 | Edward Saint Pé, President/Founder, CEO & Meteorologist | | Contact Edward | Edward Saint Pé is a digital pioneer in the television business and an entrepreneur who has taken a traditional syndication model and stood it on its head. His company, WeatherVision, founded in 1991, provides daily, customized local and regional weather forecasts to 100 television stations around the country. WeatherVision’s signal is uplinked out of St. Pé’s all-digital teleport in Jackson, Mississippi via GE-4. His distribution of “virtual weather news” is syndicated on a cash and television commercial barter basis. In addition, WeatherVision provides local forecasts to more than 100 U.S. cities via its Internet company, WeatherVision.com.
Saint Pé started on his career in meteorology at Jackson State in 1980, after having already established his career in television. Saint Pé went to New York in 1976 at age 19, encouraged by a professor, a veteran of the early years at NBC, who was impressed with Saint Pé’s dramatic “Gnome Theater” shows which he had written, directed, produced and starred in. After a year at the Institute of New Cinema Artists, Saint Pé got a call from NBC, where he spent the next couple of years immersed in all aspects of operating a television network.
By 1977, Saint Pé “wanted to see a tree again” and returned to Mississippi. He went to work at WLBT, the only black-owned television station in the country, run by William Dilday, the only black General Manager in the country. “I was a guy with a lot of ideas and not much else, but those folks embraced me, gave me my shot,” recalls Saint Pé. He went from mail boy and gopher to producer and talent. St. Pé developed and starred in “Cowboy Bill,” which he describes as a satirical and crazy 30 minutes, shot on 16 mm film, wrapped around a 60-minute kid’s show. Finally, in 1980, a weather job opened up. Saint Pé auditioned for it and got it, finishing his college degree the same year.
After moving on to on-camera meteorologist jobs in Shreveport (LA) at the CBS affiliate (WAFB-TV), and then to Baton Rouge (KSLA), Saint Pé started his first network project with radio stations, providing an audio cut of the weather report four to five times a day. His radio client list was up to six stations when his biggest station called and said they reluctantly had to drop the service due to budget cutbacks. Saint Pé came up with a creative solution. He offered to give the station the weather news for free in exchange for the adjacent commercial spot, which he would sell himself. The station’s GM agreed. Saint Pé did the math and realized that this new business model was going to generate about 10 times the revenue as fees for the service. He quickly converted the other stations to the same model, creating the first ad hoc weather network on radio. “By getting fired, I got started,” says Saint Pé, who over the next months built his client list to nearly 30 radio stations.
Buoyed by his success, Saint Pé says he had “delusions of grandeur” and set out to buy a radio station. A broker found a station in Yazoo, Mississippi, WJNS, and Saint Pé bought it, financed by the owner who sold it. Although he had never worked at a radio station, much less owned one, Saint Pé dove in. Soon after, he bought WJXN-AM in Jackson, situated on 3 acres of land downtown. He built a third station (WJXN-FM) from the ground up. But things didn’t always go smoothly. St. Pé tried putting CNN radio on WJXN-AM, which had for years featured evangelist ministers and Bible belt-oriented programming. Saint Pé recalls, “It was right after Turner came out with his ‘Ten Principles.’ People went crazy. They couldn’t stand Ted Turner.” Saint Pé went back to the previous format.
Saint Pé received his certification from the AMS (American Meteorological Society) in 1988 and began looking at opportunities to get into the television business. By 1991, his holdings had reached sufficient value to warrant selling the three station licenses while keeping the property in Jackson. This provided enough capital to build a teleport. He bought a 7-meter dish, installed a Ku-band uplink, weather computers and graphics equipment, and started calling television stations to offer them his weather segments on the same basis as he had with radio stations. Soon seven stations around Louisiana were taking the feed from St. Pé’s National Weather Network (NWN).
From the beginning, NWN was built on a digital model. St. Pé felt the higher initial investment would be offset by savings in satellite time. The studios and uplink became a valuable resource to other news broadcasters as well. As the only satellite teleport in the state, Saint Pé’s facilities were ground zero for high profile interviews. Hillary Clinton was the first, in early ’92 with CNN, on her way to becoming First Lady. The other networks followed suit, booking NWN’s studios to uplink interviews for Good Morning America, the Today Show and CNN, with news and political figures such as Jesse Jackson and Trent Lott, as well as Dan Rather doing a hurricane report from WeatherVision’s windswept parking lot.
