CINCINNATI—Sinclair-owned WKRC-TV here has upgraded its weather alerting platform to Max Alert Live from The Weather Co.
Sinclair has made the Max Alert Live tool available to more than 70 of its stations around the country, The Weather Co. said. The move is meant to help WKRC maintain its trusted place in informing viewers about severe weather, it said.
"When severe weather strikes, our viewers depend on us to deliver urgent updates that keep their families safe," WKRC chief meteorologist John Gumm said. "With Max Alert Live, I can see storms coming with an incredible level of granularity and quickly communicate those threats in a flexible manner. I can automatically broadcast and visualize county-by-county storm threats without disrupting programming."
Data and graphics from Max Alert Live help pinpoint the path, timing and intensity of storms down the to neighborhood level as much as six hours before they strike, The Weather Co. said.
The cloud-based solution enables broadcasters to access and manage alerts from anywhere with an internet connection. Max Alert Live automatically renders alerts, allowing stations like WKRC to inform viewers with customizable graphics, maps and crawls. It also enables delivery of targeted storm warnings and alerts.
Crawls and graphics can match a station’s current on-air look and dynamically adapt to changing weather conditions and urgency, the company said. Broadcasters can tailor trigger conditions, frequency, maps, graphics and text via an easy-to-use interface. They can also integrate already created graphics within an existing Max account.
Max Alert Live allows critical radar maps, customized alert crawls and live county-by-county warning graphics to be overlaid on regular broadcasts without disturbing live shows, as well as across OTT, web, mobile and social channels, the company said.
The tool supports hyperlocal, customized alerts with high-resolution live radar maps, The Weather Co. said. Direct integration with National Weather Service data enables automatic weather watches and warnings to scroll across the bottom of the screen, it said.
The solution also supports school closing alerts from BTi and enables manual alerts for sports scores and news headlines, it said.
More information is available on the company’s website.
