Spring Rubber

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.

Uhhh, so apparently TWC and CBS News had a quiet relationship a few months before this deal was ever announced? I just found these videos from January on YouTube: Looks like now that severe weather season has started, most of their recent videos use this "lightning flash" effect that occurs throughout the entire segment. There is very dark lighting on the OCM, followed by a "lightning flash" that occasionally lights up the OCM's face and body. Can anybody tell if this lightning flash effect is 100% virtual or if they're actually flashing a physical light in the studio to emulate this lightning effect?

One thing that amazes me is that Fox Weather still has this problem where they don't change the script in the prompter at the end of the final hour of most shows. At the end of Sky Dome today, for example, the OCMs said, "Stick around, we have another hour of Sky Dome still to come, but first here's a look at your Fox Weather Across America." This is not a one-off issue. I've noticed this happening on multiple shows, and it seems to happen multiple times every week. It's been happening since day 1 that the network started. Pretty much every other network that does multi-hour shows has a standard routine to always change the text in the prompter during the final hour to have their anchors say goodbye and often to mention which show is coming up next. This should be in their daily checklist when writing the prompter script. It's gotta be awkward for the OCMs, who no doubt know that their shift is ending, to read the prompter and talk about how they will be right back with another hour of their own show, when it's simply not the case.

For some reason, I'm surprised that we found out about her hiring right away. I expected WFLD to drag their feet on a replacement for a while.

During the later years of the open newsroom set, it always looked super empty in the area behind the anchor desk; kinda sad looking for a "newsroom" set. Also, I feel like in the modern news era, big video walls are the thing for everyone. I personally am not a fan of having anchors shoved right up against a big video wall with no physical set visible in their solo shots, but alas...

Is the main anchor desk the only surviving piece from 2012 remaining in the studio? I think everything else has been replaced one or more times now, right?

The Fox Weather storm chase truck is out in the field today and live on the air. It's in the Cincinnati area, not quite the epicenter of today's outbreak. I'm guessing this was simply as far west as they were able to get overnight after the NYC debut event yesterday. I wonder if they'll keep trying to head a bit south into KY/TN to get a little closer to the highest severe risk area.

With the severe weather tonight, Fox Weather squeaked out two extra hours of control room-produced coverage, ending at 12am ET. To facilitate this, they split up the OCM shifts during the evening hours and shifted the morning/afternoon programming later. The male OCMs returned to their normal shifts today, as Marissa Torres returned today, allowing Danielle Gersh to pair with her tonight. They made Sky Dome a 4-hour show, ending an hour later at 2pm ET. They had America's Weather Center run from 2pm-5pm ET, an hour later start and hour later end than normal. After that, they had Ian Oliver and Brigit Mahoney do 5pm-7pm ET Then Marissa Torres and Danielle Gersh 7pm-9pm ET Then back to Ian Oliver and Brigit Mahoney 9pm-11pm ET And wrapped up with Marissa Torres and Danielle Gersh 11pm-12am ET. Then they handed it off to Kelly Costa doing non-control-room-produced coverage solo from Orlando starting at 12am ET. They are mixing in automation from time to time to give her a break, but it's mostly all live coverage. For whatever reason, Craig Herrera, hosting from home, joined Ian and Brigit on the 5pm-7pm ET shift. I don't really get the point of that, especially on what's supposed to be a scheduled day off for him. Maybe they deemed it necessary to add a third host to help give Ian and Brigit a little bit of a break during that timeslot.

Oh dang, too bad they didn't have that thing out in the field this week...

Really crazy lineup at Fox Weather today with Britta Merwin, Nick Kosir, and Marissa Torres all off. Katie Garner flew back to NYC to fill in for Britta this morning. Danielle Gersh flew in from LA to make her first appearance in forever, filling in for Marissa Torres. As for Nick's shift, they moved every other male OCM's shift down. John Marshall came in on his normal day off to fill in for Stephen Morgan on America's Weather Center. Stephen Morgan filled in for Ian Oliver on Across America, and then Ian Oliver filled in for Nick Kosir on America's Weather Now. When 10pm EDT rolled around, they continued special coverage with Ian and Danielle in a control-room-produced show for about 25 minutes. At around 10:25pm EDT, they went into automation, with Ian Oliver doing break-ins periodically to update on tornado warnings. As of this hour, Ian is still handling the break-ins, marking his 5th hour on the air. But they're not following their previous policy from a few weeks ago, which was to stay live with nonstop break-in coverage as long as there's tornado warnings active. The break-ins are rather infrequent tonight. On the other hand, TWC is staying fully live until 12am EDT. I guess TWC is edging out Fox Weather with their coverage tonight. But let's be honest, TWC would not have stayed live for a 10% hatched tornado risk a year ago at this time. It always would take a 15% hatched risk to keep TWC live for the past couple of years. So if there's one positive thing to make of this, it's that the competition from Fox Weather is forcing TWC to stay live and cover severe weather more than they've covered it in a long time.

Yeah, it's crazy how the weekend shift at WLS has been a career dead-end for as long as I can remember. They simply have never been a station to promote the weekend crew to any weekday shifts. Now, more than ever, I understand why Rob Johnson jumped ship to WBBM back in the 2000s.

Wow, what a day for the WGN Sports department. I guess that means a really major overhaul is in store. I've got a major hunch that Kaitlin Sharkey's WFLD departure is a sign that she's going to join WGN. What's the current situation with GN Sports? I haven't watched in quite a while. Is Dan Roan hosting Sunday-Thursday while Jarrett Payton hosts Monday-Friday, or did they finally unify their schedules? I'm curious how they would re-tool these lineups in a post-Dan Roan era.

Dang, that comes as a surprise, but I can understand the reasons. I assume Payton will cover all Fridays from now on. Wonder it will be Payton or somebody else covering Saturdays.

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?

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.

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.