Spring Rubber

RIP Jim Ramsey. It's hard to believe it's already been over 4 years since he retired. He was always Mr. Dependable at WGN, always there to fill in on literally any weekday timeslot while still carrying his regular weekend shifts, sometimes working like 14 or more days in a row when Tom or Paul were on vacation. Gonna miss you, Jim.

Fox Weather started the hour with a pre-recorded long-form ish report, and then they went into automated weather maps. I assume something's wrong with the control room or studio for Across America, preventing them from going on the air. The automation that's airing is the same layout as the 11pm-1am ET automation with the big show advertisement banners in the lower third space, but it's using the standard daytime music playlist as opposed to the new music that they are currently using overnight. EDIT: Looks like it was a studio issue. They just hit the air live at 4:17pm EDT using the backup Studio K for the show. They started the show with the top-of-the-hour opener and tease, so they're throwing out the scheduled layout for the hour to make sure to get the important A-block content in there right now.

What the heck... I'm wondering if the music tracks they're using would have ever had some sort of lyrics with embedded closed captions? Perhaps lyrics were removed, but captions were not?

Gotta love when everyone just runs with the same format because ESPN did it.

Starting to get political ads for the upcoming Illinois gubernatorial primary election on the main stream directly from the Fox Weather website. Guess they're starting to broker out local ads based on IP address.

Fox Weather has turned Studio K red for today's severe weather coverage, which is surprising because they don't even do this in their main studio, Studio W, for severe coverage.

Katie Garner is back on the air from Orlando tonight providing the extended nighttime/overnight tornado warning coverage. She worked all weekend filling in for Amy Freeze, plus all last week filling in for various OCMs. She caught a flight back to Orlando, no days off, right back at it this evening.

Out with the Joe, in with the Joe.

Kendall Smith returned from vacation today, and she is in fact paired with Stephen Morgan on America's Weather Center. So both of them moved as a team from the mornings into the afternoons. Today's edition of Sky Dome was hosted by Kiyana Lewis and Steve Bender. I think it's safe to say that Kiyana is a permanent Mon-Tue host on this show, but I know Steve Bender is a field reporter first and foremost and a fill-in OCM second, so I assume he's just covering the shift for now. Still no for sure sign of who Kiyana's permanent Mon-Tue partner will be.

Looks like the automated Fox Weather Live is also part of the weekend evening schedule as well, as it's airing right now. I assume it's 11pm-1am ET just like weekdays.

Effective last night, they changed the music tracks on the automated loop to a different set of music. Some of the music tracks from the old loop are still around, but the tracks all play in seemingly random order rather than starting from the same point every single segment. Also, there's no weather maps or international cams tonight, which I think might be an error. There's nothing but domestic live cams tonight. Some of the camera shots are really cool lit-up shots, but then you have some real winners like this one...

Today's midday schedule is all over the place. Amy, Craig, and John were off today, so Stephen Morgan and Katie Garner covered Sky Dome. Katie stuck around after that to cover America's Weather Center alongside Ian Oliver. I'm wondering if Ian will then stick around afterwards to work his normal shift on Across America. My money's on yes.

Yep, that's indeed Studio K. Nice to finally see a wide-angle shot of the room, since all we see on the air are tight shots. I'm curious...is that a physical window between the camera and the monitor with the America's Weather Center logo? I can't quite tell, but if it is, it would be kinda cool if they could use that on the air in some capacity. Edit: I read the text of Katie's tweet. She confirmed that those are real windows. Yeah, I really wish they would work the windows into the broadcast rather than purposely angling the camera to NOT show them.

Earlier in the week, I inquired what happened to the Craig Herrera/Amy Freeze/John Marshall Monday-Wednesday shift that they previously did on America's Weather Center. Turns out that with the schedule realignment, they have been moved to a Wednesday-Sunday shift instead. They will be hosting Sky Dome Wednesday-Friday and then America's Weather Weekend Saturday-Sunday. So I assume that means that John Marshall's appearance on America's Weather Center this past Monday was maybe just a one-off because they needed someone to cover the shift? Heck, I don't even know who exactly are the permanent hosts of Monday-Tuesday Sky Dome? I guess we also don't know who is Stephen's partner on America's Weather Center; they've used three different co-hosts each day this week on that show. I assume Kiyana Lewis is one of the hosts of Mon-Tue Sky Dome? Maybe Kendall Smith is on vacation and she'll be the other Mon-Tue Sky Dome host when she returns? Maybe it's still gonna be Katie Garner remote from Orlando? Maybe Kendall will join Stephen on America's Weather Center when she comes back? Actually, given the fact that America's Weather Center is now hosted from the tiny Studio K, maybe the best solution would be to have Katie remote-host from Orlando and just have Stephen in Studio K by himself, that way Kendall and Kiyana can host Sky Dome from the much larger Studio W. I'm guessing we won't know what the permanent arrangement is until Monday of next week, assuming nobody else takes any vacations. Huh, this is interesting... https://www.foxweather.com/personalities Both Danielle Gersh and John Marshall have been removed from this page. Danielle hasn't been on the air in forever, but she's still tweeting about Fox Weather and Fox News as recently as today. Her profile states that she's still freelance with Fox Weather, but she's living in LA. John Marshall disappearing from this page is quite surprising; he was on the air today, and based on the above tweet, it certainly sounds like he's still going to be hosting full-time.

