Spring Rubber

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?

5 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

WBBM is bringing back the streetside studio and jumbotron.

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.

New OCM Michael Estime made his debut on America's Weather Now tonight, filling in for Nick Kosir.

https://www.foxweather.com/person/e/michael-estime

I'm not sure what the "FAST" weather service is that's mentioned in his bio. Can't find anything online about it either. Perhaps it's some new product that's about to launch?

Edit: Oh, apparently "FAST" just stands for "Free, ad-supported streaming television" - so in other words, just the main live streaming network.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220608005888/en/FOX-Weather-Signs-Meteorologist-Michael-Estime

Given that it's just internal talk at the moment, I suppose it's too early to tell what exactly might happen. Sounds like the possibilities are wide open at this point. Whatever the arrangement might be after October 2024, I assume it ought to launch with a heavy streaming component.

At least they are preempting today's Pattrn rerun due to the severe weather threat. Going forward, I hope they continue to adjust situationally and air live weather at this time when weather conditions merit.

Effective today, TWC has permanently moved the rerun of Pattrn from 1pm ET to 4pm ET.

Are they STUPID? The 4pm ET hour is typically when severe weather starts to explode on any given day, and now they're going to remove most live weather coverage from that hour. Unreal.

"Oh sorry, the news isn't happening during our regular news programming schedule, so we're not covering it." lol

Fox Weather has been experimenting with completely dumping long-form from their weekend afternoon/evening schedule. After doing their preemption for PTC One last Saturday, programming last Sunday and both Saturday and Sunday this weekend has consisted solely of the "Fox Weather LIVE" automated loop of weather maps throughout the entirety of weekend afternoons and evenings.

Edit: Looks like they're still doing long form on Sundays after 8pm ET. I suppose it's a sensible time for that sort of programming.

3 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

The LIVE bug is now at the bottom, not the top.

 

Just a minor thing I've noticed this week from watching.

I noticed that, too. This helps to bring the Fox Weather logo back in line with the position of the lower thirds. The logo was lined up with the lower thirds in the first few months of the network, and then over the winter, they added the lower display line with weather forecasts for cities nationwide. After that point, the logo hadn't been aligned with the L3s for the past few months. By moving the live bug beneath the logo, everything is aligned again.

Not too impressed. On both the weather graphics and on the open, the text seems to just get lost into the background. This is what happens when you use plain white text with no outline / no drop shadow on a busy background.

They just interspersed about 3 minutes of live coverage from WSVN into their coverage. Pleasantly surprised to see them taking video from a non-O&O.

23 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

A lot of 'storm chaser' vehicles usually have a screen on an arm attached to the hatchback door to present a forecast outdoors...but they're usually always set to a very vivid mode and they usually use known brand name sets (often weatherproofed) with a very low-profile bezel.

 

This one is a closeout 720p special (this one, specifically, a 24" 720p model with RCA and VGA hookups, and a '3.4 mm headphone output' (!); the brand is called Furrion, which specializes in RV TVs no sensible person would ever consider)...whoever picked out that unit should be fired; that's unacceptable even for one of those back-set monitors that plays a competitor station for decor. Even a damned iPad mini would be better than that POS. Do better, Fox.

Thanks for going the extra mile to look up the model of TV. Yeah, that TV is laughable. Haven't seen them use it since yesterday afternoon. Maybe they realized how bad it looked on the air and are now rethinking their purchase.

17 hours ago, NBC 5 Chicago said:

In Out & About it was posted that Tevin Wooten is going to NBC Boston. It explains why he hasn't been on air since the beginning of May. Now, I wonder if they'll replace him on Storm Center or just keep it Jacqui and Chris. Felicia posted on her socials that she was no longer going to be a regular on Weekend Recharge with May 21-22 being her last time as a regular on there. Curious to see if we'll see some shuffling around and if they'll hire anyone new any time soon. With the holiday weekend they've had a lot of the part time OCM's on to help fill the voids. 

Thank you for the updates. I noticed that Tevin's been gone for a while. I wonder if maybe this was even a planned move for a while. When each show had their "cover images" put onto my on-screen guide a few months ago, Tevin was excluded from the Storm Center cover image; while every other show had their OCMs added to the cover images.

2 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

Jeff Van Gundy and Woj out for Game 1 of the 2022 NBA Finals due to COVID. Mike Breen still TBD.

Welp, that's unfortunate timing. Hope everyone gets better soon, and hope it doesn't continue to spread throughout the broadcast team.

49 minutes ago, Action Newsroom said:

New President Chris Licht says he wants cut down on using the "Breaking News" chyron. Personally, I support this completely. 

Solid move. We all need less fake "Breaking News" in our lives.

