The Weather Channel is planning to “double down” on its climate change coverage, citing greater concerns over the issue from its audience.
“Climate and weather coverage are completely linked,” chief content officer Nora Zimmett told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week. “It’s the most important topic of not just our generation, but generations to come. We have a front seat.”
While the Atlanta-based Weather Channel has covered climate change on its airwaves, Zimmett said, it hadn’t yet done it on a regular basis. Now, she said, there will be a “full-scale assault” on the topic.
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“We intend to do that now,” she said. “American sentiment only recently caught up with the urgency of the issue. Years ago, our audience didn’t want to hear about it. They are much more interested in it now.”
Polling shows younger Americans like millennials and Generation Z are more likely to have concerns about climate change.
Zimmett, who came to The Weather Channel in 2014 after a two-year stint at CNN, said the evidence of climate change was “overwhelming,” and more people were seeing it affect their lives, whether through the recent heatwave in the Pacific Northwest or natural disasters.
She said coverage would focus on “positive solutions” for viewers to address mitigating climate change, saying sensationalistic coverage of the issue was the wrong approach. She said she didn’t want to “alienate” viewers who are skeptical on the issue, as scientists and Americans debate how much of a role humans play in warming global temperatures.
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“That’s not the way to inspire or engage viewers,” Zimmett said.
