Frank Batten Sr. (1927-2009) created the Weather Channel in
1982, despite mocking by colleagues in the media that
around-the-clock weather broadcasts would be as exciting as
watching paint dry. The network, and later its companion website,
Weather.com, became the largest private weather company in the
world and an American cultural icon.
Yet few have heard of Batten, a media pioneer whose Virginia
newspaper was the only major daily to back school integration. At a
time when American corporate greed was making headlines, without
fanfare and limelight Batten built a media empire centered on
honesty, integrity, and ethics.
Starting out in his uncle's newspaper business in Norfolk,
Virginia, as a reporter and advertising salesman, he assumed
leadership of the "Virginian-Pilot" and "Ledger-Star" at the age of
twenty-seven and grew Landmark Communications into a media
powerhouse. He championed racial equality, a position not often
taken in Virginia during the 1950s. His flagship newspaper, the
"Pilot, " was the only daily paper in Virginia to back
court-ordered school desegregation. He created two billion-dollar
businesses and gave away more than $400 million to charity, nearly
all of it to education. As chairman of the Associated Press from
1982 to 1987, he helped guide the news agency back on a sound
financial footing.
Batten also faced a tremendous personal challenge that would
have sidelined many: he lost his vocal cords to cancer two years
before starting the Weather Channel.
This is the untold story of a man whose name few recognize, yet
who helped change the face of the media in the twentieth
century.
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