Someone forwarded this NY Times article to me.

The sender pointed out in their email that "the NY Times buries an important fact:  The Weather Channel's main content, weather information, is derived from the public agency NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), whose scientists and technology track weather systems around the globe.  NOAA scientists have been central to tracking storms like Katrina, and the Asian Tsunami before that, as well as pointing out the need for early warning systems and better public information to assure public safety.  It seems antithetical to public interest to me that the Weather Channel should be sold for such a huge sum when it essentially could not exist without the public agency it relies on." 

CHAIN SAID TO SEEK BIDS FOR WEATHER CHANNEL

[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Ross Sorkin]
The Weather Channel, one of the last privately owned cable channels, is being put up for sale and could fetch more than $5 billion. The channel and its rapidly growing Web site, weather.com, are already attracting interest from some of the biggest names in media, including NBC, a unit of General Electric; the News Corporation; and Comcast.

The sale of the Weather Channel is part of a larger breakup of its parent, Landmark Communications, a privately held company controlled by the Batten family of Norfolk, Va., which also owns daily newspapers and other media properties. Landmark’s newspaper holdings include The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, The News & Record of Greensboro, N.C., and The Roanoke Times in Virginia, as well as 50 other community newspapers. The company, which does not release its earnings, generated $1.75 billion in revenue in 2006 and has 12,000 employees. The sale of the Weather Channel, once written off as a dull network for weather buffs, could become especially heated as it is one of the few remaining basic cable channels available for sale.

One potential suitor approached by Landmark described the Weather Channel as “beachfront property.”
 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/business/media/03weather.html?ref=todayspaper
  <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/business/media/03weather.html?ref=todayspaper> (requires registration)
* Landmark looks into selling Virginian-Pilot, Weather Channel
Besides The Weather Channel, Landmark’s non-newspaper properties include one of the world’s biggest weather data companies, TV stations in Las Vegas and Nashville, Tenn., and Norfolk-based Dominion Enterprises, a national chain of print and online classified-ad publications, which alone represents more than $850 million in revenue.
 http://hamptonroads.com/2008/01/landmark-looks-selling-virginian-pilot%2C-weather-channel <http://hamptonroads.com/2008/01/landmark-looks-selling-virginian-pilot,-weather-channel>