Spring Rubber

A couple of updates. I'll start with the bad news and work up to the good news. 1) It looks like John Marshall has parted ways with Fox Weather. When they were shorthanded during the overnight hours for Hurricane Ian coverage, I was thinking to myself, "Wow, I can't believe they're not putting John Marshall on the air to help with the overnights and weekends." From checking his social media, he updated his bio to say, "The forecast was delivered for ch.2 ch. 4 & Fox Weather." in the past tense, and he changed his profile pic from a Fox Weather headshot to a personal pic. Based on his Twitter, he suddenly stopped posting Fox Weather material after September 16th, so that must have been his last day with them. https://twitter.com/johnmarshall_wx 2) This past weekend, they aired all long-form programming after 2pm ET instead of automated weather maps. Live weather didn't return until 1am ET when Night Light started. I sure hope this was just being done to make up for no long form being aired during Hurricane Ian coverage. I have my concerns that it might be permanent. Seems like the execs keep flip-flopping on long-form programming versus automated maps. We'll have to see what they do this upcoming weekend. 3) After a 10-month hiatus, America's Weather Tonight has returned in a new format. It is now a pre-recorded show with a runtime of ~13-15 minutes, airing during the 11pm-1am ET slot that used to house "Fox Weather Live" automated weather maps. I didn't tune in and see it until 12:30am ET last night, so I don't know how often it airs. I'm guessing top and bottom of the hour? The show is solo-hosted and pre-recorded earlier in the day. Last night's show was hosted by Ian Oliver; unsure if they'll have rotating hosts or if he'll always be the main host. There were only short weather map segments detailing the national forecast for that evening plus the forecast for the following day. Much of last night's show was spent airing pre-taped field reports from Hurricane Ian's aftermath. I'm curious how the format will evolve when there's less big stories going on; if they'll keep airing mostly taped reports or if they'll mix it more weather maps on slow nights. After the 13-15 minute America's Weather Tonight ended, there was a commercial break, followed by Fox Weather Live automated weather maps to round out the half-hour block from 12:45am-1:00am. Fox Weather Live didn't go without changes itself; they have replaced the background music they've been using since Fox Weather's launch with smooth jazz instead. It's definitely music with a more modern feel than what TWC used to use. I'm having a hard time telling if it's commercial music or if it's perhaps production music. I'll have to tune in tonight, if I remember, to see if this format holds true for the entire 11pm-1am ET block.

I guess if there's one thing that doesn't change with the radio landscape, it's cruel and sudden format changes that happen right in the middle of the broadcast day as soon as the execs pull the trigger.

Fox weather did finally do overnight nonstop coverage last night Wednesday into Thursday, and a major factor may have been the fact that management decided to simulcast Fox Weather on Fox News Channel from 1am-4am ET. During the daytime hours on Wednesday, Fox Weather shuffled up their OCM schedule around the landfall. Ian Oliver and Kelly Costa (in for Brigit Mahony) moved up from the 4pm timeslot up to the 2pm ET shift and were on the air as Ian ironically made landfall in Cayo Costa, FL. The normal 1pm ET crew of Stephen Morgan and Kendall Smith moved down to somewhere around a 5pm or 6pm ET start (unsure), while Nick Kosir and Marissa Torres moved down from their normal 7pm ET start to instead begin their coverage at 10pm ET so that they could help support the overnight shift. The makeshift team of Michael Estime and Jane Minar picked up coverage at 3am ET before the normal morning crew started. Looks like they're continuing with modified shifts today, as Ian and Kelly took over at 2pm ET again. I'm assuming that coverage will continue live a tad bit later into the night, but I'm doubting that there would be any overnight coverage tonight.

Fox weather called it a night at their usual weeknight end time of 10pm ET. They switched to "Fox Weather Live" automated maps with top and bottom of the hour updates only. TWC is staying fully live until 1am ET tonight and will begin 24/7 live coverage starting tomorrow at 6am ET and continuing through after the landfall. Will be interesting to see if Fox Weather will do the same, or if they're going to continue writing off coverage during the nighttime hours. Ever since Fox Weather invested big time in that overnight coverage for the December 2021 tornado outbreak, it seems like they've been super reluctant on doing more than top/bottom of the hour updates with automated maps during the nighttime hours. I know when it comes to extending coverage, one thing TWC does is extend every on-air shift to four hours instead of three. I wonder if Fox Weather has the contractual leverage to do that, or if they're bound to keeping certain shifts at 3 hours. Either way, for a big event like this, I'll be sorely disappointed if Fox Weather doesn't begin 24/7 live coverage starting tomorrow.

Good find. Definitely interesting timing on this.

I can't help but notice that in his goodbye message along with that photo, he says "Thanks for letting me fill in with you Michelle Relerford Kye Martin Iisha Scott Alicia Roman" Is he implying that his tenure on the show was never intended to be permanent? Looking back on Feder's old posts, I only see that it says he was named 11am anchor back in 2020, but never a mention of him being named official morning anchor after Zoraida left. It's weird to start changing it up when a new permanent anchor hasn't been announced.

Taking a look at NewsNation's schedule for the first time in forever, I can't help but notice that there's no longer an 11pm ET live show. Does anyone know when that got eliminated?

