AccuWeather, Inc. | New Media in the 1990s
New Media in the 1990s
New methods of delivery were developed in the early 1990s, including an automated service and broadcasts via Compu-Serve. By 1991, AccuWeather had begun transmitting print-ready pages directly to newspaper printing systems.
There also were new sources of weather information, such as NEXRAD Doppler radar data acquired from Unisys, made available through the Accu-Data database. New sources of weather imagery continued to emerge in the mid-1990s. AccuWeather was a leader in providing images from weather satellites. VirtualWeather offered computer-generated 3-D representations of storm systems.
AccuWeather.com was launched in 1996, the same year the company introduced local weather for cable TV systems. An aviation-related weather site debuted in 1998.
The detail of AccuWeather's local forecasting was extended with 10-Day Hour-by-Hour forecasts introduced for 55,000 cities in 1997. Widespread Weather Services was acquired during the year.
A new interpretive tool introduced in 1997 was The Exclusive AccuWeather RealFeel Temperature, which described what the temperature really felt like to someone appropriately dressed for the weather. It was a unique composite of everything that affects how warm or cold a person feels, and measured the effects of temperature, wind, humidity, sunshine intensity, cloudiness, precipitation, and elevation on the human body.
The late 1990s was a time of celebration and success at AccuWeather. In 1997, company founder Dr. Joel N. Myers was recognized as a major American entrepreneur by Entrepreneur Magazine. The next year, the company moved to a new $5 million, 52,000-square-foot headquarters. In the late 1990s, AccuWeather had 345 employees and 15,000 customers, including 280 radio stations, 250 TV stations, and 400 newspapers.
As a side venture, AccuWeather also was distributing other types of information and content such as crossword puzzles and lottery results. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, though, most of its revenues came from analyses provided to businesses, not the media. The company had to be vigilant, however, to fend off advances from The Weather Channel on its traditional media and corporate weather businesses.
In early 1999, AccuWeather rolled out Forecast Center, a turnkey, automated service that allowed local television stations to transmit graphics and live, two-way footage of AccuWeather's own meteorologists.