Old Wind in New Bottles

By James Poniewozik

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 part of Burke's problem. And he is hoping he has the solution: Storm Stories (weeknights, 8 p.m. E.T.), the Weather Channel's heavily promoted first venture into a regular series.

Think of Storm Stories as Behind the Music with rain; it searches history and recent news for stories of struggle and triumph, from World War II sailors capsized in shark-infested waters to families made homeless by tornadoes. (If there isn't a storm on the radar, there's always one in the video vault.) Half an hour in length, the show is meant to extend the average viewer tune-in of 12 minutes. "If the same people watch 10% longer," says Burke, "it's the same as growing your ratings 10%."

For those who want tomorrow's weather, not 1944's, the forecast will still run at the bottom of the screen. But Storm Stories' emotional tone--the stories include heart-tugging music and the occasional re-enactment--is a departure for a network best known for its buttoned-down restraint. Unlike many TV weathertainers, the Weather Channel's meteorologists--the men in car-salesman suits, the women in sensible sweaters--avoid cheerleading and hype; they don't make corny puns or brag about their gastric-bypass surgery. Even the plain logo looks like something from the '50s. So there's something un--Weather Channel--ly about the flashy Storm Stories, whose ads promise "The power! The fury! The drama!" amid lightning and thunderclaps.

Still, it's hard not to get choked up when you see a sheriff recover a shaken but healthy baby--snatched out of her mother's arms by a tornado--from the mud outside what used to be her home. The scene captures weather news' appeal: it's scary and soothing at the same time. There are no bad guys, the sun will always come back eventually, and you don't have to question your faith in human goodness over a hurricane. As Storm Stories host Jim Cantore puts it, "People can accept that the weather can get nasty. They can't accept that someone can take a plane and crash it into a building." In an era of amber alerts and terrorist warnings, it's enough to make a person weather engaged. --By James Poniewozik