Spring Rubber

TWC wound up not doing extended coverage last night, despite the box in the lower right corner saying that they were going to do so. Guess what, they're not doing extended coverage tonight either, despite the fact that there's a 10% tornado risk, and multiple active tornado warnings, including a confirmed tornado actively on the ground. They promptly went to long form at 8pm ET despite the circumstances.

Good Day Chicago to see a new lineup starting next week: https://www.robertfeder.com/2022/05/06/robservations-wls-890-taps-steve-cochran-morning-fill-fox-32-shuffles-morning-anchor-lineup-marcus-gilmer-joins-crains-chicago-business/#more-33386 Looks like this might be why the press release about the hour(s) Anita Blanton would anchor was always a bit vague. Feels like they kind of had her in mind to take on this larger role from the very beginning.

I'm surprised that they're even scheduling nighttime coverage tonight, considering how much the severe threat is diminishing, until it flares back up again tomorrow. Edit to my previous statement: apparently the severe weather is supposed to flare up again tonight after a brief lull, so maybe there will be something of an outbreak, especially of damaging winds, to cover.

Because nothing makes sense with TWC's program schedule, for some reason, the America's Morning Headquarters branding holds up for the 12pm ET hour, and the Weather Underground branding holds up for the 1pm ET hour, yet when the Storm Center team continues their coverage into the 8pm ET hour, they drop the Storm Center branding for that hour, change all of the studio lights from yellow to blue, and brand that hour as "Severe Storm Central". I guess this has something to do with ratings manipulation?

In a strange move, no Storm Alert music / red logo on the Local Forecasts tonight. Heck, they didn't change the live on-air graphics to red until the new crew took over at 9pm ET. They were blue the whole rest of the day until then.

His Twitter bio still says so. Don't really have anything else to go on. Doesn't look like he has a public LinkedIn or a public presence on any other social media platforms.

Well that didn't take long. Mark Elliot made his debut as a freelancer at TWC a few moments ago. Glad to see he'll still be freelancing there in his spare time.

Fox Weather made an interesting decision on a Moderate Risk day to replace the 1PM ET hour today with a pre-recorded Fox Weather Reports long-form show about the 5/4/2007 Greensburg, KS EF5 Tornado. Greensburg, KS is the hometown of Kendall Smith's family, and much of the show was spent talking with her relatives there, recounting the events and the aftermath of that tornado. I'm assuming they have had this long form hour planned to air today for quite some time, and because the severe weather hadn't yet started as of the 1PM ET hour, they made the decision to run with the hour-long show anyway. America's Weather Center started at 2PM ET and will end an hour later at 5PM ET. I guess this will give them the benefit of running all of the shifts one hour later tonight to cover the severe weather, which will be most prominent in the evening hours.

When they launched the second part of AMHQ w/Jen and Alex last summer, they did away with the setup where Kelly Cass used to partner with Alex Wallace on Mon/Tue while Felicia Combs & Dr. Postel would host with him Wed-Fri. Now the whole weekend team is left without consistent weekday roles. I'm curious if they were given any behind-the scenes roles on weekdays to keep them full-time (when not called to fill in). I can't even remember the last time Paul Goodloe filled in on a weekday...

One TWC Expert didn't stick around for the big 40th anniversary. Turns out Mark Elliot departed in late March to take an off-air job at AT&T. I've noticed a trend since Entertainment Studios took over; they haven't been hiring/replacing any of the Experts that have left TWC. When NBC was in charge, they hired and promoted an absurd number of experts, especially around like 2014-2015 when they first debuted The Lab. Now only Dr. Rick Knabb, Dr. Greg Postel, and Carl Parker still remain. All three of them are now used as pseudo show hosts at this point. Dr. Knabb is a host on Weather Underground; Dr. Postel is a host on Weekend Recharge and fills in Wednesday-Friday mornings as needed, and Carl Parker hosts extended coverage hours during severe weather. Entertainment Studios definitely wants to streamline their on-air positions and doesn't see the value in having Experts that aren't also hosting shows. Also, this afternoon on Weather Underground, they did a quiz question of "How many hurricane experts has TWC had in its history?" The answer they provided was three: John Hope, Dr. Steve Lyons, and Dr. Rick Knabb. I think they literally wrote Bryan Norcross out of their network's history because he's working for the competitor now.

I fully expect it to be one day only, tops. They might even switch to Storm Alert music later today when the severe weather outbreak occurs.

Happy 40th Anniversary to TWC. Looks like given the Moderate Risk area for severe weather, TWC is going to be forced to spend their entire 40th anniversary covering severe weather instead of showing long form tonight.

I'm noticing that Corey and Dawn have switched back to a traditional Monday-Friday shift, based on what I'm seeing on their website. How long ago did that happen?

Nice catch! I didn't notice the watermarks before. On a separate note, I recorded AMHQ today. Jordan was present, but Stephanie was not there. Colleen Coyle was filling in for her. On Pattrn today, both Jordan and Stephanie are on the show. Jordan is wearing the same thing he was wearing this morning, so I assume this is still live/live-ish. I didn't catch AMHQ any of the other days this week, so I have no idea if Jordan and Steph were there or not. Anybody know?

