Spring Rubber

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.

New camera angle in use at the WOFL studio to match the type of camera angle that's typically used in the NYC studios. It's quite up close and personal, so up close, in fact, that you can't exactly use full lower thirds with headlines on them. They have to use just "slim" lower thirds in order to keep most the monitor visible.

Fox Weather is now using two separate OCM teams on America's Weather Weekend: 6am-10am ET: Craig Herrera and Amy Freeze (Michael Estime filling in for Amy today) 10am-12pm ET: Steve Bender and Kiyana Lewis Then it looks like Kiyana Lewis sticks around to provide occasional weather updates during the automated Fox Weather Live. Seems like since they're adding Steve and Kiyana to weekends now, it's a missed opportunity to not provide fully-live weather programming until 1pm or 2pm ET, instead having them only work two fully-live hours of programming.

Best wishes on retirement to Robert Feder. It's going to be weird not waking up to his column anymore. So, what's our next best source for Chicago media news now?

Wow, how about that. As far as set design goes, are they restricted to following certain CBS O&O design elements? I wonder how much creative liberty they'll have with how they use the space.