Forecast gloomy
January 4, 2008 at 9:33 am by Scott Henry in Randomly NotedEmployees of the Cobb-based Weather Channel had a rude awakening Thursday morning when they showed up for work and discovered their company is being sold. According to one source at the cable channel, rank-and-file staffers didn’t know they were on the auction block until someone spotted this item in the New York Times online.
According to the Times, the WC’s owner, Landmark Communications, a private media company based in Virginia, is seeking to collect as much as $5 billion for the channel and its popular website, weather.com. No word yet on what would become of the channel’s Forecast Earth website, where climatologist Heidi Cullen has ruffled some conservative feathers with her dissing of global warming deniers.
The NYT predicts that NBC, Comcast, Time Warner and even Faux News could be interested in bidding on the channel, which, appropriately, is located just off Windy Hill Road.
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January 4th, 2008 at 11:10 am
“Forecast Gloomy”
What does this headline mean? Why is being bought by a company that can afford to invest in growth at the Weather Channel, while allowing long-time employees to get a premium on options and stock they have in the private company a bad thing, i.e. forecast gloomy.
“According to one source at the cable channel, rank-and-file staffers didn’t know they were on the auction block until someone spotted this item in the New York Times online.”
You write this as if this is somehow unique. Companies NEVER discuss pending transactions like this with ‘rank-and-file’ for a few reasons. First, if any party to the transaction is a publicly traded company, talking about it prior to a public announcement is a serious violation of SEC rules. Second, public disclosures like this can affect the negotiations themselves.
“No word yet on what would become of the channel’s Forecast Earth website, where climatologist Heidi Cullen has ruffled some conservative feathers with her dissing of global warming deniers.”
WTF does this have to do with the story other than allowing you to bring up global warming in a story that has nothing to do with it, and take a jab at conservatives which is of course how you all earn your stripes at Creative Loafing.
Why not just write, “no word yet on what will happen to the security guards, where office Steve has ruffled some skateboarder feathers, by constantly running them off of the Weather Channel parking lot.”
Seriously.
January 4th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Hey, Scott, did you get those stripes Ken asked me to leave on your desk?
January 4th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Andisheh, I grabbed the stripes off Scott’s desk because I had to write a blog post. Sorry about that.
Scott, I hung your stripes back up in the stripes closet, which, if you forgot, is to the left of our Cindy Sheehan mural. Paint’s still wet, so… you know, just be careful, you filthy liberal.