Foraying into the volatile world of reporting on climate change has proved to be good business for the Atlanta-based The Weather Channel, but it has also brought a whiff of controversy.
The issue started influencing the network’s coverage in a new way after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005, and has been shaping its programming decisions.
“If The Weather Channel isn’t talking about climate change and global warming, who is?” said Kaye Zusmann, the vice president for program strategy and development for the network. “It’s our mandate.”
The network, which had been gearing up for the opening of hurricane season on Friday, sees the engagement with the issues surrounding climate change as important for content and for business.
“We have a point of view, and we think it’s really important to articulate why it’s happening. Secondarily, it’s good business,” said Ms. Wilson, the network president. “Many consumers want to know, ‘What should I do?’ ”
The lightning rod for controversy, so to speak, is Heidi Cullen, the network’s resident climate expert.
In December, she raised the ire of Fox News and others by writing on her weather.com blog that the American Meteorological Society should not give its “seal of approval” to any meteorologist who “can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change.” (There are now more than 1,700 comments on that one post.)
Dr. Cullen, a tiny woman who speaks with conviction, said she believed that people were “finally seeing climate connected to weather,” but that a lot of information still needs to be disseminated. “If you turn on the local forecast, you wouldn’t necessarily know that global warming exists,” she said.
Far from being intimidated by the political backlash, Dr. Cullen and executives at the channel say they have embraced the issue of global warming. Dr. Cullen is host of the weekly show “Forecast Earth,” formerly named “The Climate Code” where she has entertained such guests as former Vice President Al Gore. She also appears on the channel’s other programming with segments on hybrid taxicabs in New York City and the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft.
The network’s other programs have also directly engaged the elephant in the room — or, in this case, the polar bear on the melting ice cap: a recent anniversary roundup of “The 100 Biggest Weather Moments” listed global warming as No. 1. And the network is training its meteorologists so that they can discuss long-term trends as well as five-day forecasts.
“Weather information on an on-demand basis is the foundation of what we do, and a deeper experience on an emotional level brings us to life.” Ms. Wilson said.
Besides sections devoted to travel, golf and pets (yes, pets), the weather.com Web site also has interactive features like blogs and user-submitted videos — as well as consumer-information sections that give users tips on how to prepare for a severe storm, or how to reduce a carbon footprint.
Recent developments, from the strong scientific consensus about global warming to President Bush’s proposal last week to set goals for cutting global emissions, seem to have made the network’s embrace of the topic less risky and more closely tied to its service-journalism mission.
“I think the debate for most Americans has moved away from, ‘Is global warming happening?’ to ‘What do I do?’ ” Ms. Zusmann said. “The viewers want what they always want; they want good television.”