I'm curious if there's any way to fix the colors of the clock with a chroma key effect. I'm guessing it would be difficult/impossible with the selection of colors being displayed on that clock.

Are they using that color scheme on the desk and the images on the video walls during the morning show?

I can only assume Nexstar execs wanted no part of it. Especially considering that A&E is taking legal action against Reelz for "copying" Live PD, I'm assuming that played a role into Nexstar taking a pass on the show.

I would say that after coming so far without making a change, they're waiting for their new rights deals to start next year before making any changes to their non-NFL graphics.

I was wondering when they were going to replace their set. The previous one had been in use for 10 full years.

I see that Fox Weather opted for a full weekday schedule today, as opposed to July 4th, when they cut it off early at 1pm ET. (They also did a full schedule on Memorial Day, but that was mainly because there was a large-scale severe weather outbreak on that day.)

If I'm reading this correctly, they didn't even return the local markets of the two teams back to the game, right? Ridiculous if so.

That Bucs package gives me a real early 2000s vibe...

I really like that Steelers package. Might be my favorite preseason package ever.

Did we receive confirmation that they're only on the temp set for two weeks? From reading Patrick Fazio's post above, I see that Kate Chappell is anchoring with him for two weeks, but I don't see anything about the temp set before for two weeks.

I wonder what that will mean for the future of their web/mobile stream. I wonder if it will always stay free or if they will get to the point where they charge for the stream. Right now, as far as advertisements on the stream go, there's only 4 ad breaks per hour, each break lasting only 60-90 seconds, and I'd say that over 90% of the ads are pharmaceutical ads for the same few medications over and over. I wonder if they'll either increase the number of ads, start charging for the stream, or both. One change they just made on the stream this week is that the commercials are now clickable links so that you can be brought to the advertiser's website. I'm assuming that will help bring their ad revenue a bit higher, from the few commercials that they do have.

I have felt that Dan Abrams' gig with NewsNation was always a placeholder for him to have a cable TV presence while working to get Live PD back on the air. Now that it's back on the air by way of On Patrol: Live, I keep checking every day to see when Dan will announce that he's "stepping away from NewsNation to focus on other projects." The Abrams/Cuomo interview felt like an "interview your successor" type of moment.

Here's an example of what they're doing with the "slivers" at the bottom of the lower thirds. Every single topic now has its own dedicated sliver like "Fox Weather Extreme Heat", "Fox Weather Top Story", "Fox Weather Wildfire Alert", etc. The show's own sliver "America's Weather Now" only appears very briefly as they transition between segments, almost like a "bridge" between these other slivers. As the day goes on, it appears that they're no longer allowed to use any show opens, wipes, or any other full screen graphics that display the show's title. The use of the show's title is limited to just the occasional slivers on the bottom of the lower thirds, to the background behind the anchor desk, and to a few random monitors across the studio. All OCM scripts continue to say "Fox Weather" in place of the show names. Clearly some consultant decided that they want to go full steam on the "Fox Weather" brand only. Personally, I'm really going to miss dedicated show opens. I hate the modern trend of eliminating openers.

As of today, some formatting changes have taken place at Fox Weather: 1) The timeclock for segments has been redone. Instead of the top of the hour segment starting at :00, it now starts at :58, to mirror TWC. They now play the pre-recorded Across America segment with the O&O mets at :58, and then the studio show immediately starts as soon as that segment ends 2) Show opens and teasers are now gone. The top of each hour starts with a quick "Fox Weather TOP STORY" graphic, and they immediately jump into the story. 3) Along with the above change, they seem to be de-emphasizing all of the individual show names. When the OCMs start and close segments, they now say "Welcome back to Fox Weather" instead of "Welcome back to Sky Dome" or "Welcome back to America's Weather Center." I'm noticing that the only place the show names are now seen are on the background behind the anchor desk as well as very rarely on the graphics below the lower thirds. They have gone out of their way to craft a bunch of other "sliver" graphics below the lower thirds in place of the show titles. So far, each show still retains its own music and double box graphics, but we'll see if that lasts. 4) All shift changes now result in a live toss from the OCMs of the previous show to the OCMs of the next show. This happens after the :58 Across America segment wraps up.

The Cuomo signing led an IRL family member to say to me, "Hey, did you hear that Cuomo is coming back on some channel called NewsNation? Have you ever heard of it?" So I guess it caused some increase of awareness of the channel's existence...

Effective today, America's Weather Weekend now runs until 2pm ET. Steve Bender and Kiyana Lewis anchor the 10am-2pm ET portion. One of them still stays afterward for an unknown amount of time to provide top and bottom of the hour updates during Fox Weather Live from 2pm ET onwards. They have updated the corner graphic to reflect the new schedule.

After Tevin Wooten's departure in May, TWC quietly moved Dr. Rick Knabb from Weather Underground to Storm Center to replace Tevin, making Weather Underground just a two-OCM show now. One caveat is that Dr. Knabb still appears at :50 past each hour on Weather Underground for the Tropical Update. That's kind of a historical nod to the way that TWC *used* to utilize their hurricane experts on the air back in the 90s/2000s/early 2010s.

Lighting tweaks to the WOFL set today. I thought the lighting looked better yesterday. Seems way too shadowy today.