Rupert Murdoch is looking to rain on The Weather Channel's parade.
Murdoch is set to debut a new streaming service, Fox Weather, this fall, with his company believing that the "sometimes-staid world of weather TV is ripe for disruption," The New York Times reports. Fox Weather is aiming to take on The Weather Channel, but the Times noted that the latter company is "already throwing some shade" at its new competitor.
"They couldn't even get a headline right about Tropical Storm Bill," The Weather Channel chief content officer Nora Zimmett told the Times, slamming a recent article on Fox News' website claiming the storm posed a "massive" threat. "I applaud Fox getting into the weather space, but they should certainly leave the lifesaving information to the experts."
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Zimmett added that climate change "is too important to politicize, and if they do that, they will be doing Americans a disservice." A Fox Weather spokesperson pushed back, telling the Times, "While the Weather Channel is focused on trolling FoxNews.com for unrelated stories, Fox Weather is busy preparing the debut of our innovative platform to deliver critical coverage to an incredibly underserved market."
The report describes how Fox Weather is "taking a run at major talent" from The Weather Channel, which is also planning to roll out a new streaming service of its own called Weather Channel Plus. But Byron Allen, chair of The Weather Channel's owner Allen Media Group, told the Times he welcomes the competition from Fox Weather because "there's no Ali without George Foreman."
