Remember the good old days when you could send an letter to the US Gov't at Fort Collins, Colorado. You'd include a self-addressed stamped envelope and a cassette tape and they would return the cassette with a recording of WWV so that you could set your clocks.
You think that is silly? Is it any more silly than that the maga-klan is trying to make US citizens buy weather (data that was acquired via US assets and taxes) from private dealers such as Accuweather?