Spring Rubber

As for Nick Kosir, yeah, they've moved him entirely into the "fun segments" type of role, both in studio and out in the field. They've given his segments titles like "Kosir's Korner", "Nick's Clicks", and "In the Nick of Time". His segments have ranged from field reports on skiing and surfing, to man-on-the-street interviews, to game show host, and today, reporting live for Groundhog Day with Staten Island Chuck. To date, since the January 9th schedule change, they have not used him as a fill-in OCM, either. They've used him exclusively for "fun" segments.

She was technically a third OCM on that show to some extent, but she got rotated off that show constantly to fill in on literally every other show throughout the day, to the extent that her appearances on First/Sunrise were becoming quite scarce, except for cases where Jason or Britta themselves were off, in which case she would be their primary fill-in.

So, one week down, and it looks like The Streamable had a little bit of an incorrect scoop. Weather Command actually does feature Ian Oliver alongside Amy Freeze five days a week (he's even featured prominently in the show's promo, so pretty confident this is permanent). I'm wondering if the original concept of the show was an Amy Freeze solo show, and they made changes to it after they gave the scoop to The Streamable. Turns out that America's Weather Center is not a 3-host show. Michael Estime is the Mon-Wed host, and Craig Herrera is the Thu-Fri host. I assume Kendall Smith is there Mon-Fri, but this week was a bit of a mess, as Kendall only worked Monday this week and was out the whole rest of the week. Stephen Morgan was also out the full week, but either way, I *think* we can confidently say that Stephen and Kendall will not be hosting Fox Weather @ Night together, because the show is pre-recorded during the late afternoon hours, and with them both being on separate live shifts now, there would not be a convenient timeslot where they could record the show together. They way they did things this week is that whoever hosted Across America also hosted Fox Weather @ Night. It stands to reason that they'll keep this the same going forward. From watching today, the new weekend lineup is: *6:00-10:00am ET: Fox Weather First Weekend - anchored by Craig Herrera and Jane Minar *10:00am ET-2:00pm ET: Fox Weather Live - anchored by Kiyana Lewis and Michael Estime (replaces the America's Weather Weekend title) These are the first permanent hosting roles for Jane and Michael, as they were previously floaters who would fill in on any timeslot, any day of the week. What's interesting is that both weekend male hosts have regular weekday timeslots, splitting the week on America's Weather Center; however, both weekend female hosts appear to not have a regular weekday slot, likely meaning that they will both be used as primary fill-ins during the week. I know Kiyana Lewis filled in for Stephen Morgan on Across America and Fox Weather @ Night Monday-Wednesday. (Previously, all male and female weekend hosts had regular weekday slots on Sky Dome (Lewis/Bender Mon-Tue & Freeze/Herrera Wed-Fri). Looks like Nick Kosir is the odd man out as the only NYC-based OCM without any regularly-scheduled hosting role. During this past week, he only appeared Monday doing live hits at an indoor skiing/snowboarding park and Tuesday doing live hits at an ice skating rink, both in the NYC area. With all of the severe weather taking place this week, and with both Morgan and Smith out this week, they leaned heavily on Kiaya Lewis plus their Orlando-based team (Katie Garner and Kelly Costa) to fill in. On Friday, the on-air staff was so depleted that Steve Bender pulled a double shift (co-hosting all of Across America and Fox Weather Live, plus solo-hosting Fox Weather @ Night), while Ian Oliver and Kelly Costa both pulled 1.5 shifts (Oliver co-hosting all of Weather Command plus the first half of America's Weather Center / Costa co-hosting the second half of America's Weather Center and all of Across America), just to get through the broadcast day. No appearance of Nick Kosir at all in the studio all week, despite the shorthandedness. Curious to see what his on-air role looks like going forward.