Looks like TWC is set to launch The Weather Channel en Español on or around May 2, to coincide with the main network's 40th anniversary. TWC's last Spanish-language venture shut down way back in 2002, the network's 20th anniversary. I didn't hear anything about this happening, but I just caught this tweet from this past Monday. Based on the way this set looks, I'm speculating that this is likely in the studio that was most recently used as a second studio for isolation purposes during the height of COVID, previously used from 2015-2019 as the Weather Underground basement/bar set. I can't find any articles confirming the exact launch date, but the tweet references two weeks from 4/18, so that should take us to 5/2. I did find these other articles talking about TWC en Español. Nothing here seems to really answer if this is going to be on cable, on streaming platforms(s), or both. Can anyone else find anything? https://www.mediamoves.com/2021/08/sussy-ruiz-hired-to-help-relaunch-the-weather-channel-en-espanol.html https://deadline.com/2022/03/byron-allen-allen-media-group-promotes-nora-zimmett-1234962360/

Sky Dome was split-hosted by Craig Herrera in NYC Studio W and Katie Garner in Orlando today, as Amy Freeze had the day off. America's Weather Center is in the main Studio W instead of the small Studio K today. Oddly, the lighting on the LED strips in the studio is the same light red color that's used on Sky Dome, rather than the blue color that was used for America's Weather Center when it used to call Studio W its main home. The control room wasn't ready for the fact that in Studio W, Kendall and Stephen sit in opposite positions than they do in Studio K.

Looks like Molly McCollum, who has been freelance with TWC since June 2021, has now been hired as a full-time OCM. Based on what I'm seeing, her primary weekday role on the air is as the weather update OCM on Pattrn, but I'm sure she will be tasked to fill in on shows all throughout the week and weekends whenever needed. https://www.facebook.com/wxmolly/posts/519124126440610?__cft__[0]=AZXKmhPX-U1cktp1i0Rixua32G1Sx0NDMkYLoN90tDiIZ4qj8biU009vLUhvlYSwVxob9RiovVihY67P30eStxeQsvD7OYklObQR7_dAf-_fLUK-PVnx33nFgMExI1jgRYqBVR_pDzlQUM7BxZ2WqztEBpQWapsuOmW-PRTUU0IfPg&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R

The second part of AMHQ is once again relegated to The Lab today. Not sure if this is related to Pattrn, related to shoots being done for CBS News, or maybe something else?

I guess Steve Bender is permanent on the Monday/Tuesday editions of Sky Dome. This is now three weeks in a row where he's been alongside Kiyana Lewis. The last two weeks, he also covered Wednesday-Friday for a number of other OCMs, like Craig Herrera on late-week Sky Dome and also for Britta Merwin on Sunrise on one of the Fridays that she was out. Seems like he's switching from being a field reporter first and foremost to now being an in-studio OCM first and foremost, and then field duties as needed.

Is this The Weather Channel, or just a fancy T-Mobile store?

Ok, I guess it's live. They're doing a live tease with Mike and Alex for what's coming up next on Weather Underground. They also have a live weather update with Molly McCollum in The Lab right now. Sad to see another two hours of weather eroded from the midday schedule. I have noticed that several of the interviews are pre-recorded from other dates, many of them done in The Lab

It could also be pre-recorded. I have noticed over the past 4 weeks, there have been several days each week where either the later edition of AMHQ w/Jen & Alex or Weather Underground were moved into The Lab for an entire day. Last week, the Jen & Alex show spent Monday and Tuesday in The Lab, while Weather Underground has been in The Lab every single Thursday.

Ah thanks; guess I missed the days where they have done them.

KRIV Fox 26 Houston joined the Across America segments (I think for the first time ever?) today. So at this point, the Midwest region is way overrepresented on Across America, being represented by Houston, Dallas, Austin, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. The west has two stations: Phoenix and Seattle; the southeast also has two: Orlando and Tampa; meanwhile, the northeast still only has one station participating in the region: Philadelphia. The fact that not every Fox O&O participates makes me think that station management has a say in the matter. Apparently the big three in NYC, LA, and Chicago simply won't get involved in it. I still think it's crazy that on weekends, the northeast region simply isn't even included in the segment because WTXF won't record hits for the segment on weekends. They only participate on weekdays. Outside of NYC and Philly, I think D.C. is the only other O&O they have in the northeast, and I guess they won't have any part in the segment, either. At this point, maybe have one of the many midwest participating O&Os cover the northeast on weekends and make a casual reference like, "Boy, our friends up at Fox 29 Philly are really loving the weather out there today!" or something like that? lol Also, effective these past two weeks, there has been a change with the timing of when the Across America segments are recorded. Since day one of Fox Weather until early April, the morning segments from from WTXF and WTVT would typically feature each station's morning meteorologists, Sue Serio and Dave Osterberg, respectively. Now the morning segments are pre-recorded by the evening meteorologists Kathy Orr from WTXF and Paul Dellegato of WTVT on the night beforehand, while the morning meteorologists now record their segments in the morning, but not to be aired until the evening after 5pm ET. From what I can tell, the other stations in the midwest and west region have always done this, so this is falling in line with that trend. I'm guessing the morning meteorologists probably had to record the segments super early like 4am so that the Fox Weather editors could edit the segment together for air, and it was probably frustrating for either the mets, the editors, or both, to be on such a tight timetable. The new way is probably better for everyone's sanity.

Oh dang, are they doing this every night where there's not severe weather? If that's the case, then so much for adding the 9pm ET hour to their schedule. If they're gonna send everyone home early, then might as well just start Fox Weather Wild reruns at 9pm ET like they were doing during the first few months of the network.