The Weather Channel is launching a week of tornado-related programming, and is betting on a clever viral campaign to help drive tune-in. Lost Remote has more on the campaign.

The short version: as people Tweet using the #TornadoWeek hashtag, a large fan in Weather’s Atlanta headquarters will spin faster, creating heavier and heavier winds for the poor interns manning the computers, topping out at the equivalent of an F-5 tornado. The channel is live-streaming it on YouTube.

WATCH:

The Weather Channel is planning its largest programming push in its history over the next year, expanding not only its morning and dayside weather news programs, but also its entertainment and long-form programming in primetime. “Wake Up with Al” will be sticking around, but will be joined by new shows.

At a splashy upfront presentation at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York City this morning, the channel pulled back the curtain on what is coming down the pipeline. It was the first upfront event for the company in five years, and the first real presentation in its history.

“This is an incredible, incredible thing, because being at the Weather Channel 26 years, I have never seen us do something like this, and throw something this huge,” meteorologist Jim Cantore said.

Aside from the programming, the biggest change viewers will see is the graphics packages, which are being redesigned to be consistent across all of the Weather Company platforms, including Weather.com and the Weather app. The new TV graphics bear a striking resemblance to the graphics found on the website and app. Local weather and information will always be on-screen, at leastin the morning, when so many viewers tune in to the channel.

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Rena Golden, the senior director of digital content for The Weather Company and a former senior VP at CNN International and CNN.com, has died at age 51 after a two-year battle with Lymphoma.

Golden joined CNN in 1985 as a producer, rising to supervisor in 1993, VP in 1997 and the senior VP level at CNNI in 2000, eventually moving to CNN.com in 2007. She joined The Weather Channel in November, 2011.

She is survived by her husband, Rob Golden, and two children. Rena met Rob while both were working at CNN in 1987, as her obituary notes:

Rob Golden worked as a journalist in the newsroom. The two fell for each other, and in 1987, colleagues put together a mock newscast, in which he asked her to marry him.

She thought she was watching a real newscast on TV. Rob Golden’s appearance on the screen took her by surprise.

In an email to Weather Company staff this morning, CEO David Kenny wrote of Golden:
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Jim Cantore and Stephanie Abrams are having a bit too much fun covering Winter Storm Hagrid (or whatever this one’s called). Reporting live from Worcester, Mass. this morning the two Weather Channel meteorologists had a good old fashioned snow throwdown. The area is under a severe winter storm warning until 7pm tonight with snow totals anywhere from 15 to 24 inches.

Watch after the jump…

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Al Roker, weather guy for NBC’s “Today” Show, can sum up the secret to his success in a sentence, “Don’t be a jerk!” Roker has his own show “Wake Up with Al” on The Weather Channel, owns his own production company “Al Roker Entertainment,” has co-authored three mystery novels, written a couple of cookbooks, and a has penned a couple of New York Times Bestsellers.

So how did America’s favorite weather guy go from being a flannel shirt and overall wearing student at SUNY Oswego to media kingpin? Al said his first big break came from being in the right place at the right time when someone said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

So Nemo, is what we’re calling this? This storm will sound nothing like Ellen DeGeneres as a clownfish (oh wait, she was Dory). Anyway, maybe the Weather Channel can come up with more daunting names next year. Remember Snowpacalyse which hit three years this week? Also Snowmaggedon?

So, what are the networks planning? The Weather Channel had already blown out their reality shows in primetime last night with storm prep coverage. The news and business networks have reporters out in the field.

CNN is planning to be live overnight tonight and into Saturday covering the storm. Chad Myers and Jen Delgado will monitor the storm’s movement from the CNN Weather Center. Reporters and anchors including Jason Carroll, Susan Candiotti, Poppy Harlow, Ali Velshi, Ashleigh Banfield, Zain Asher, Alison Kosik, Mary Snow (appropriately), Gary Tuchman and Brian Todd will be out and about.

Brooke Baldwin anchors overnight coverage from balmy Atlanta. “This is when you know there’s a serious breaking news story,” said Baldwin during 2pmET coverage, “Look at all the pizza boxes at CNN.”

On Fox News, Anna Kooiman and Molly Lyon will report live. The storm has pushed the Saturday morning business block to the afternoon, from 2-4pmET. Kelly Wright and Jamie Colby will continue with live coverage from 10-Noon.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — the real one, not a parody of him — was on SNL’s “Weekend Update” tonight. In a scripted bit with Seth Meyers he thanked many people, including his wife Mary Pat who’s been “putting up with a husband who has smelled like a wet fleece for the past three weeks.” And he also took time to not thank several others, including:

“I also do not want to thank the reporters that put themselves in danger by walking into the middle of a hurricane with their cameras. We don’t need you to tell us there’s a hurricane. We have windows!”

> More: Also on the show, fake Wolf Blitzer in the fake “Situation Room” on the David Petraeus affair. “Joining us from Tampa is our never-used Tampa correspondent Victor Randall.” Watch:

Watching a Ken Burns film is like watching the past come alive through the expert use of narration and still photographs. So how did he develop his signature style? The iconic filmmaker sits down with MediabistroTV in, “Ken Burns: My First Big Break.”

>UPDATE: Watch “Ken Burns: My First Big Break” in three weeks on MediabistroTV, Thursday, December 6.

And if superstorms on the East Coast and unseasonably warm weather on the West Coast wasn’t enough to satisfy your craving for major weather events, PBS presents an Extreme Weather Night of TV this Sunday (11/18), beginning at 7pm ET.

NOVA gets the party started with the premiere of “Inside the Megastorm” an original one-hour documentary taking viewers moment by moment through Hurricane Sandy. Then Ken Burns gives us reason to give thanks when he presents “The Dust Bowl.” Burns tells the story of the worst man-made environmental disaster in American history in a two-part, four hour documentary detailing how the convergence of a terrible drought and the scramble for the American Dream nearly changed the southern plains forever.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

The Weather Channel has gone ahead with its plan to name Winter storms. Alphabetically they’re already on “B:” Athena a Nor’easter that brought high wind and snow to the Northeast and Brutus, in the Northern Rockies which is expected to bring blizzard conditions to Montana today.

A quick search in TVEyes shows “Athena” was mentioned 56 times Wednesday on The Weather Channel. So far “Brutus” has been mentioned 17 times today.

The naming of the storms is not sitting well with the National Weather Service:

Weather Channel’s sister network NBC is getting in on the naming action, sort of. In his oh so glib way Wednesday on “Today”, Matt Lauer said, “This is, I guess, winter storm Athena, is what they call it right now.”

Your move Caesar, or Mother Nature, or whoever’s in charge.

ABC says it has raised $11.5 million so far for Superstorm Sandy relief efforts as the Disney-wide “Day of Giving” is about to enter primetime. “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts delivered a special message during the show’s coverage this morning. Roberts watched from her Manhattan apartment as the storm blew through a week ago tonight. On doctors orders, she is not well enough to return to work. Roberts continues to recover from a bone marrow transplant after she was diagnosed with a form of leukemia last April.

Video after the jump…

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