Rating: 
Summary: An Invaluable Component of "The Age of Information"
Review: Although I agree with others that tighter editing would have eliminated repetitions and the photos provided should have offered a better visual presentation of the channel's development and (especially) its operations, I still rate this book as highly as I do for several reasons. First, Batten (with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank) provides a compelling analysis of the challenges and problems he and his associates had to overcome to achieve the improbable business success of "a media phenomenon." Also, after having read this book, I had a much better understanding and appreciation of the value of what the Weather Channel now offers in this so-called "Age of Information." What if advanced warnings about severely inclement weather been easily accessible in years past? How many lives would have been spared from natural disasters such as the hurricane which devastated Galveston Island in 1900? For many people I personally know (including my wife), the Weather Channel is "must viewing" at the beginning and end of of each day. For them and countless others, it is the modern day equivalent of a crystal ball. For business travelers, which clothing to pack? For parents, what should the children wear to school? For those about to be involved in an outdoor activity (e.g. a Little League game, family picnic, or round of golf), "what's it going to be like?" Of course, born and raised in Chicago, I know how unpredictable the weather can often be. Years later, while living in Boston, I recall an elderly woman who called the meteorologist at a local television station to complain that "I now have four inches of `partly cloudy' in my basement!" In this book, Batten brilliantly achieves two major objectives: To tell a unique "business success story," and in process, thereby to explain why the Weather Channel has become so important to so many people.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected, but it is a book on TWC...
Review: For those thinking about buying this book. One word of caution, it is NOT specifically about TWC. It is more about creating a business from the ground up and ignoring critics, blah, blah, blah. I was hoping for a behind-the-sences type of book on TWC, but this is not the case. A pretty dull book IMO, but a great book if you're a business person.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Management and Personal Lesson
Review: I know the senior author and the Landmark newspaper in Norfolk well. At least I thought I did. This book was an eye-opener about Frank Batten, Landmark,and The Weather Channel. Although the story is clearly facinating from a business and weather junkie perspective, its main lesson is how Landmark deals with its own people. Giving key employees responsibility and trusting their decisions is backed with a piece of the financial action. This message eclipses all of the financial, media, and marketing information about the amazing development of The Weather Channel. The book is a refreshing story of business success based on individual player's skills and the stellar reputation of a relatively small privately held communication company.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Management and Personal Lesson
Review: I know the senior author and the Landmark newspaper in Norfolk well. At least I thought I did. This book was an eye-opener about Frank Batten, Landmark,and The Weather Channel. Although the story is clearly facinating from a business and weather junkie perspective, its main lesson is how Landmark deals with its own people. Giving key employees responsibility and trusting their decisions is backed with a piece of the financial action. This message eclipses all of the financial, media, and marketing information about the amazing development of The Weather Channel. The book is a refreshing story of business success based on individual player's skills and the stellar reputation of a relatively small privately held communication company.
Rating:
Summary: A great read--recommended!
Review: I'd recommend this book to anyone who regularly tunes into The Weather Channel for their weather forecasts. It's a fun read and great look at how this cable channel began and how it was run back in the early years of cable TV. It's a story that few people know about. The founder of TWC takes readers through all of the early struggles he had in the beginning and shows how the small start-up cable network became a media giant with millions of followers that have become die-hard fans. This is far from a CEO-memoir--it's truly an amazing story. Take this book to the beach with you this summmer!
Rating: 
Summary: Improbable? I don't think so. Phenomenon? Definitely.
Review: I'm so old that I remember when Cable TV promised to give commercial-free programming in return for the customer's subscription fee. That seemed like a great idea and I've often wondered why -- and how -- it disappeared so quickly. Batten's book certainly answers that question. This book, which could use some careful editing and does not speak well for current literary standards at the Harvard Business School Press, tells a fascinating story of the building of a little empire. Batten's insights on leadership are intriguing, too, and he certainly doesn't hesitate to point out areas where he feels he could have done better. All of that will be helpful to the reader who wants to learn about building a business from "scratch." It's encouraging to see how the weather channel has evolved. We can hope they'll soon improve on some of their current shortcomings. One I find particularly annoying, for example, is "your local weather" "on the 8s" which never has my local weather but instead gives me the weather in Chicago, Atlanta, Boston and other major geographic points -- a ridiculous time-waster, at the very least, to someone deep in the Nebraska woods! More useful would be a temperature map of the regions surrounding those areas. The subtitle: "The Improbable Rise of A Media Phenomenon" is a bit misleading. I can't imagine how such an idea -- that is, the idea of presenting nationwide and even worldwide current weather on television -- could possibly NOT have occurred to someone once satellite images were available. The improbability, it seems to me, was that noone would come up with the idea. But media phenomenon it is and although the book isn't a phenomenon, it is an intriguing look at building a modern business and should be especially useful to budding entrepreneurs.
Rating:
Summary: Battan's Book a Bore (Zzzzzzzzz......)
