New England Weather Service (Was Re: Radio WX)

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>On 3/26/99 2:25 AM, Mike Thomas (nostatic@earthlink.net) wrote:
>
>> I'm curious as to what happened to the New England Weather Service.  It was
>> started by the Chase family when they owned WTIC-AM & FM in Hartford.  It
>> was supposed to be an alternative to Accuweather with more of a regional
>> focus.  It's forecasts were on WTIC-AM and WTIC-TV (Fox 61.)

        There's more history to it before then. When Travelers sold the
radio stations in the mid 1970s, the name of the long-standing weather
service that was used by the AM, FM and TV was changed to N.E. Weather
Service and continued to provide the forecasts and meteorologists (mostly
or all real meteorologists) for the radios and for channel 3, although it
had been sold to a separate new owner (Post-Newsweek). Pretty much the same
staff that had been with Travelers Weather continued on, with the addition
of Hilton Kaderli, who was brought in to be 3's main forecaster. He did
some radio sometimes.
        In the very late '80s, I think it was, the weather service was
discontinued. The radio switched to Accuweather. WTIC (AM) grotesquely
insulted the public and the N.E. weather service ex-employees/now
unemployed persons by running newspaper advertisements declaring that this
was going to be a big improvement. In connection with this transparent
money-saving foolishness, the AM also debuted its slogan of "the weather
station," which it has used up until the present, with slight modification.
Within a year or two, if my historic guesstimate is correct, Accuweather
was dropped and the N.E. Weather Service revived, with great fanfare. At
first, it was a Chase operation, serving the AM, FM and WTIC-TV, ch. 61.
Its revival may even have coincided with the debut of the 61 newscast at 10
p.m., which was, I know, in 1989. At some point much more recently, Chase
no longer owned 61 and the TV outlet for N.E. Weather switched to Ch. 3
(which I presume took it from 61 with a higher bid as soon as Chase was
out).
        So, N.E. Weather is alive and well again. For radio, it's the only
full-scale locally based weather forecasting operation in Conn. and does
the best job, IMO, on both radio and TV, in bad weather situations.
        N.E. Weather provides forecasts to a small number of radio stations
in Conn. and western Massachusetts--some of them surprisingly close to WTIC
(AM), although its market area and real listenership area now is much
smaller than its signal area, like many/most of the Class A stations. At
one time or another I believe N.E. Weather has been on WSBS/Great
Barrington and the FM station in extreme NW Conn. (Sharon?), among a few
other clients that I believe it has had.

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Have you patronized the skywave signal of an AM Class A station today?

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