CNN Touts New Weather Center

CNN wants to be more than a “hurricane headquarters:” It wants to be your weather headquarters. The network introduced a new Weather Center with “the most state-of-the-art weather forecasting and reporting center in the broadcast industry” yesterday.

CNN’s Chad Myers looked like a little kid on Christmas day as he demonstrated the new set on American Morning. “The new weather center has three cameras and eight lit positions. The old set was really just one locked down camera pointed at the blue screen,” Myers tells WHAC.

The center has “the computing power of more than 30 dedicated machines, including eight on-air computers; GPS technology designed to track CNN crews in the field and provide them with real-time weather data; and software designed to more closely track weather patterns, commercial airline traffic and related information,” the P.R. says.

> AJC: “The network had wanted to upgrade its weather studios for a while but fast-tracked the change in the wake of last year’s busy hurricane season…”