Research Reveals That The Weather Channel Has the Largest Combined Television and Online Reach of Any Cable News Entity

Research Reveals That The Weather Channel Has the Largest Combined Television and Online Reach of Any Cable News Entity

119 Million Unduplicated Users Experience The Weather Channel and weather.com on a Monthly Basis

ATLANTA, March 12 /PRNewswire/ -- The Weather Channel is announcing that according to research from The Nielsen Company, The Weather Channel and weather.com reach over 119 million unique, unduplicated consumers a month, a reach which surpasses that of any other cable news brand in the country. The Weather Channel and weather.com ranked #1, outperforming CNN/cnn.com which had 118 million, Fox News/foxnews.com which had 95 million, and other cable news networks.(1)

The findings, even without the additional strength of TWC mobile usage which could add several more million users, show The Weather Channel brand is the clear leader in reaching consumers across multiple platforms. Other studies of media brands' cross platform reach also confirm TWC's strong multiplatform performance.

In a breakdown of the totals, weather.com was higher in users than were the web sites of other cable news networks. weather.com had 42 million unique users while cnn.com had 33 million and foxnews.com had 9 million.

It is no surprise that The Weather Channel brand does well in analysis of unduplicated multiplatform reach. The popularity and success of the network and its web site are outstanding across the board. The Weather Channel network is distributed to over 96 million households. The Weather Channel Interactive (TWCI) is the most popular source of online weather, news and information according to Nielsen Online; TWCI is the leading provider of broadband and wireless weather products including weather.com and The Weather Channel Mobile

"The sea change in the ad industry for clients to seek out cross platform opportunities to optimize their advertising dollars requires the creation of a new metric for measuring multiplatform unduplicated reach. We applaud the work being done to bring these important measures to today's marketplace and we are pleased to have research-based verification of our superior performance in multiplatform reach," said Paul Iaffaldano, executive vice president of The Weather Channel Media Solutions.

He continued -- "The Weather Channel has always looked for ways to improve research-based approaches to demonstrating our strong ad performance to clients and advertisers. We have been leaders in pushing new metrics methodology. In the same way that we were among the first to use commercial minute ratings with clients, we are taking a stand that the Nielsen Fusion is the current best way to illustrate cross platform performance. Again The Weather Channel is ahead of other networks in understanding and working to provide relevant ad effectiveness measurement to our advertisers."

The research results are derived from Nielsen's TV/Internet Data Fusion service, which links Nielsen's National People Meter panel with Nielsen Online's NetView panel, matching them through common demographic variables, to derive consumer usage across multiple platforms.

"At a time when consumers are accessing information from many different media platforms, it is important to have a measurement tool that tells us how media brands perform across all platforms," said Howard Shimmel, Senior Vice President, Client Insights, NielsenConnections. "Nielsen's TV/Internet Data Fusion service is unique in its ability to describe for the advertising community the full range of multiplatform services such as the Weather Channel.

The Weather Channel brand's superior performance in unduplicated audience reach is one of several messages that The Weather Channel is taking to the advertising community during the upfront season. Other strengths of advertising on The Weather Channel and weather.com include:

-- Based on more than 38 studies over the past eight years, research
findings show that viewers are predisposed to remember information they
watch on The Weather Channel and therefore they will remember
advertising. Research has proven that, on average, recall on TWC is
more than 30 percent higher than the same ads on other networks.(2)
-- Advertisers who choose to advertise on TWC's multiple platforms
experience higher ad awareness than when advertising on one platform
alone. Research shows that multiplatform advertising with The Weather
Channel brand is 58 percent more effective in generating ad awareness
than advertising on one platform alone.(3)
-- In an age of concern about time-shifted viewing, a "TIVO-proof"
advantage of The Weather Channel is the immediate and perishable nature
of its content. Viewers are less likely to record it with DVR devices
that let them skip commercials. The fact that viewers continue to watch
TWC during commercials is confirmed by the network's high standing in
studies of commercial minute ratings.(4)

(1) Nielsen Fusion, May-August, 2007
(2) ASI Entertainment Inc. Ad Recall & Engagement Studies, 1999-2007
(3) ASI Entertainment Inc. Ad Recall Study, 2006
(4) Nielsen N Power Oct./Nov. 2007

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact:

Source: The Weather Channel

CONTACT: Connie Malko of The Weather Channel, +1-770-226-2180

Web site:

http://www.weather.com/

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