"from a new state-of-the art New York City studio." Is this going to also be in the WPIX space? A different set from where Abrams and Cuomo are already doing their shows? Seems like Nexstar sure blew a lot of money building out the Chicago studios for NewsNation, seeing as most new shows are originating out of New York these days. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Marni and Leland's shows are the only ones that still originate from the main Chicago studio, right? And everything else that's still from Chicago originates from the newsroom set?

Some screengrabs of the new show logos. They're all sort of based off existing templates they've already had in use, with the "Fox Weather @ Night" logo just being a straight-up text swap from "America's Weather Tonight". Same intro and graphics for that show otherwise. Weather Command kept the same music from Sky Dome, while I didn't get to hear any show music during Fox Weather Live, as they pretty much played Alert mode music during that entire show, from what I could tell. Here are the new set pieces... first the two new desks... and the new merged video walls... For comparison, here's how the same wall used to be laid out in the OLD version of the set... Even though the set changes are relatively minor, the way they utilize the set is totally different. They are carrying over the same ideas from the small studio K revamp of two weeks ago - that is, they have eliminated almost all stand-up-in-front-of-maps weather segments. Almost the entire day today was spent with the OCMs presenting weather maps either from seated positions at the anchor desk or from a standing position at the new Expert Desk, presenting most maps in a double box or triple box format with the OCM in one box, and the map in another box. The only stand up arrangement I saw today was using the small monitor to the side of the anchor desk, and never using any of the large screens in the studio. The large screens in the studio (the new merged video wall plus the large curved video wall) were only used for "Hey, let's point a camera at this video wall while we show video footage on the monitors" type of camera shots. From what I could tell, the OCMs never stood up and presented at either of the two large video walls.

So based on the article, they're saying that Amy Freeze will be the solo host of Weather Command (implying that Ian Oliver and Britta Merwin only joined them today for the severe weather coverage). If that's the case, then it appears that Ian Oliver and Nick Kosir have been moved off the regular weekday schedule. Assuming that means they're both moving to weekend mornings? (I think that's a perfect place for Kosir given his laid-back broadcasting style, but would disagree with moving Oliver to that role, as Ian is definitely great at handling serious severe weather that you often see during the afternoon and evening hours). BTW, Nick Kosir is being utilized as a field "fluff" reporter today, doing segments about skiing. Again, this is for sure his "strong suit". He's way better at these types of segments compared to actual serious weather.

Yep, looks like the mini-refresh is complete. New anchor desk. New positioning of monitors in the studio. Apparently the show that's on right now is called Weather Command and not Sky Dome. Ian Oliver is apparently now a morning-shifter, and apparently the show is now a 3-host show with everyone at the anchor desk all at once? Unless it's just for today...unsure. Very heavy usage of red LEDs in studio and red graphics.

Five days later, and they're still doing all shows from the small Studio K. Starting to look like Studio W is getting a refresh even though it's been only 14 months since its debut? Strange. After 4 days of all weather maps being done from a seated position with this new version of Studio K, it appears that today, they finally realized how they could position a camera and some lighting in order to do some stand-up shots for a change.

Wow, I thought it was her left shoulder until you pointed that out.

It's ironic that in the writeup linked earlier, CBS claims that they're being minimalist and not wasting screen real estate, yet the bug is perhaps one of the largest bugs in the industry.

They are still using the small Studio K as of the 9am ET hour this morning. Wonder how much teardown of Studio W they did yesterday just to shoot whatever promos they were doing. (or wonder if something got broken during the process)

TWC is doing extended coverage of the west coast storm tonight, and instead of their own reporters, they are leaning heavily on their relationship with CBS News, featuring live field reports from both KCBS/KCAL (on their final night of the old branding) and from KPIX.

Whatever they did with these promos must have been quite involved, as I've noticed that all programming has originated out of the small shoebox Studio K today. They haven't had any programming in the main Studio W since I first tuned in during the 9am ET hour this morning. They're still using the small Studio K as of the 9pm ET hour tonight. Gee, they sure picked a good day for this...

