Euromedia March April mar apr | Page 17

that drastic changes in conditions can catch
you unprepared.
Automated solutions can help supplement
your on-air talent by enabling you to configure
thresholds for specific weather and traffic
events that are most impactful to your market,
such as an oncoming storm. When these
customisable thresholds are met, the solution
automatically sends alerts and notifications
to your audience with messaging that you
have developed ahead of time. This can help
you improve efficiency and audience
satisfaction by providing robust weather
coverage without adding staff and
resource costs.
Some solutions enable you to feature
your trusted on-screen talent in this
content to provide relevant local context,
such as how weather or traffic may affect
upcoming events in the area. Notifications
can also be delivered as audio push alerts
narrated by your talent or as videos with
voiceovers, a service that global weather
apps are often unable to provide.
This focus on efficiency could also
empower your talent. Consider a solution
that enables your on-air personalities to
make changes to weather forecasts on the
fly, enhancing – rather than inhibiting – their
ability to tell an up-to-the-minute story. This
could include the ability to make rapid changes
to visualisations while you’re on the air.
Multi-platform
With the widespread adoption of mobile
apps and social networks, today’s audience
often wants personalised, relevant content
pushed to them throughout the day on their
preferred platform. This new media landscape
creates tremendous opportunities for deeper
engagement. But many stations may lack
the resources to create and distribute digital
content in addition to producing their standard
on-air presentations.
To help you address your viewers where
they are, find a solution that enables you to
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POWER9, and Watson are trademarks
of International Business Machines
Corp., registered in many jurisdictions
worldwide. The Weather Company®
and the Weather® logo are trademarks
or registered trademarks of TWC
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Business. Other product and service
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publish content – preferably automatically
– across digital channels through a single
interface. This can help you streamline your
digital processes and gain more value from
existing content.
These capabilities often include geo-fencing
technologies that create a more personalised
experience, delivering weather information
– and advertisements – only to viewers for
whom it is relevant based on their current
location.
from showing an ad for a restaurant that’s
over an hour away from the user’s location.
This hyperlocal functionality can help
increase value for you, your audience and your
sponsors.
This integration should extend to
publishing content on social channels with
sponsor logos and banners. You should also
search for a solution that helps you understand
engagement with these postings so you can
identify what resonates with your viewers
and refine your content strategies
accordingly.
A robust suite of weather
content production
solutions
This guidance for evaluating content
production solutions results from
years of experience in deploying
hundreds of systems around the world
that emphasise speed and precision.
In fact, The Weather Company®, an
IBM® Business, is the world’s most
accurate forecaster, according to a 2010-
Flexible
The nature of the broadcast industry can be as
unpredictable as the weather. Your needs may
shift drastically from year to year, so you need
a solution that can grow and change with you.
If you’re a smaller broadcaster, you might
not need all of the capabilities discussed earlier
in this editorial. However, you should be able
to select which capabilities are right for your
station as well as the option of adding more
when appropriate.
For instance, you could decide to start
with a solution that supports pre-produced
clips and basic weather presentations. As the
demands of your audience grow and change,
you may want to employ more sophisticated
technologies, such as augmented reality.
Regardless of where you begin, find a
provider who offers a full range of solutions at
different price points. This flexibility creates
an opportunity to rapidly add and change your
capabilities to match your station’s possible
future needs.
Designed for monetisation
Effectively monetising your digital content
can be a major challenge, especially if you
lack the staff to manage sponsorships and
advertisements.
When evaluating a weather content
production solution, determine whether it can
integrate relevant monetisation opportunities
– such as promotions for local businesses –
into your digital channels. This technology
should also use geolocation to prevent you
2017 study, which is the most recent,
most comprehensive study available
from ForecastWatch.1
But rather than being satisfied with
the status quo, IBM is bolstering these
capabilities with a new Global High-Resolution
Atmospheric Forecast (IBM GRAF) System,
the first hourly-updating commercial weather
system. This technology combines IBM
POWER9™ supercomputing power with state-
of-the-art weather models and a wealth of data
from previously untapped sources.
The result is a high precision, rapidly
updating model that helps our Max
users predict weather events as small as
thunderstorms, virtually anywhere on the
globe.
At the heart of the Max ecosystem, Max
Engage with Watson® provides an automated
cross-platform experience that is designed to
help increase your number of video views and
reach your intended audience faster with vital
and hyperlocal information that is relevant to
their interests.
The result is an ability to do more than just
deliver content. These solutions are designed
to create conversations with your users about
weather and its impacts on aspects of everyday
life, such as traffic. Our specialists are ready
to help you become a trusted, essential source
of information for your audience and a valued
partner to advertisers for years to come.
1. Three-Region Accuracy Overview: 2010-
2017, ForecastWatch, Sep 2018, https://
www.forecastwatch.com/static/Three_
Region_Accuracy_Overview_2010-2017.
pdf
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