Storm Stories
| Storm Stories | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Narrated by | Jim Cantore |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 9 |
| No. of episodes | 371 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Towers Productions, Inc. |
| Distributor |
Litton Entertainment Trifecta Entertainment & Media |
| Release | |
| Original network |
The Weather Channel National Geographic Channel (Greece) |
| Picture format |
480i (SDTV) (Seasons 1–7) 1080p (HDTV) (Seasons 8–9) |
| Audio format | Stereo |
| Original release | January 6, 2003 – August 25, 2010 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Storm Stories is a non-fiction television series that aired on The Weather Channel (TWC) and Zone Reality. It is hosted and narrated by meteorologist and storm tracker Jim Cantore. Storm Stories showcases various types of severe weather, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards. Each episode features a famous severe storm, and survivors of it sharing their experiences. The program also features footage of the storm if it is available, but typically a re-enactment is used instead. The video of the storm is often shown while the survivors offer their accounts of it. Often, TWC would air a special week dedicated to one specific type of storm.
Storm Stories was produced by Towers Productions. A syndicated version of Storm Stories is distributed by Litton Entertainment to television stations around the country. The syndicated version includes co-branding opportunities for stations to place, within the program, their local weather anchors, who are usually shown discussing the topic of the episode, and current news. Some syndicated episodes never aired on TWC. In 2009, NBCUniversal (which owns TWC) announced that it would begin handling sales of all of the national ads on Litton's syndicated shows, including Storm Stories.
Storm Stories launched on January 6, 2003 as the first true serial long-form program on The Weather Channel. The groundwork for Storm Stories was laid by Atmospheres, a weekly long-form program that aired from 2000 to 2003, and signaled the beginning of a change in paradigm at The Weather Channel. Storm Stories, in turn, was the predecessor to a variety of other long-form programs on The Weather Channel, including It Could Happen Tomorrow (2006), Epic Conditions (2007), and When Weather Changed History (2008).
The idea of creating a signature series was proposed to the executive team in 1990 by Jim Alexander (The Weather Channel VP Consumer & Strategic Research). Viewer reactions (development research) to Atmospheres, along with existing weather documentaries, influenced the concepts considered. Content development research with viewers demonstrated the potential for a successful series combining visual evidence of nature's destructive power and first-hand accounts of the experience and its impact on individual lives. Market segmentation research was used to judge the potential audience for the programs, along with the impact on viewers who counted on TWC for information about weather across the United States.
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