Spring Rubber

TWC really should have done full coverage of the severe weather from 10pm-2am ET last night, given how horrible the tornado outbreak was, but alas, they did not. Just occasional break-ins with Mike Bettes.

Wanted to give a quick update on what's been happening at TWC ever since the departure of Chris Warren and Jacqui Jeras... and actually some changes that happened slightly before that as well. Starting I believe the week of March 17th, if memory serves correctly, Weather Unfiltered was reduced to a two-person show. Dr. Knabb is the only constant on the show now. On any given night, he hosts the show alongside either Mike Bettes or Alex Wilson, but not both. There doesn't seem to be any noticeable pattern. I've seen Mike and Alex swap from week-to-week or sometimes mid-week. If Dr. Knabb is on vacation, which he is right now, then Mike and Alex will host the show together, as they did this past Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. With that being said, now that neither Mike Bettes nor Alex Wilson are on the network full-time, does anyone know if they're covering the local Allen stations, or if they've simply been cut back to part-time? With all of these cutbacks, the hosts of the 10am-2pm AMHQ and the hosts of the 2pm-6pm TWC Live are now responsible for sliding down the schedule to cover any gaps. It seems that in general, Jen Carfagno stays put on the 10am-2pm AMHQ, but over the past several weeks, Alex Wallace and Dr. Greg Postel have repeatedly been tasked with hosting the 2pm-6pm block if Chris Bruin or Felicia Combs are out. Sometimes there are also double swaps, such as today, with Mike Bettes and Dr. Knabb both out, Felicia Combs slid down to the 6pm-10pm Weather Unfiltered block to cover for them, and Dr. Postel slid down into the 2pm-6pm block to cover for Felicia. On weekends, the any one of the hosts of Weekend Recharge (Paul Goodloe, Molly McCollum, or Lynette Charles) are responsible for covering the 6am-10am America's Weekend Headquarters shift if either Kelly Cass or Reynolds Wolf are out. If that happens, then Weekend Recharge is reduced to a two-person show for the day.

Man, this is so weird to watch, and what the heck are all of the AI-generated thumbnails that look nothing like her?

So Chris and Jacqui are both out after being removed from Storm Center a little over 5 months ago. The fact that they both left at almost the same time tells me that both of them were not being renewed by TWC. As for the Allen station hits, I'm told that Carl Parker and Todd Borek are two of the OCMs doing those hits. Not sure if any others are involved. With Chris and Jacqui gone, plus Carl and Todd focusing all efforts on the local hits, plus Jim Cantore and Alex Wilson off today, TWC went with a super bizarre OCM lineup for today's severe weather coverage. AMHQ Shift 1: Stephanie Abrams, Jordan Steele, and Reynolds Wolf AMHQ Shift 2: Jen Carfagno and Molly McCollum TWC Live: Alex Wallace and Felicia Combs Weather Unfiltered: Chris Bruin and Dr. Rick Knabb Extra 10pm-2am ET shift: Dr. Greg Postel and Mike Bettes So apparently the strategy was to move everyone downward from their normal timeslots just to fill out the schedule.

Somewhere within the past ??? number of weeks, the weekend 6am--9am ET show was rebranded to Weather Command Weekend. Of course, this literally makes no sense given that the weekday edition of Weather Command remains an 8am-12pm ET show. Would have made a lot more sense to keep the weekend 6am-9am ET branded as Fox Weather First Weekend while rebranding the 9am-2pm ET show to Weather Command Weekend, but it doesn't seem like Fox Weather can make many sensible decisions lately.

Well, this is a shocker. 14 years after the CBS/TBS/TNT/TruTV deal began, CBS finally released an official video on YouTube with the 2011-Present March Madness theme song. Curiously, the video contains the music on loop for 1 hour. However, it's definitely not the full theme song, as some core components are missing, like this part.

From TWC's standpoint, are the mets who are doing the local hits the same mets that are used on the national network, or are they using a different bunch?

I think a happy medium would be to cover all of the day's news in the A block while doing longer-form stories the rest of the show.

With the NBA Playoffs happening April through June and Sunday Night Football starting in September, I don't think NBC would be a great partner if MLB wants their games to be carried on the mothership.

Yep, the leaked score graphic is real, and it's as ugly as the leaked images indicated.

For the game broadcast, they are indeed using lower thirds that match the leaked scorebug, totally different from pregame.

This looks horrible.

I'll have to wait until I see it in hi-res, but from this initial look, I don't like it.

I guess so... I'm just surprised that they didn't have him retire in his usual timeslot... just would have seemed fitting.

Changes are effective February 10th. Vargas moves to 7pm ET, and NewsNation Now with Connell McShane expands to three hours to cover the 5pm ET hour that Vargas's show currently occupies. Really surprised they're actually not adding a new personality to the schedule.