The Weather Channel Plus is coming later in 2021

By MixDex Article may include affiliate links

Consumers overwhelmed with streaming options will soon have yet another option to consider: The Weather Channel Plus.

Coming in the fourth quarter of 2021, the service will be priced at $4.99 a month and will include the channel’s signature weather related content as well as more than 50 additional channels.

These could pull from other Allen Media Group properties. Allen Media Group owns The Weather Channel and offerings could include Pets.TV, Comedy.TV, Recipe.TV, Cars.TV, Es.TV, MyDestination.TV, JusticeCentral.TV, TheGrio.TV, This TV, Local Now and Pattrn, all of which are owned by the company as well.

The company is aiming for 30 million subscribers for its Weather Channel Plus offering by 2026 (assuming everyone pays full price, that would be over $1.7 billion in revenue).

Allen Media already runs the fast growing Local Now, a free ad supported streamer with 8,000 title and 345 localized and topical feeds.

While The Weather Channel is arguably the biggest brand in the Allen portfolio, leveraging its name could have some cons as well — namely that consumers may think all they’re getting is weather forecasts, which are already available for free on thousands of news websites, including The Weather Channel’s own weather.com.

The name also runs the risk of becoming the punchline of a “there’s a streaming service for that” joke as more and more networks and media providers venture into streaming.

Streaming is a hot area of growth for broadcasters now, as ad revenue shifts and more people bail on linear TV services. However, it also has challenges of having to produce expensive original content to remain appealing, price wars and password sharing that often mean families or groups of friends each pay for one or two services in exchange for sharing their password with others who, in turn, subscribe to different ones — forming a sort of streaming clutch.

Meanwhile, Fox Media is working on its own streaming, ad supported weather service called Fox Weather, which is slated to be free.