Weather Channel Issues Sweeps Bulletin to Boost Series
The Weather Channel is hyping its new series about weather’s impact on historic events online with a quiz and a vacation sweepstakes.
“When Weather Changed History” debuted on Jan. 6 with the weather story behind the Challenger space shuttle disaster. (Extremely cold weather created conditions that led to its destruction.) A preview clip from that episode was posted online at www.weather.com/history in advance of the series debut, along with a weather history quiz with series clips and a sweepstakes for a trip to London and Paris, Honolulu and Maui or Tokyo and Hiroshima.
Other sweeps prizes include camcorders, with winners encouraged to submit short videos for possible online posting about how weather has changed their lives.
It’s all part of a continuing TWC tact to build audience through web connections and build content bridges between TV and PC screens.
“We’re always looking to let people have fun with our content across all platforms,” said Paul Greenberg, TWC director of consumer marketing.
The weather history quiz, featuring series host Jim Cantore, satisfies Weather Channel fans’ expectations of its content, Greenberg said.
“People are looking to learn something from the Weather Channel,” he said. “It has to be information as well as engaging.”
So far, most people visiting the site to register for the sweepstakes are taking the quiz, according to Greenberg, who projected it would prove to be TWC’s most effective promotional ploy to date.
TWC ran a trip sweepstakes online last fall to draw attention to its Nissan-sponsored “Epic Conditions” series.
TWC is using online ads and on-air spots to make viewers aware of the trip sweepstakes. The series tie-in is the historical gravitas of the locales: the London/Paris excursion includes tours of Dover Castle and Dunkirk; Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor is the focus of the Hawaii trip; the Japan excursion focuses on the Atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima.
Each of those historical locations appears in the context of one of the series episodes.
Online registration for the TWC sweeps runs through Feb. 1.
TWC has 10 episodes “When Weather Changed History” either done or in production, with two more episodes planned. The series is shot in high definition.
