Whenever consumers are asked to name their primary reason for tuning into a TV newscast, the No. 1 answer is always the weather.
Fox News commentators have also been largely dismissive of climate change. Last year, prime-time host Tucker Carlson described climate change as “systemic racism in the sky,” and he raised doubts about its impact on the wildfires that swept the West Coast. The company will face well-established competitors such as the Weather Channel, the leading national TV source of weather information for 40 years. AccuWeather, which has supplied forecasts to consumers, media outlets and corporations since 1962 and has ramped up its own cable channel, recently launched a video streaming service called AccuWeather Now. Colorado-based WeatherNation also supplies forecasts to TV stations and cable systems throughout the U.S.
Amy Freeze, a veteran meteorologist who joined Fox Weather from the Walt Disney Co.’s WABC-TV in New York, fried an egg on a sidewalk in Newark in 2011 when the area had its hottest day on record. She also covered the two biggest blizzards in New York City history.