20 Aug The Weather Channel Parent Corp. Names Fred Bucher SVP and CMO For Weather Group LLC

By Bruce Haring

Weather Group LLC, the parent company of The Weather Channel television network, has named Fred Bucher as its senior VP and chief marketing officer.

Bucher will lead the marketing, communications and research/insights areas for The Weather Channel and free streaming service Local Now. The departments will work to support the network’s television programming, including its live coverage, and The Weather Channel’s free streaming service Local Now.

“With the opportunities smart media companies have in a world of ever-changing viewer behavior, it’s even more important to ensure we are optimizing our marketing and audience development efforts to reflect our innovative approach to storytelling and the technical capabilities that we’ve been advancing for years,” said Tom O’Brien, president of Weather Group. “Fred has a great strategic marketing mind, and his creativity and passion will be a perfect complement to our team at The Weather Channel and Local Now and help us remain ahead of the curve.”

Bucher brings more than 25 years of experience in marketing at some of the world’s leading brands. He was most recently SVP/CMO of Spectrum Reach, the advertising sales division of Charter Communications. He previously served as the SVP/CMO for Time Warner Cable Media and VP of marketing solutions at ESPN, where his responsibilities included managing sponsor-driven marketing programs across ESPN’s on-air networks, ESPN.com, ESPN The Magazine and ESPN mobile properties. Bucher also worked at Omnicom’s Tracey Locke Partners and Ryan Partnership, which became Epsilon.

“I’m excited to be working with Tom and the rest of the incredibly talented team at The Weather Group,” said Bucher. “It’s hard to find a more exciting and invigorating opportunity as a marketer than this one. The Weather Channel and Local Now are uniquely positioned to thrive in today’s quickly evolving media landscape, and I’m looking forward to jumping in to help grow both brands.”