Arrggg. “My” show was on tonight for the first time.
January 24th, 2010 at 10:18pm EST
“That was my show” I say with contempt.
Watching some Weather Proof and Cantore Stories on TWC really wasn’t making me happy. Actually, it’s totally surround the show Storm Proof. See earlier in 2009, Towers Productions contacted me about hosting a show for them. They saw a number of my online videos and got a hold of other video in which I appeared. Because the fact I got out and was big about experiencing the weather and it got on film apparently said to them I was a good candidate for hosting their show. In deed, after some phone conversations, additional video and more, they were ready to pitch the show to The Weather Channel. The idea was to have a show that took various simulated conditions (along with real video and conditions) to show controlled examples of what severe weather could do.
Shortly thereafter, I found out that Peacock Productions had a ’similar idea’. Yeah right I said…sounds like they are stealing the idea to me. Of course I don’t know for sure, but even the titles were similar. Peacock is NBC’s (owners of The Weather Channel) own in-house production company. They have taken over productions of a number of TWC’s shows. Towers Productions was the production company for Storm Stories among other shows on TWC and other networks. But they, from what I understand have lost most if not all the contracts to provide programming for TWC.
While I’m disappointed, I’m pretty sure this is common place among the industry, especially these days with the highest ever level of competitiveness among production companies for programming. I see, watching the show tonight, that they did change it enough (likely to avoid a lawsuit from Tower) and those changes did not help the concept. The original idea that I discussed with Tower was great. In fact, it still has a viable chance to be made (if they so choose) and pitched it to other networks.
It will be interesting to see how the rest of the episodes play out. Of course, then again I guess I can’t complain too much…I did get them to stop using “Weather Warriors” and they renamed that series ‘iWitnessWeather’ now. I kind of 1/2 with TWC…LOL.