecraft are in operation. The United States' GOES series has three in operation: GOES-15 , GOES-16 and GOES-17 . GOES-16 and-17 remain stationary over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, respectively. GOES-15

3680-530: The host station, as Scripps does with the Ion transmitters, allows for the reduction of costs by eliminating such payments in some markets. In some cases, switching stations can also lead to the service gaining carriage on cable in its broadcast area. For instance, in 2022, Sinclair Broadcast Group moved Comet , one of its three diginets, from WSBK-TV to WFXT in the Boston area, which also led to cable carriage for

3760-457: The launch of Create by American Public Television in January 2006. In 2016, PBS began providing a 24-hour PBS Kids service to member stations. Weather satellite A weather satellite or meteorological satellite is a type of Earth observation satellite that is primarily used to monitor the weather and climate of the Earth. Satellites can be polar orbiting (covering

3840-666: The mass of the first generation - were developed by ESA with European industry and in cooperation with EUMETSAT who then operate the satellites from their headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany with this same approach followed for all subsequent European meteorological satellites. Meteosat-8 , the first MSG satellite, was launched in 2002 on an Ariane-5 launcher, carrying the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) and Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) instruments, along with payloads to support

3920-462: The morning repeating long into the late afternoon. In the latter instance, this was an issue as updated information may not have been available during any type of severe weather (unless very significant) that was ongoing. Some of the segments featured on the network used different titles at times if it is a sponsored forecast segment such as State Farm Road Coverage , which replaced Coast To Coast . The network also produced Weather Plus University ,

4000-510: The most dramatic photos showed the 600 Kuwaiti oil fires that the fleeing Army of Iraq started on February 23, 1991. The night photos showed huge flashes, far outstripping the glow of large populated areas. The fires consumed huge quantities of oil; the last was doused on November 6, 1991. Snowfield monitoring, especially in the Sierra Nevada , can be helpful to the hydrologist keeping track of available snowpack for runoff vital to

4080-411: The national Weather Plus feed (live if possible) during the "Coast To Coast" and/or "Plus Five Forecast" segments. During the network's "Weather Alert" mode, specifically when a major severe weather event was occurring or a dangerous hurricane is preparing to make landfall, regular programming was interrupted to provide constant coverage. Most of NBC Weather Plus' affiliates used a respective combination of

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4160-613: The network bring coverage up to 67% of U.S. households. Weather Plus was moved to NBC News division in 2007 after NBC Station Group President Jay Ireland returned to General Electric . However, by September 2005, KAMR-TV in Amarillo, Texas became the only NBC affiliate owned by Nexstar Broadcasting Group (now Nexstar Media Group) to have picked up the NBC Weather Plus service on its digital subchannel. In September 2008, Landmark Media Enterprises sold The Weather Channel to

4240-560: The network discontinued on-camera segments in October 2008, NBC Weather Plus maintained a wheel format for its forecast segments, which were scheduled at fixed timeslots each half-hour: NBC Weather Plus' programming is mostly recorded; outside of at least one live update hourly between 4:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. local time provided by the affiliates, a digital video jukebox system is used to shuffle certain segments (particularly during seasonal outlook and weather news segments as well as

4320-492: The network's late night programming), except in the event of severe weather of particular significance ongoing in the U.S. A viewer that watched NBC Weather Plus in any given day would be able to see a weather news segment that originally aired in the morning repeated long into the night, the same weather information that aired at 11:00 p.m. airing at 4:00 a.m., and the same seasonal outlook (severe weather, tropical weather, or winter weather) segment that originally aired in

4400-466: The network, Weather Plus staff provided weather updates for CNBC and MSNBC; MSNBC also aired "sample" hours of the network during the morning hours on certain major holidays. In addition, Weather Plus was promoted during NBC's NFL pre-game show Football Night in America , and was used to provide the temperature and weather conditions at gametime for each week's NBC Sunday Night Football game during

4480-495: The next-highest diginet and greater than cable channels such as Bravo , Lifetime , and A&E . As digital multicast services began to proliferate and gain viewers in the 2010s, they also became more specialized in an attempt to stand out and reach potential viewers. However, those that were not owned by large station groups and thus could not count on a backbone of significant national coverage struggled to negotiate distribution, having to do so with individual stations in each of

4560-484: The ocean's surface starting in the late 1970s, with microwave imagery which resembled radar displays, which significantly improved the diagnoses of tropical cyclone strength, intensification, and location during the 2000s and 2010s. The DSCOVR satellite, owned by NOAA, was launched in 2015 and became the first deep space satellite that can observe and predict space weather. It can detect potentially dangerous weather such as solar wind and geomagnetic storms . This

