Pelmorex Media Inc. is a Canadian broadcast group. The company operates the broadcasting licence for The Weather Network and its French sister station, MétéoMédia. The Weather Network and MétéoMédia are Canada’s only 24-hour national specialty television networks devoted to weather reporting. Pelmorex also offers a full range of weather-related products, services and multimedia applications to a number of consumer and commercial clients.
"Pelmorex" is a portmanteau derived from the name of the company's founder, Pierre L. Morrissette. [1] Morrissette effectively owns 59.64% of the company, with 10.36% owned by other Canadian investors and 30% owned by The Weather Channel in the United States. The Weather Channel is in turn owned by NBC Universal, Blackstone Group, and Bain Capital.[2]
In the 1990s, the company owned the Pelmorex Radio Network stations in Northern Ontario. The company sold the stations in 1998 and 1999, to Telemedia and Haliburton Broadcasting Group.
Pelmorex was chosen to be one of Canada's Top 100 Employers in 2002 by Mediacorp Canada Inc. and recognized for its leadership in broadcasting for employment equity in a cover story by Maclean's.
In 2006, Pelmorex purchased the operations of World Weatherwatch of Markham, Ontario. Established in 1976, World Weatherwatch provides a wide variety of meteorological services to a broad client base including the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO), Hydro One and Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, as well as numerous cities and municipalities. The firm has been providing weather services to the transportation, rail, aviation and municipal sectors for many years. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. [3]
Pelmorex has undertaken a project that would create a national warning system called All Channel Alert (French: Système d'alerte tous canaux), similar to the Emergency Alert System in the United States. The service will provide alerts to participating media outlets, who will then relay the information to their viewers and listeners.
This system was partially approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on February 28, 2007, with conditions; in addition, the CBC and Bell ExpressVu also applied to the CRTC for their own emergency services.[4] On June 11, 2009, the CRTC gave Pelmorex full approval of the service, which will serve to complement efforts set forth by the federal government, as well as provincial and local governments. In correlation to this, the CRTC also ordered all cable and satellite companies to carry both The Weather Network and MétéoMédia on the digital basic tiers -- Bell TV and Shaw Direct already do so; most cable systems already carry one or the other on analog, depending on location.[5][6]
Pelmorex first issued a proposal for All Channel Alert in 2001, but was denied, due to efforts at the time by local stations, as well as developments by Environment Canada to establish a similar system of its own.[7]
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