AccuWeather Founder Joel Myers Inducted Into Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame

Joel Myers, the founder and executive chair of State College-based AccuWeather, joined luminaries who have shaped the media industry with his induction into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame on Tuesday night in New York City.

Considered the father of modern commercial meteorology, Myers was honored for a pioneering career that brought weather forecasting to the masses while leading the way in adapting new technology. He was inducted as part of a 2026 class that included Wolf Blitzer, Andy Cohen, Bobby Flay and Stephen A. Smith, among others.

Myers founded AccuWeather as a Penn State meteorology graduate student in 1962 and served as its CEO for more than 60 years, building the company into a global leader in weather data, forecasting and warnings.

“I think that Joel was a true visionary,” former Walt Disney Company CEO and current senior advisor Bob Iger said in a video played before Myers’ induction. “He knew that by using technology to weather forecasting and weather reporting that it would become more important in people’s lives and he would be serving people better.

“He created the modern weather forecast and presentation. He was a person that served not only the industry but the audience.”

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a renowned business management and leadership scholar at Yale School of Management, also credited Myers with revolutionizing how the public receives weather information.

“When he launched this business in 1962 at Penn State he wound up coming out with weather forecasting that was 25 times more accurate than anybody else in the business,” Sonnenfeld said. “Nobody had done this before to really professionalize weather. People used to always make jokes about why doesn’t somebody do something to change it. He did.”

AccuWeather now provides services for more than half of the Fortune 500 companies and reaches over a billion people worldwide through AccuWeather.com, the AccuWeather Network and the AccuWeather app, as well as forecasts and information on radio, television, newspapers, cable and streaming platforms. 

The hall of fame praised Myers as a “visionary entrepreneur” whose work continuously pioneered better communication of weather forecasts and warnings.

“By moving AccuWeather into the digital age as an app, as a website, he maintained the relevance of Accuweather in an incredibly impressive way,” Iger said. “I’ve always been impressed with people who could create a product for one world and ultimately bring that product into a new world.”

Added Sonnenfeld, “Interactive technology, making it so user-friendly, making it so every consumer has access to it — he’s been a great case study of how broadcast goes into new life stages.”

With his induction into the hall, Myers joined nearly 500 executives, personalities and programs, such as Oprah Winfrey, Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson, Edward R. Murrow, Al Roker, Jim Henson, Ted Turner, Barbara Walters and Bob Hope, to name a few.

The 2026 Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame class: 

• Wolf Blitzer – Award-winning co-anchor of CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown “

• Val Boreland – President of Entertainment, Versant 

• Andy Cohen – Host, executive producer and author, Bravo, Embassy Row 

• Joseph M. Cohen – Co-founder, USA Network, President, The Switch Sports Group and Chairman and CEO of West Ridge Associates 

• Luis Fernández – Chairman, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises (Chairman’s Award) 

• Rita Ferro – President, Global Advertising, The Walt Disney Company 

• Bobby Flay – Chef, restaurateur, producer and media personality, Food Network, Warner Bros. Discovery 

• Robert King & Michelle King – Creators/showrunners/executive producers, CBS Studios & King Size Productions 

• Jon Litner – President and CEO, YES Network

• Dr. Joel N. Myers – Founder and executive chair, AccuWeather 

• Jim Packer – Chief revenue officer, Lionsgate 

• Suzanne Scott – Chief executive officer, Fox News Media 

• Stephen A. Smith – Featured commentator/executive producer, “First Take,” ESPN ·

• William Wang – Founder and CEO of VIZIO (Technology Leadership Award) 

• “Star Trek” – Celebrating 60 years as a defining sci-fi franchise (Franchise of the Year Award)