Cloudy with a chance of outrage: Fox prepares to launch a weather channel

Politics can be a thorny subject – sometimes, it’s best just to talk about the weather.

That seems to be the strategy behind Rupert Murdoch’s latest venture. Fox Weather – forecast to arrive sometime this year under the oversight of the Fox News stalwarts Suzanne Scott and Sharri Berg – appears to address the media empire’s shifting business needs. Ratings for Fox News, CNN and MSNBC have fallen since Donald Trump left office, while the Weather Channel has seen its audience grow, according to the New York Times. Murdoch looks to be betting that breathless 24-hour updates on rainfall and heat indexes will have viewers on the edge of their seats.

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These days, of course, politics and the weather are inextricably linked – and Fox has a remarkable track record on climate, with 86% of segments on the issue bolstering denialism, according to a 2019 Public Citizen analysis.

So with the west in a drought, fire season under way and hurricanes brewing, Murdoch’s timing couldn’t be better. The forthcoming channel would surely have plenty to say on the Pacific north-west’s “heat dome”, which may have contributed to hundreds of deaths. The future Sean Hannity of weather broadcasting wouldn’t waste time offering a measured assessment of whether global heating might have played a role; he’d probably focus instead on big weather’s efforts to require background checks amid a surge in squirt-gun sales.

That’s why Fox Weather will surely be more entertaining than the competition. If forecasters follow the example of their favorite former US president, all it will take is a Sharpie to change the course of major weather events. That hurricane headed for Mar-a-Lago can simply be rerouted away from Real America toward a progressive den of sin like New York. Rain will presumably be Joe Biden’s fault; tornadoes will be blamed on the “woke left”. Sunshine will, of course, be a holdover from Trump-era policies for which the Biden administration is taking credit.

Some might argue that a 24-hour channel is less convenient than, say, checking the weather app on your phone. But the forward-thinking Murdoch, 90 years young, surely has a plan in mind – perhaps Tucker Carlson can schedule some rants on hurtful anti-blizzard bias before throwing to a bristling meteorologist for further insight.

One thing is for sure: Fox Weather isn’t taking any guff from the bleeding-heart tornado huggers at the Weather Channel. As the Times notes, the two channels have already started a Twitter beef over climate coverage, with the Weather Channel’s boss likening the rivals to Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

Seems the weather forecast is the next cold front in America’s culture wars, and the future is cloudy with a chance of outrage.