Steadily, Saint Pé’s weather service expanded to more stations. He added meteorologists to augment his own on-camera work. Trademark features of NWN’s weathercasts were that each was customized to each market, with the station’s own graphics and carefully orchestrated banter with the local station’s anchors. This format seamlessly integrated the weather report into the local news. Viewers had no idea that the meteorologist was hundreds – or thousands of miles away, as evidenced by the requests that came to the local stations for appearances by Saint Pé and his team at local events. The local station clients found themselves carefully sidestepping such invitations.
In 1999 Saint Pé added an online service and began supplying customized weather to more than 100 cities around the U.S. His initiatives drew notice by potential buyers, including networks that were looking to acquire a business that provided content ideally suited for multiple broadband applications, and easily brand-able by sponsors. Saint Pé discussed but resisted offers, focusing instead on building his distribution. In April 2001, Saint Pé changed the name of his service to WeatherVision, and signed his first network, PAX TV, supplying national and regional forecasts to more than 40 of PAX’s stations around the country.
Mornings begin early at WeatherVision’s offices in Jackson. The meteorologists on the morning shift arrive between 3:30 and 4:30 AM. Raw data from WSI (Weather Service International) is downloaded. Weather reports are prepared, graphics fine-tuned. The morning feed begins at 6 A.M. The next feed goes out at 3:30 PM, and then the last feed from 5:30 – 7:30 P.M. All day, the computers are monitored for potential severe weather events. In such emergencies, WeatherVision runs a live feed to the stations in the area.
Saint Pé is undaunted by such a grueling schedule. His focus is on growing the business, adding specialized segments, expanding the Internet weather service, supplying Spanish-language forecasts and seeking ways to make his business even more valuable to broadband partners. Saint Pé says, “We have a product whose time has come. The world of is catching up to the thing we invented, virtual weather.” |
 | Jason McCleave, Vice President & Meteorologist | | Contact Jason | | Jason McCleave is Vice President of WeatherVision, Inc. In addition to his involvement in every business aspect of WeatherVision, from on-air delivery and affiliate relations to production management and broadcast operations, Jason is an on-camera meteorologist. McCleave joined WeatherVision in 1995 and has worked closely with Edward Saint Pe’ to grow the company’s reach to more stations, as well as to develop its Website and its Internet forecasts. For WeatherVision’s television station affiliates, McCleave focuses on making WeatherVision’s forecasts function as a profit center for the stations by being as attractive as possible to advertisers. Working with a station’s General Manager, News Director, or most often, Sales Manager, McCleave’s objective is to deliver value. He enjoys this creative end of the business, whether it is producing a custom demo tape for the station to use for sales, adding the client’s logo to the forecast or having the meteorologist mention the client and product on the air, he takes pride in finding solutions to make the WeatherVision’s broadcasts a win-win for all concerned. McCleave has a degree in meteorology from Mississippi State and is a member of the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association. He was an on-camera weatherman at WCBI, the CBS affiliate in Columbus, Mississippi, before joining WeatherVision. |
 | Ben Terry, Chief Meteorologist | | Contact Ben | Ben graduated from Mississippi State University in May 2006 with his Bachelor of Science degree in Geosciences with an emphasis in Broadcast Meteorology. While at MSU, he was active in the East Mississippi Chapter of the National Weather Association and American Meteorological Society, and helped with their annual Severe Storms Symposium.
Ben was awarded “Top Forecaster” in the MSU Undergraduate division of the 2005-2006 National Collegiate Forecasting Contest where he competed nationally against approximately 1000 forecasters across the country.
Ben is an active member of the Madison Campus of First Baptist Church Jackson where he volunteers his time to run the sound system during the Sunday service.
When Ben’s not keeping up with Jackson weather, he enjoys traveling, visiting friends, and keeping up with Mississippi State sports. He is currently training to run the 2008 Chicago Marathon! |
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