Weather satellite of rotation and its elliptical orbit kept it from collecting a notable amount of useful data. The Explorer VI and VII satellites also contained weather-related experiments. The first weather satellite to be considered a success was TIROS-1, launched by NASA on April 1, 1960. TIROS operated for 78 days and proved to be much more successful than Vanguard 2. TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program, whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched since then. Beginning with the Nimbus 3 satellite in 1969, temperature information through the tropospheric
The Weather Channel to general company policy which discourages telecommuting for the majority of employees. Later in 2012, The Weather Channel's holding company changed its name from The Weather Channel Companies to The Weather Company. The company also purchased competing weather service and website Weather Underground the same year. On March 10, 2015, Verizon FiOS dropped The Weather Channel and WeatherScan for their rival AccuWeather. On September 9, 2015, the channel announced a phased overhaul of its programming schedule during 2016, in which the channel would gradually shift its focus back towards a forecast-based lineup; the channel cancelled "Wake Up with Al" (citing