DirecTV will relaunch its severe weather pop-up channels with rolling coverage from local television stations of Hurricane Milton, a spokesperson confirmed to The Desk early Tuesday morning.
The pay TV provider is currently reaching out to local broadcast station owners in Tampa, Orlando and other markets where the storm is expected to impact when it makes landfall between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning. Currently, it has agreements with Hearst Television, Fox Television Stations, Cox Media, Sinclair, Gray Media and Montclair Communications to involve their stations in the emergency weather pop-up channels, called the Severe Weather Channel and Severe Weather Mix.
Weather forecasters say Hurricane Milton is one of the strongest storms of its kind to threaten the United States in years. The storm strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane on Monday before being slightly downgraded to Category 4 status; the storm is expected to strengthen before reaching Florida’s western coast later this week.
DirecTV has launched severe weather pop-up channels for its satellite customers in the past. Last month, the company rolled out the Severe Weather Mix with aggregated reports from local TV broadcasters who were covering Hurricane Helene, which struck the western coast of Florida as a Category 4 storm and spurred deadly flooding in that state and five others.
The Severe Weather Channel offers aggregated local news broadcasts from TV stations covering Hurricane Milton on location, and is available to DirecTV via Satellite customers on Channel 361-2 and U-Verse subscribers on Channels 227 (SD) and 1227 (HD).
In the past, DirecTV has worked with local broadcasters like Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair, Gray Media, the E. W. Scripps Company, Fox Television Stations, TEGNA and Cox Media Group to provide aggregated coverage of severe weather through their pop-up channels.
The Severe Weather Mix offers a mosaic-style multi-view of local stations and national news networks during weather-related emergencies. In addition to the Severe Weather Channel, the Severe Weather Mix offers live coverage from CNN, AccuWeather and The Weather Channel. It is available exclusively on DirecTV via Satellite on Channels 361-1, 71-1, 200-1 and 307-2.
DirecTV via Internet and DirecTV Stream customers can watch coverage of Hurricane Milton via Fox Weather, CNN, AccuWeather and The Weather Channel.
