Weather Channel Names Fred Bucher Chief Marketing Officer

Weather Group LLC, parent company of The Weather Channel, has named proven senior marketing and media executive Fred Bucher as senior vice president and chief marketing officer.

Bucher will lead the marketing, communications and research/insights areas for The Weather Channel and free streaming service Local Now. These departments will work in tandem to support the network’s television programming — including its live coverage of the most impactful severe weather events across the country — 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 leadership roles at some of the world’s leading brands. He was most recently SVP and chief marketing officer of Spectrum Reach, the advertising sales division of Charter Communications.

He also previously was 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.