At The Seven Network, Australia’s most watched television network, every News and Public Affairs program includes weather. Every bulletin. Every market. Every day.

Across hundreds of hours of news each week — including more than 120 localised regional inserts nationwide — weather is embedded in the broadcast schedule. Viewers rely on it. During severe events, they depend on it.

Behind the scenes, teams work with live radar, satellite imagery, synoptic charts, and constantly updating data feeds. That information must be processed, built into scenes and delivered to air multiple times a day.

For years, delivering that reliability required dedicated hardware at every site, coordination across markets, and legacy systems that weren’t built for the speed and flexibility live weather demands.

The Challenges Behind the Traditional Broadcast

Delivering continuous, reliable weather broadcasts across metro and regional markets was both a presentation and operational challenge.

1. Speed: From Data Source to On Air

Weather production depends on constantly updating radar, satellite, forecast, and synoptic data feeds. The challenge wasn’t simply accessing that data — it was making it usable in time to go to air.

• Large volumes of data had to be processed and distributed
• Information needed to reach multiple sites simultaneously
• Updates had to be reflected in scenes before broadcast deadlines
• Any delay reduced flexibility under live pressure

With our old system, it could take 45 minutes for a radar to update for me…you’ve got a storm that’s hit Brisbane, and the radar’s showing it’s 30-40 kilometers away.
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— Tony Auden, Meteorologist and WeatherPresenter

2. Workflow Friction Under Broadcast Pressure

Building scenes, updating graphics, and preparing regional inserts required coordination across teams and systems.

• Scene construction was time-consuming
• Simple updates often involved multiple steps
• Supporting 120+ regional inserts added coordination complexity
• Changes weren’t always quick to propagate across markets

I didn’t know if building a scene was going to take five minutes or five hours. To change a picture background, I think I counted 50 clicks.
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— Tony Auden, Meteorologist and Weather Presenter

3. Infrastructure Complexity at Scale

Behind the scenes, weather production relied on expensive hardware and distributed systems.

• Dedicated high-spec servers and local databases at each site
• Data transfers and synchronisation between locations
• Ongoing maintenance and hardware lifecycle management
• Costs that scaled with every market

Historically, the biggest challenges were the cost and complexity of maintaining dedicated hardware infrastructure at every broadcast location. Each site required high-spec servers, local databases, and tightly coupled systems — all of which increased operational overhead and made scaling difficult.
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— Dacien Hadland-Beer, Head of Technical Services

Rethinking the Model

From the outset, Weather Insights was a collaborative effort between 7NEWS and InterKnowlogy to design a better model for how weather is produced and delivered. It brought together 7NEWS technical leadership, meteorologists, and broadcast operations teams alongside InterKnowlogy’s engineers.

Meteorologists worked closely with InterKnowlogy’s development and design team, shaping how scenes are built, how data flows into graphics, and what needs to be accessible and customisable under live broadcast pressure. User experience and simplicity were deliberate design principles.

At the same time,Seven’s engineering and technical services teams worked alongside InterKnowlogy to move towards a cloud-based model to reduce infrastructure, improve reliability, and accelerate the path from data ingestion to playout.

What Changed Inside the Newsroom

Weather production at 7NEWS now operates on a centralised, cloud-based model spanning data ingestion through to playout. Data is ingested once and made immediately available across all markets, eliminating large dataset transfers to individual sites and simplifying infrastructure.

The shift changed how teams work day-to-day — from data availability to scene building to live delivery.

For Meteorologists

• Faster access to trusted radar, satellite, and model data
• Predictable, intuitive scene building
• Easy customisation of the look and feel of scene elements
• Real-time editing and layer control under live conditions
• Fewer steps between building a scene and going to air

We’ve fussed over every click to make this as efficient as possible. When you’re doing things in the heat of battle, two or three extra clicks really matter.Everyone’s been really happy with how easy the system is to use.
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— Tony Auden, Meteorologist and Weather Presenter

For Producers

• A streamlined Control Room environment for assembling and sequencing shows
• The ability to preview and adjust scenes before broadcast
• Instant propagation of updates across markets
• Seamless handoff from production to presentation

For Broadcast Operations

• Centralised processing in the cloud
• No high-spec hardware at individual sites
• Elimination of large dataset transfers between locations
• Simplified deployment and scaling across markets

The entire processing pipeline now runs in the cloud. Once the data is ingested and processed, it’s immediately available everywhere. The impact has been significant – especially when it comes to turnaround time.  From the moment updates arrive from providerslike the Bureau of Meteorology and other data sources, we can get the latest information to air far faster than before.
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— Dacien Hadland-Beer, Head of Technical Services

Transform Your Weather Broadcast Experience with IK Weather Insights. Learn more