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.
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.