Millions Continued to Rely on The Weather Channel as Hurricane Dennis Advanced to Mainland

Millions Continued to Rely on The Weather Channel as Hurricane Dennis Advanced to Mainland

TWC Rates Highest Among All Cable News and Information Networks

ATLANTA, July 12 /PRNewswire/ -- The Weather Channel rated #1 among all cable news and information networks for coverage of Hurricane Dennis, achieving a Total Day (5 a.m. - 2 a.m.) rating of 1.5, representing 1.3 million households on Sunday, the day of landfall. Among the news and information networks, TWC held the 1st place ranking in total households and in the 25 to 54 age demographic throughout the weekend across the Total Day (5 a.m. - 2 a.m.), Mornings (5 a.m. - 11 a.m.) and Primetime (8 p.m. - 11 p.m.).

Ratings on The Weather Channel peaked in the critical quarter-hour when Hurricane Dennis made landfall, officially at 3:25 p.m. ET at Santa Rosa Island, FL. The Weather Channel achieved a 3.3 rating in the 3:15 - 3:30 p.m. time period; 2.9 million households tuned in.

TWC achieved a Total Day (5 a.m. - 2 a.m.) rating of 1.2 on Saturday; this represents an average of just over 1.0 million households. Coverage by The Weather Channel on this day also outperformed all the other news and information networks. Combined ratings for the two days resulted in making Saturday and Sunday the second highest-rated weekend in TWC history. Only last year's Hurricane Frances coverage, which aired over the September 4-5, 2004 weekend, ranked higher.

"Even more significant than the numbers themselves is the quick response to this early hurricane strike by the large number of people we reached in the affected areas. The Weather Channel went out in full force to warn people on TV, on radio, and through our interactive services. The warnings were taken seriously and evacuation notices were heeded, both good signs that we have an excellent system in place for informing people about staying safe," said Debora Wilson, president, The Weather Channel Companies.

In the spirit of desiring to reach as many people as possible with safety information, The Weather Channel Companies gave permission for free distribution of the network for 250 Wal-Mart stores in Florida and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi by Premier Retail Networks which provides the Wal-Mart Television Network. The Weather Channel also honored a request from Mediacom to make TWC's all-local digital network available to analog subscribers in Gulf Breeze, FL and a number of other areas where Hurricane Dennis could have an impact.

weather.com, the Web site of The Weather Channel, set a record from Friday through Sunday receiving the highest number of page views for a three-day weekend in the history of the site. These results further confirm the findings of the most current Nielsen Trust Study in which The Weather Channel was found to be the most trusted cable TV weather source and weather.com was the most trusted online source for weather information.

Source: The Weather Channel

CONTACT: Connie Malko, PR manager of The Weather Channel, +1-770-226-2180

Web site: http://www.weather.com/

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