Taking a page out of TWC's book of what they do in the day(s) leading up to a tropical landfall, Steve Bender is co-hosting America's Weather Center from the field today in Miami. For whatever reason, he took the creative liberty of standing next to his own live program monitor.

Ah ok, so the monitor was intended to be used for weather maps, and perhaps they had the monitor set to the wrong source in the opening segment.

Either way, the monitor is still kinda dark out there in the bright sun.

16 minutes ago, 24994J said:

Chris Boden gets promoted to full-time, while Kaitlin Sharkey, who voluntarily exited Fox32 the same week Magiera was let go from 9, joins WGN. Neither are being named to a broadcast slot, at least for now.. Payton and Frydman are also in the mix, so that'll mean any/all of 4 sports anchors on any given night. That's not at all messy and annoying.

 

https://www.robertfeder.com/2022/05/31/wgn-names-chris-boden-kaitlin-sharkey-full-time-sports-anchors/

This is exactly what I expected in terms of hires. Sharkey leaving WFLD at the same time Magiera left WGN made it all-too-obvious.

What I didn't expect was WGN taking a WMAQ-style approach to just having any sports anchor appear on any given night. I figured they would go with assigned roles right out of the gate. I would assume they'll have defined roles before November sweeps, but hey, you never know.

They just started their live coverage at 5pm ET, and they're already advertising in the corner of the screen that they have long form scheduled to resume at 8pm ET. Guess what time the severe storms are expected to really flare up in earnest? Right around 8pm-9pm ET. 

Update: around 5:22pm ET, they got rid of the long form advertisement and changed it to "All Evening - Severe Threat - LIVE Coverage". So we'll see...

Update: TWC dropped coverage at 9pm ET. So much for their "All evening" coverage. I guess it depends how you define evening.

Because TWC loves inconsistency (or because they're reading our thread  ), they have decided to have special severe weather live coverage today starting at 5pm ET. Interestingly, at the time they committed to this, the risk areas were 5% tornado and 30% hatched for wind and hail. Since then, the SPC upgraded the tornado risk to a 10% non-hatched area.

This is definitely lower than the threshold that TWC has been using for their criteria to extend live coverage on a weekend for many years, especially considering today's events are transpiring in the plains, not their beloved northeast. Glad to see them giving some attention to severe weather in the plains on a weekend for a change.

1 hour ago, mrschimpf said:

I use my Apple TV all the time and not having it on there (as niche as it is) is a severe oversight. Not even a browser to AirPlay option. I have a Fire TV, but it's just too slow and, Roku's video standards and overall UX are years behind.

 

Like the horrible situation where the private equity vultures forced apart the TV Guide channel and the magazine and it took revolt to bring them and proper listings back together, the entire situation with the Weather Channel's breakup has been a complete strikeout; I'm more apt to ignore the Weather Channel completely because Spectrum never upgraded their local headend for HD (thus I get the same feed as DirecTV in HD), so it's either watch local coverage in 4:3 SD (which I simply won't in 2022), or cue up the Spectrum app and watch the Milwaukee headend's data (with Cleveland ticker advertising for some reason) over reality glurge in primetime the vast majority of the audience doesn't give a damn about.

I agree; the selloff of weather.com, mobile assets, and forecasting technology to IBM was a huge detriment to the TV network. Now they basically don't have a leg to stand on in the digital and streaming age.

The Milwaukee headend has a Star where the ad ticker is for the Cleveland area? Are there any videos of it?

They did stuff throughout both the 9 and 10pm newscasts, but yeah, they did the big final farewell during GN Sports. Ray, Micah, and Tom re-joined Dan and Jarrett at the desk during GN Sports, also bringing in Rich King, Josh Frydman, and many others. For the very final segment, the on-air staff left the desk, instead having Dan sit at the desk surrounded by his family while Dan delivered his final remarks. They wound up staying live over their timeslot, ending the show at 11:01pm.

Dan did remark that they have hired their new sports anchor, but they can't announce it yet. He said the announcement should happen next week.

2 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

A man pointed a gun at Joanie Lum and her cameraman during a live shot.

Yikes, sad to know that you have to fear for your life just doing a field report in your own city.

I'm curious to see how WGN will handle Dan Roan's goodbye tonight. I know they've still been enforcing social distancing in the studio. I wonder if they'll lift those restrictions a bit in order for the anchors and crew to give him a proper goodbye.

I'm also curious if they would do two separate goodbyes - one at the end of the 10pm news and one at the end of GN Sports - or if they'll just do a single goodbye.

8 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

Man you really do keep an eye on FOX Weather for us @Spring Rubberand I thank you for that!

Someone's gotta do it!