Contacts:
Peggy Wilhide, NASA
202-358-1898 pwilhide@hq.nasa.gov
Connie Malko, The Weather Channel
770-226-2180, cmalko@weather.com
Ginger Hernandez, Porter Novelli for Dreamtime
415-538-7536, ginger.hernandez@pnicg.com
Hunt for Santa to Include Clues from the International Space Station
HUNT FOR SANTA TO INCLUDE CLUES FROM THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
The Weather Channel, NASA and Dreamtime Join Forces to Keep Santa on Track
NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif., Dec. 19, 2000 ? It’s a
classic game of hide and seek, but with a holiday Weather Channel twist.
While many television networks will be showing holiday specials on
Christmas Eve, The Weather Channel with support from NASA and Dreamtime,
will be airing SantaWatch, to track Santa and his reindeer beginning at 9
a.m. EDT on Christmas Eve.
“At this special time of year, The Weather Channel is proud to play a part
in the time-honored family tradition of anticipating Santa’s visit on
Christmas Eve,” said Patrick Scott, executive vice president and general
manager of The Weather Channel.
The Weather Channel will air hourly reports from Mission Control at Johnson
Space Center in Houston, featuring the latest Santa tracking information
from the International Space Station.
With eyewitness sightings from the ISS and clues from Weather Channel
meteorologists around the globe, children can only guess the location of
Santa’s next sighting.
“The idea is to entertain children, but also provide them with educational
facts about the International Space Station,” said Dan Tam, apecial
assistant for commercialization at NASA. “We want to stress the station’s
importance for educational and scientific research.”
Making this special holiday broadcast possible between The Weather Channel,
the nation’s pre-eminent weather information provider, and NASA is
Dreamtime, NASA’s multimedia partner.
“SantaWatch is a unique reminder to children of all ages that reindeer
aren’t the only things flying this time of year,” said Bill Foster, CEO of
Dreamtime. “By connecting Santa to space exploration, we’ve created a
high-tech way to find out who’s been naughty or nice.”
Promotional advertisements for SantaWatch will be airing this week on The
Weather Channel.
About The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel, Inc., based in Atlanta, is the nation’s premier
provider of weather information and reaches more than 78 million TV
households in the U.S. The Weather Channel Latin America reaches over 7.8
million households in Latin America. The Weather Channel is owned by
Landmark Communications, Inc. a Norfolk, VA-based, privately-held media
company with global interests. The Weather Channel is the leading provider
of weather information for emerging technologies with services for
broadband and interactive TV (ITV) applications. The Weather Channel’s Web
site, weather.com, is the world’s leading source of weather on the Web,
averaging more than 300 million page views per month and is the Number One
TV-related Web site, according to Nielsen NetRatings.
About Dreamtime
DREAMTiME, a privately held Silicon Valley-based new media company, is
focused on increasing awareness of space through education and multimedia
technology. Under the terms of a multi-year agreement with the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), DREAMTiME is digitizing
existing NASA archives and providing new content for a variety of outlets
including broadcast, film and the Web. This collaboration was made possible
by The Commercial Space Act of 1998.