So glad for Ed, and here's to his continued health!

They got the much-needed podium with laptop in the WOFL studio. Now just to fix the way-too-blue lighting...

Fox Weather Wild will not be shown tonight due to the severe weather threat. They are airing the automated Fox Weather Live with Fox Weather Alert lower thirds and "intense" music instead of the usual peaceful music. Kelly Costa is providing updates from the WOFL studio during times that there are active tornado warnings.

Brigit Mahoney, absent from yesterday's lineup, is now paired with Stephen Morgan on America's Weather Center today. Not sure what's going on with the lineups...lol Edit: Stephen just mentioned that Brigit will be working both shows today: America's Weather Center and Across America, 6 hours total.

Here's a look at the Fox Weather Live title: Ok, something's wrong with these "Day Planner" graphics. Obviously the 4pm forecast is missing from all of them, but also, the forecast appears to be for Wednesday, not for Tuesday. I am guessing that this is jacked up during the 12am ET hour because it's after midnight, and the computer was programmed to literally pull the forecast for "tomorrow" regardless of the circumstances. Does anybody know if it was correct in the 11pm ET hour? Also, the moon icon is showing up at 8am in OKC? That tells me that it must be pulling the forecast times in EDT for all of the regions instead of adjusting for timezone, seeing as OKC's sunrise time is 7:21am CDT.

Did not see that one coming... well, I'm glad they found some use for this format! I like the art style of the banner lower thirds they're using to advertise their new schedule.

Speaking of which, it appears that Fox Weather Wild is not live tonight; they're airing a rerun from mid-February. I'm curious what their production schedule is like with this new lineup - if they'll be doing live shows still or if they'll be pre-recording them during the daytime in advance.

I'm not surprised that it didn't turn out to be this. The overall O&O participation in Fox Weather is quite low. In the southeast, only WTVT and WOFL participate in the Across America pre-recorded segments, and in the northeast, only WTXF participates, and only on weekdays. On the weekend morning Across America segments, they actually usually skip the northeast region because they don't have a single O&O that's willing to record for that region on weekends, and for the southeast region, typically Paul Dellegatto of WTVT records the Saturday forecast segment on the Friday night beforehand. It kinda feels like pulling teeth to try to get the O&Os more involved in Fox Weather than just slapping up one or two 30-second pre-recorded hits per day.

They are back in the main Studio W for Across America. This show uses a decidedly more middle-America rural backdrop as opposed to the city skyline-type graphics used on all of the other shows. As for the opens and music? It's all the same as the "Across America" segments that feature the regional O&O meteorologists. It's definitely a weird branding decision to have "Across America" continue to be used for both purposes. They are also branding the show as "A New Way to Look at Weather". And what they claim to mean by this is that instead of taking a region-by-region forecast, the show will be focused on each individual storm system as it moves across the country, first explaining how it impacts the west coast, then how it impacts the center of the country, and then how it will impact the east coast. I don't personally think it's anything different than any of the other shows; seems like just a marketing/branding sort of thing.

You can modify the lighting all you want, but you can't make the tiny shoebox of the studio any bigger than it previously was! While John gets a different TV screen away from the anchor desk to stand in front of, Stephen simply has to use the same monitor that they use as a background at the anchor desk! You can see the anchor desk literally right there in front of the TV screen that Stephen uses while presenting. The small size of this set never ceases to amuse me, but they're making the best of it as much as possible! For variety purposes, they are also using the chroma key wall from time to time, just as they also did on America's Weather Tonight last year... EDIT: they just announced that Katie Garner will be surprisingly subbing for Brigit Mahoney on the debut edition of Fox Weather: Across America, and they have updated the graphic accordingly:

Wow, they are indeed back in Studio K for America's Weather Center, which hasn't been seen on-air since America's Weather Tonight was cancelled on 12/9/2021. They have ditched the sit-down desk in favor of a stand-up desk, and they have completely re-done the lighting, making the lighting on the anchors much warmer, as well as adding a ton of lighting embedded into the walls. The lighting is 1000% better now.