Spring Rubber

On 4/16/2025 at 1:40 PM, Horizon said:

 

Well, the trend has been (mainly with former news anchors) starting their own platforms, Substack, Podcasts, etc.

 

She jumped on the podcast bandwagon, but also did something that may surprise some of you. She started her own AI clone to provide her own Weather AI company in partnership with The Weather Company.

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.

22 minutes ago, JTT said:

Will another network step in to get this part of the deal from ESPN?  NBC, perhaps?  Sunday Night Baseball, Football, & Basketball.  Sports programming year around.

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.

32 minutes ago, NYAZSporty said:

Well, it's most definitely not BS now, seems legit. 

 

This looks horrible.

11 hours ago, CTrey98 said:

Well, believe it. FOX is debuting a new graphics package on Sunday for Super Bowl LIX after only two seasons with the previous package. The new scorebug design is definitely a surprise. Looks like they are going back to the simple boxed look from 2017.

 

https://x.com/CTreySports/status/1887621933711433934

 

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

1 hour ago, HSV cheesehead said:

Maybe CNN is preparing for his retirement

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

11 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

Leland Vittert moves to 9pm.

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.

Fox Weather is toast. The most dangerous tornado outbreak of the fall/winter season is underway, and Fox Weather dropped coverage at 8pm or 9pm ET (not sure which), because welp, it's a weekend during the holiday season, and ya know, 9pm is pretty late, so we'll be back live at 6am to assess the aftermath.

Even TWC, which originally planned on also dropping coverage at 8pm ET, added an additional live shift from 8pm to ??? (still live as of now at 9:37pm ET) when they saw how serious the tornado outbreak was going to be.

I don't think the higher-ups really care about Fox Weather anymore. It seems like they're just treating it as another shovelware FAST network that plays whatever they feel like showing in between constant ad breaks. I think 2025 will be the year that Fox Weather drastically cuts back even its weekday programming schedule, with additional staff cuts.

Well that's certainly going to create a lot of holes in their lineup. He had Monday-Friday shows on FNC and Fox Business, as well as a 2-hour Saturday morning show on FNC.

He hosted the 4pm ET weekday hour on FNC basically since the inception of time.

The USA Today article says that FNC will roll out a new programming schedule in January, with guest hosts filling his shows in the interim.

Looks like Tom Niziol didn't return at Fox Weather for this winter season. His bio has been removed from their site.

57 minutes ago, TheRolyPoly said:

I don't know if anyone else has seen this before but... Pattrn's 24/7 FAST channel is going away. That's in addition to TWC en Espanol going away sometime soon.

 

https://deadline.com/2024/11/pattrn-allen-media-group-climate-fast-channel-shutting-down-1236178497/

Nope, I wasn't aware. Thanks for sharing.

Another thing I've noticed lately is that if one of the AMHQ Weekend hosts is off, TWC is sliding Molly up from Weekend Recharge to host the AMHQ shift, rather than calling someone else in to host, as was the norm in the past. They're doing anything they can to slash costs right now.

3 hours ago, SF1964 said:

Jacqui Jeras was on today's (11/8) Morning/Afternoon/Daily Headquarters or whatever they call the show between 10AM and 2PM.

Indeed, and Chris Warren was on the 2-6pm show Thursday and Friday of this week, alongside the other Chris. (Felicia co-hosted Mon-Wed)

I wonder if Chris Warren and Jacqui Jeras are both per diem at this point, or what the deal is.

3 hours ago, Dave Lampstein said:

 

I think it's actually a giant LED wall studio? They aren't using any AR graphics. They're bringing guests on via a TV screen on a rolling cart...

 

Brian looks/sounds good, but he needed to be teamed up with a stronger group around him.

 

The insert graphics are absolutely awful... poor design, sloppy templates, and the CG system they're using seems to be struggling with them.

Agreed about the graphics. What are those lower thirds? There are private YouTubers (and maybe even college stations) that have nicer graphics than that. What are those shapes? What is that font?

I like the use of the windows and the backlit logo. Nicely done.

Chris Bruin and Felicia Combs ended up not being paired together the entire week.

Thursday's show featured Chris Bruin and Carl Parker.

Today's show features Felicia Combs and Chris Warren (still with TWC in some capacity, I take it).

2 hours ago, SF1964 said:

Jacqui posted on her own website that she'd be on some selected WC shows in November & December.  See link below.

Jacqui's upcoming TWC schedule.

 

It looks like this is a very old page from back when she was newer at TWC and was still per diem.

http://web.archive.org/web/20190318013952/http://www.jacquijeras.com/when-to-see-me.html

I found a copy of this page on the web archive from March 2019. I suspect given the dates of the weekend shows (Nov 10th, 11th, 17th, 18th) that this page is from November 2018. That's the only year since 2012 that had weekends on those exact dates.

Both yesterday and today, Carl Parker has had a presence on The Weather Channel LIVE. Yesterday, he was live with Chris and Felicia in The Lab. Today, he's featured in pre-recorded hits from what currently serves as the TWC En Español studio.

This studio previously served as the COVID isolation studio in 2020-2021, and from 2015-2019 as the Weather Underground studio.

On another note, apparently the height differential between Chris and Felicia was too great. They now begin the show seated. They actually made this adjustment somewhere in the middle of yesterday's program.

Also during the middle of yesterday's show and continuing today, the LIVE NOW bug was replaced with a standard bug that appears during other programming.

3 hours ago, Megatron81 said:

Pretty much what their rival TWC does at 2PM until 6AM on the weekends. 

Indeed, it sounds like both networks have modified their schedules within this past week (Fox Weather shortening weekend hours; TWC lengthening weekday hours) to mirror each other.

31 minutes ago, NBC 5 Chicago said:

So, it is Weather Channel Live. No open or anything. But they have a live now bug on the bottom right corner. It is originating from The Lab. Chris Bruin and Felicia Combs are the meteorologists. Felicia posted on Facebook that she and Bruin will be there all week. Not sure if they are every week or if this will be a weekly revolving door of meteorologists during this block. 

 

 

 

Hmm, the "LIVE NOW" bug is something we used to see on the live break-in coverage that would air during long form programming. Similarly, this show is not using any lower thirds other than those identifying the meteorologists. This seems to suggest that this is a very paired-down broadcast, as we suspected.

I wonder if Chris Warren and Jacqui Jeras are still with TWC, or if this is the end for them.