Breakup of Weather Co. empire takes hold in Cobb
by: Matt Kempner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
11:24 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016 | Filed in: Business
Jim Cantore, The Weather Channel on-camera meteorologist and storm tracker, reports on Winter Storm Jonas in Washington on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. (Kevin Wolf/AP Images for The Weather Channel)
The Weather Channel is on its own again.
IBM announced it has officially closed on its deal to buy most of the channel’s parent company, the Cobb County-based Weather Company.
That includes weather.com, the company’s mobile apps and, crucially, the ability to gather, crunch and distribute huge amounts of weather data not only to consumers but to the Weather Company’s business customers, including airlines, media outlets and energy businesses.
But the acquisition, plans for which were announced in October, doesn’t include the TV network.
The Weather Channel remains an independent network, at the moment at least, and has a long-term license to get weather forecasting data from IBM.
Questions remains about how the businesses might change in the future, especially on the side attached to IBM, a company that is largely out of the consumer business.
Between 900 and 950 employees are making the jump to IBM, a spokeswoman wrote Sunday in an email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. About 450 of those new IBM workers are based in Atlanta.
A spokesperson for the remaining Weather Channel was not immediately available for comment Sunday morning. That part of the business has had several hundred employees.
Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM, which has been dogged by declining sales, plans to use the Weather Company’s expertise and infrastructure to boost the tech giant’s big bet on Watson, a computing system that “learns” and could provide insights for a host of industries.
IBM also said it plans to expand weather.com into China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Japan, with hopes of adding hundreds of millions over three years.