Review: I've been a friend and admirer of the author for almost thirty years. But I can be objective enough to say that you won't read a better business book this year than The Weather Channel. It tells an amazing story: how a very small company, centered around the newspapers in Norfolk, Va., and Greensboro, N.C., took a gigantic risk. Competing with the largest communications companies, Landmark Communications started one of the first national cable channels. And almost failed (you can't come closer to failing than this one). And, in the end, succeeded gloriously.
Though the impossibly modest author almost paints himself off the stage altogether, you will also meet one of the most decent and admirable executives in American business, Frank Batten. Because Mr. Batten's company is private, almost no one knows of this remarkable man. Although he's reticent about himself (a life-threatening and life-altering cancer that occurred at the time of the Weather Channel launch is dismissed in a paragraph),you'll understand how lucky the citizens of Norfolk and Greensboro have been to have him in charge of their newspapers the last 40 years.
This is a book about business, not weather. But if business interests you at all, it's a hell of a book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must for any weather nut, BUT
Review: In May of 1982 our cable system signed off it's own weather channel that only showed the time, temperature, etc. and signed on The Weather Channel. I was hooked from day one and regularly tune in to see what's going on. The book is a fascinating account of what Frank Batten went through. BUT it's also a book-length advertisement for Landmark Communications as well. While I enjoy his personal accounts, I could have done without all the info on Landmark. His editor also could have done a better job as well as Frank repeats himself several times, sometimes even on the same page. If you don't care about weather or business deals, then don't waste your money. If you're a weather nut like me and enjoy a good bedtime story, then go ahead and buy it and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: interesting but......
Review: This book is a business story of how The Weather Channel became one of the leading media brands in the nation. It is not a "behind the scenes at TWC" tale, although a few pages in the "afterword" give readers a brief glimpse at how it all comes together on air. The most fascinating parts of Batten's story are the tales of how TWC came to be in the very beginning, from the early company history, to the initial concepts and business plans of the late 1970s and early 1980s, to the 1981/1982 start-up, to the birthing pains caused in part by a messy corporate divorce with one of the founding partners. The book also provides an interesting glimpse into how the cable TV landscape was first settled by pioneers like HBO, ESPN, WTBS/CNN and, of course, TWC. The latter half of the book deals with many of TWC's forays in the 1990s, including the highly-successful weather.com website, as well as several international ventures). But the final chapters lack excitement or drama. The book has 264 pages, and it's not a hard read. I think the same story could have been told more effectively in about half the space, leaving out many of the details. The authors of this book focus almost exclusively on the TWC dealings and strategies at the corporate and operational levels. A better story could have been told by weaving in more perspectives from other TWC people, namely the on-camera meteorologists, some of whom have been with TWC since the very early days. Combine the best elements of this book (the first half of the story, in particular) with a real 20 years of "behind the scenes", and you'd have a compelling tale that would appeal to audiences beyond the book's target audience (TWC die-hards, business students, weather and media professionals). Finally, the book provides 16 pages of full-color photos, but none appears to be older than 1998. Why didn't the authors add photos from the early days? Those of us who have been TWC fans for many years would have appreciated seeing some of the old faces, old graphics, and old technology that have made The Weather Channel the familiar and trusted friend it is today for millions of people. Despite its flaws, I recommend the book for those who are interested in TWC specifically, or in the media or weather businesses in general.
Rating:
Summary: interesting but......
Review: This book is a business story of how The Weather Channel became one of the leading media brands in the nation. It is not a "behind the scenes at TWC" tale, although a few pages in the "afterword" give readers a brief glimpse at how it all comes together on air. The most fascinating parts of Batten's story are the tales of how TWC came to be in the very beginning, from the early company history, to the initial concepts and business plans of the late 1970s and early 1980s, to the 1981/1982 start-up, to the birthing pains caused in part by a messy corporate divorce with one of the founding partners. The book also provides an interesting glimpse into how the cable TV landscape was first settled by pioneers like HBO, ESPN, WTBS/CNN and, of course, TWC. The latter half of the book deals with many of TWC's forays in the 1990s, including the highly-successful weather.com website, as well as several international ventures). But the final chapters lack excitement or drama. The book has 264 pages, and it's not a hard read. I think the same story could have been told more effectively in about half the space, leaving out many of the details. The authors of this book focus almost exclusively on the TWC dealings and strategies at the corporate and operational levels. A better story could have been told by weaving in more perspectives from other TWC people, namely the on-camera meteorologists, some of whom have been with TWC since the very early days. Combine the best elements of this book (the first half of the story, in particular) with a real 20 years of "behind the scenes", and you'd have a compelling tale that would appeal to audiences beyond the book's target audience (TWC die-hards, business students, weather and media professionals). Finally, the book provides 16 pages of full-color photos, but none appears to be older than 1998. Why didn't the authors add photos from the early days? Those of us who have been TWC fans for many years would have appreciated seeing some of the old faces, old graphics, and old technology that have made The Weather Channel the familiar and trusted friend it is today for millions of people. Despite its flaws, I recommend the book for those who are interested in TWC specifically, or in the media or weather businesses in general.
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