4640-547: The operational configuration. The imager satellites carry the Flexible Combined Imager (FCI), succeeding MVIRI and SEVIRI to give even greater resolution and spectral coverage, scanning the full Earth disc every ten minutes, as well as a new Lightning Imager (LI) payload. The sounder satellites carry the Infrared Sounder (IRS) and Ultra-violet Visible Near-infrared (UVN) instruments. UVN is part of

4720-409: The remaining affiliates running them as local weather services. Many operated under the unofficial brand, "NBC Plus". This option allowed the equipment that had been used to insert local content onto the former national feed of NBC Weather Plus to remain in use. The network's forecast system and maps continued to be used until 2010 for studio segments on CNBC and MSNBC, with Weather Channel branding along

4800-424: The same time, energy use and city growth can be monitored since both major and even minor cities, as well as highway lights, are conspicuous. This informs astronomers of light pollution . The New York City Blackout of 1977 was captured by one of the night orbiter DMSP space vehicles. In addition to monitoring city lights, these photos are a life saving asset in the detection and monitoring of fires. Not only do

4880-420: The same transmitter; a representative for Harmonic, a seller of encoders, noted that stations were seeing a return on their investment within less than a year from the additional revenue stream opened up by adding another diginet. Public television stations in the United States were also comparatively early adopters of multicasting, and public TV content distributors joined the game in the mid-2000s, such as with

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4960-606: The satellite ground track can still be gridded later to form maps . According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a meteorological-satellite service (also: meteorological-satellite radiocommunication service ) is – according to Article 1.52 of the ITU Radio Regulations (RR) – defined as « An earth exploration-satellite service for meteorological purposes.» This radiocommunication service

5040-429: The satellites see the fires visually day and night, but the thermal and infrared scanners on board these weather satellites detect potential fire sources below the surface of the Earth where smoldering occurs. Once the fire is detected, the same weather satellites provide vital information about wind that could fan or spread the fires. These same cloud photos from space tell the firefighter when it will rain. Some of

5120-785: The single first generation satellites to continue the EPS mission. Observation is typically made via different 'channels' of the electromagnetic spectrum , in particular, the visible and infrared portions. Some of these channels include: Visible-light images from weather satellites during local daylight hours are easy to interpret even by the average person, clouds, cloud systems such as fronts and tropical storms, lakes, forests, mountains, snow ice, fires, and pollution such as smoke, smog, dust and haze are readily apparent. Even wind can be determined by cloud patterns, alignments and movement from successive photos. The thermal or infrared images recorded by sensors called scanning radiometers enable

5200-663: The station and "Weather Plus" branding, for both the subchannel and for the station's general weather branding during newscasts and weather updates on the NBC affiliate's main channel. After the shutdown of the digital network, many NBC affiliates continued to use the "Weather Plus" brand as part of their on-air weather branding, although most have switched to other brands in the succeeding years. NBC Weather Plus gave 24 minutes of programming time per hour to its affiliates to air pre-recorded local forecast segments conducted by weather staff from local NBC-affiliated stations, running eight times an hour. In addition, current weather conditions for

5280-587: The test station. At the time, the network was operating out of the offices of NBC News' affiliate newsgathering service, NBC News Channel , in Charlotte, North Carolina . NBC and MSNBC weather anchors and meteorologist staff the network to start. Raycom Media agreed by April 2005 to affiliated its 13 NBC stations' subchannel with NBC Weather Plus, On March 30, 2005, Sunbeam Television , Liberty Corporation , Sunbelt Communications and Bonneville International announced that 30 stations of their station would launch

5360-452: The three major networks all did so, bringing the number of channels they offered from three to eleven. The original commercial multichannels were generalist in nature, which made it difficult for advertisers to target specific demographics and therefore made them less lucrative. The shift to specifically targeted services and their reliance on existing programming has allowed these channels to survive despite drawing comparatively low shares of

5440-410: The time of sunset in a given locality), an occasional bug in the "L-bar" displayed weather icons incorporating the sun when detailing the current sky condition for some observation sites at night. If an observation site was located within or near a larger city, the forecast for the next closest reporting station would be shown instead (for example, on Dallas affiliate KXAS-TV 's Weather Plus subchannel,

