WAAY Selects Baron Services As Weather Source

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TVNewsCheck,

Baron Services announced today that it has been selected by WAAY, the Calkins Media-owned ABC affiliate in Huntsville, Ala., to be the station's sole-source weather provider. The decision, the station says, has reduced its overall monthly costs and streamlined vendors.

"For WAAY, having one vendor has been a cost-saving move," said Keith Lowhorne, the station's news director. "When WAAY had two data vendors, we found we were double paying for certain kinds of data, including National Weather Service domestic data and numerous satellite and radar products. When we decided to go with Baron Services, not only did we have access to the high resolution products, but we were able to add in severe weather, snow, hydrology and futurecasting data, while saving monthly data costs overall."

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WAAY, which utilizes Baron's full line of weather display products including VIPIR, FasTrac and StormWarn, most recently debuted Omni, Baron's news and weather platform, in November 2009. The station has used Omni to cover hyper-local news events, as well as global events including the Haiti and Chilean earthquakes.

"In addition to the earthquake data, I was pulling in pictures and videos from the web and had all of it ready to go in Omni in less than 15 minutes," said Brad Huffines, WAAY's chief meteorologist. "Additionally, I downloaded KML data from the US Geological Survey and had it auto-updating so that the aftershocks in Haiti were popping up automatically."

Baron's suite of severe weather tools played a major role in the station's decision to go all Baron. "Since Baron's patented data and severe weather tools are the best in the industry, it wasn't a real hard decision," said Art Lanham, the station's GM.

And Huffines added: "Baron Services is the leader in severe weather, and hands down the most accurate. During the most recent Huntsville tornado outbreak, we were talking about the tornado 10 minutes before the National Weather Service issued a warning."

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