How Dougall Media Reinvested in Local News with Chyron Weather
Client Overview
Dougall Media is a locally-owned broadcast and multimedia company in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada – providing high-quality news coverage to the many communities of Northwestern Ontario via television, radio, print, web and a full digital marketing service.
- The only locally-owned stations in English Canada
- The Northwestern Ontario market encompasses a vast area of 526,372 km²
- Footprint across television, radio, print, and web
- Providing news to the community since the 1950s
The Ask
As part of a revamp of their entire news program, including a brand-new studio set and on-air graphics package, the Dougall team was eager to do an overhaul of their weather coverage. Historically, Dougall Media had been having difficulties with a restrictive combined weather graphics + data provider and wanted to go in a new direction to achieve the following goals:
INCREASE DESIGN AND DATA FLEXIBILITY
Due to the nature of their privately-aggregated data, Dougall’s previous weather graphics provider was unable to deliver many of their promised and demonstrated features in the Canadian market. The team was eager to find a system that would give them the freedom to realize their unique vision for weather presentations.
OBTAIN TOTAL CONFIDENCE IN DATA ACCURACY
Additionally, the Dougall team lacked confidence in the accuracy of the data they were receiving for their forecasts. With no way to validate the privately-aggregated data, their weather presenters were resorting to stressful cross-checking and last-minute adjustments to the program.
REDUCE DATA SERVICE COSTS
In spite of the issues Dougall Media was routinely dealing with, the provider’s service-level agreement for weather data continued to rise in cost, reaching over $30,000 in the final year of use. The Dougall team was determined to find a data-agnostic solution that would not lock them into a costly data service contract.
The Solution: Chyron Weather
An end-to-end weather visualization suite that delivers professional weather coverage to news audiences with rich map-based graphics, custom forecast elements, dynamic global analysis, and lifelike low-level flythroughs. Chyron Weather combines total freedom of data integration with exceptional ease of use in graphic design and live presentation.
ELIMINATING DATA SERVICE COSTS
By leveraging Environment Canada’s free, open source data – Dougall Media eliminated the massive annual data service costs of their previous weather graphics provider, that continued to rise year-after-year.
CONFIDENCE IN DATA ACCURACY
Dougall Media lacked confidence in the accuracy of the privately-aggregated data they received from their previous provider. By utilizing Environment Canada data, the Dougall team can verify the values in their forecast are a one-to-one match with the Environment Canada website.
PARTNERING WITH CHYRON FOR INTEGRATION
To bridge the service gap in working with an open source data provider, Dougall partnered with the Chyron Weather team to perform the necessary integration to merge Environment Canada data with the unique vision for their weather graphics.
TRUE-TO-DATA VISUALIZATIONS
Environment Canada provides Dougall Media with superior GRIB modelling data for precise weather visualizations over crisp high-resolution maps. The Dougall team’s overhaul of their program with Chyron Weather is a true win-win of improving production quality while lowering operating costs.
THE RESULT
Dougall Media’s team kindly joined us at our booth in Las Vegas for the 2024 NAB Show to discuss their success with Chyron Weather. Hear from them directly in their experience with us revitalizing their workflow and enhancing their storytelling with the video below!
Interested in more user experiences with Chyron Weather? Learn how South Africa’s favorite weekly news program ontbytSAKE elevated weather forecasting for their audience.
Otherwise, visit the Chyron Weather page to learn more about how you can deliver data-flexible, high-quality weather presentations to your audience.