5520-485: The top left (which were more often seen on local feeds, and was removed during Weather Plus University ), current weather conditions (sky condition, temperature, wind speed/direction and humidity) for the affiliate's city of service and other cities within the viewing area or state on the middle left; station identification on the bottom left (in which affiliates augmented their logo above the Weather Plus logo); and

5600-410: The top-third banner, before being replaced entirely with graphics used by The Weather Channel by mid-2010 (the graphics system used for Weather Plus's national feed remains in use on NBC's Early Today as of 2014). Until 2011, several NBC owned-and-operated stations ran a barebones variant of Weather Plus, which was finally replaced with a localized news and lifestyle service called NBC Nonstop (which

5680-516: The tracks from Positive Pop Grooves , with the other tracks being DJ Gruv , Voccho , Sneez and Pyraflex ) used by NBC Weather Plus' weather radar forecasts from 2005 to 2008. The network utilizes an on-screen graphic, known as the "L-bar," to display local weather forecasts on the left and bottom third of the screen to provide local weather information on a continuous basis, even during commercial breaks, national weather segments and Weather Plus University . The sidebar displayed sponsorship tags on

5760-399: The volcanic ash cloud from Mount St. Helens and activity from other volcanoes such as Mount Etna . Smoke from fires in the western United States such as Colorado and Utah have also been monitored. El Niño and its effects on weather are monitored daily from satellite images. The Antarctic ozone hole is mapped from weather satellite data. Collectively, weather satellites flown by

5840-439: Was ABC Kids , which broadcast from 2001 to 2003; in the succeeding years, the country's commercial broadcasters also launched secondary services to compete against DVDs and online piracy. However, their ability to do so was hampered at first by a ban on adding channels, with a focus on such services as datacasting and high-definition. It was not until 2009 that commercial broadcasters were allowed to add multichannels; in that year,

5920-595: Was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit at 817 km altitude by a Soyuz launcher from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. This operational satellite - which forms the space segment of the EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS) - built on the heritage from ESA's ERS and Envisat experimental missions, and was followed at six-year intervals by Metop-B and Metop-C - the latter launched from French Guyana in a "Europeanised" Soyuz . Each carry thirteen different passive and active instruments ranging in design from imagers and sounders to

6000-550: Was launched on February 17, 1959. It was designed to measure cloud cover and resistance, but a poor axis of rotation and its elliptical orbit kept it from collecting a notable amount of useful data. The Explorer 6 and Explorer 7 satellites also contained weather-related experiments. The first weather satellite to be considered a success was TIROS-1 , launched by NASA on April 1, 1960. TIROS operated for 78 days and proved to be much more successful than Vanguard 2. Other early weather satellite programs include

6080-473: Was not carried on satellite via DirecTV , Dish Network or C band services) cycled through daily forecasts and composite satellite/radar loops for the respective regions of the Northeastern, Southeastern, Midwestern, Northwestern and Southwestern United States. Music associated with the local forecast segments came from commercial sources, including 615 Music , which composed the music package (mostly

6160-450: Was replaced by Cozi TV in 2012). Other stations have discontinued their use of Weather Plus in order to take advantage of upgraded weather technology after converting to high-definition news production, or switched to an entertainment-based multicast network featuring programming more palatable to different advertisers. WVIR-TV kept the Weather Plus look until reportedly May 2015 when it was replaced by WeatherNation. From its launch until

6240-534: Was retired in early July 2019. The satellite GOES 13 that was previously owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) was transferred to the U.S. Space Force in 2019 and renamed the EWS-G1; becoming the first geostationary weather satellite to be owned and operated by the U.S. Department of Defense. Russia 's new-generation weather satellite Elektro-L No.1 operates at 76°E over

6320-675: Was seen as a validation of the diginet business. Scripps then acquired most of the Ion Media transmitter network and affiliated with the remainder in 2021, using the transmitters to broadcast a growing array of targeted, thematic diginets. Tegna , like Scripps an owner of full-service broadcast stations, acquired the Justice Network (now True Crime Network ) and Quest for $ 91 million in 2019. Multicast services typically pay local stations to affiliate, with higher payments going to stations with lower major channel numbers; owning

6400-525: Was shut down at the end of 2008 in a decision taken by the network's affiliates. Several new channels offering classic TV programming were launching or growing at the time. These included the Retro Television Network (RTN), started in 2005 by Equity Media Holdings as the first such service, and This TV , a movie service run as a joint venture between Weigel Broadcasting and film studio MGM . Another planned subchannel of this type,

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