There's a severe weather outbreak ongoing right now, and Fox Weather is airing a pre-taped special called "Biggest Weather Stories of The Year" as of 12pm ET. This is just baffling. It seems like something that they always must have had plans to air today, and for some insane reason, management refused to reschedule it.

Turns out there was a reason Studio K (the small midday studio) has been off the air for the past 10 days. They have revamped the space. With the new look, the entire show is done with both OCMs seated at a small coffee table-like desk. With this setup, there are no standup weather map segments anymore, as they used every inch of space on this new set layout. Every weather segment is done via double-or-triple boxes with the OCM seated there, just talking through the maps. I think the wide-shot of the set looks good, but I don't think there's any way it's worth the trade-off of having to do all of the weather maps while seated.

Thank you for mentioning the atmospheric river term. It seems like in the past 1-2 years, everything is suddenly an atmospheric river or a bomb cyclone.

Looks like they also dumped America's Weather Tonight again, instead opting to pre-record America's Weather Now and run it all the way through the evening until 1am ET. The pre-recorded show is akin to TWC's Evening Edition West Coast back in the 2000s, such that there's no live radar or current conditions, but plenty of forecast maps and weather summaries. They did the same thing last night as well. Unsure if this is just temporary during the winter storm/holiday season or if this is the new schedule going forward. Due to my current schedule, I haven't been able to tell if they've done any hours of fully live weather content at 7pm or 8pm ET or if they switch to this format right away at 7pm ET.

It was only a few years ago that the RSNs were shelling out record-breaking rights deals to the team owners, banking on there being many more years of huge cable subscription $$$ still ahead. I'm guessing there's no single company to blame for this, as pretty much the whole industry was shelling out big bucks, banking on the RSN model, with a short-sighted outlook of just how quickly cord-cutting would devastate the business model. If you wanted to play ball (ha) in the sports rights industry, you had to sign record-breaking contracts to even stand a chance.

Effective today, the 6am-10am ET weekend show has been renamed to "Fox Weather FIRST Weekend". The 10am-2pm ET show retains the "America's Weather Weekend" branding. This shift in the morning show names appears to be a corporate move to get their branding in line with FNC's morning shows. From looking at the logo design, the "FIRST" is similar to, but not exactly the same as, the Fox & Friends FIRST logo. Similarly, the "Weekend" part of the logo seems to take after the Fox & Friends Weekend logo.

The irony of the old NBC logo that was used in Deadline's cover image for the story.

I tuned in during the 5am ET/4am CT hour today, and they were still airing Night Light. I also see that Jason Frazer, of Fox Weather First, is appearing during the first hour of Sky Dome as a contributor, doing a travel weather segment. I slept during the whole Fox Weather First program's timeslot, lol

I just found a video clip on their website from Monday's Fox Weather First. It's literally just the America's Weather Weekend graphics with a different logo, which itself is just a reskin of the America's Weather Center/America's Weather Now graphics. Let me guess, it's probably going to be the same music as well?

Oh wow, they renamed Fox Weather Sunrise to Fox Weather First? Either way, good to see they're starting early and not removing any other live hours of shows. Any idea what the new graphics and/or music look like? I know they've been in Fox Weather Alert mode Tuesday and Wednesday due to the severe weather outbreak. I wonder if there's any chance of them being back to normal mode by Thursday morning so I can see what the graphics/music are. (Given the duration of this severe event, I could see them waiting until Friday to return to normal graphics and music.)

Looks like a schedule change went into effect today. I see that Sky Dome is on the air as of the 9am ET hour, when it previously started at 10am ET. I'm wondering what else may have changed. My hunch is that they might have moved the start time of all shows up, so that the live programming day might end earlier again. I guess we'll have to see throughout the day.

One year into Fox Weather's existence, one of the major barriers between Fox Weather and FNC has been broken. Today, Amy Freeze was tapped as a guest host on FNC's Outnumbered. When she says "joining", she doesn't just mean a single segment; she was actually a guest co-host (filling in for Harris Faulkner) for the full hour today.