Spring Rubber

After all day Wednesday and Thursday and all morning today with both meteorologists at the desk together, suddenly we're back to social distancing in two separate studios this afternoon. Go figure.

Omicron social distancing has ended. They have returned to having both anchors at the desk.

Awesome, I seem to remember the old newsroom being pretty outdated.

I was also unaware...

Side note: the program at 3pm ET is still America's Weather Center as of today. I guess the folks making the schedule graphic weren't aware of which program to list at which time. I can confirm that as of Friday, normal weather programming ended at 7pm ET, and Fox Weather Wild aired at that time, followed by long form programming afterward. EDIT: Their current answer to what to do with all of the on-air staff was to merge the two late shifts together into a 4-host program. America's Weather Now is now hosted by Nick, Marissa, Ian, and Brigit all at the same time. As to whether this holds up over time...we'll see...

"Welcome to our great new weather channel! We proudly present to you 6 live hours of programming on weekday mornings, 4 live hours of programming on weekday afternoons, and 6 live hours of programming on weekend mornings! Any other time you tune in, we'll be happy to present either long form programming or an automated loop that doesn't present a whole lot of actual weather information!" I've noticed that TWC blew Fox Weather out of the water in terms of live hours of programming during this past week's winter storm. TWC was live until 1 AM ET each night, while Fox Weather was calling it quits around 9 or 10 pm ET every night. Ever since the December 10-11 tornado outbreak where Fox Weather went all in on the overnight coverage, it's all been downhill from there with a constant reduction in live programming hours every couple of weeks since then. It feels like they didn't like the (presumably low) amount of viewership they got from that overnight coverage, and some exec said, "You know what, we're done with all this live programming. We're only going to be live during peek hours, and those are the only timeslots where it's valuable to be live." In other words, the same logic TWC execs used on their current programming strategy, but somehow even WORSE. If they continue down this path, there's no bright future ahead for Fox Weather.

Looks like another schedule change is on the way, and again, more programming cutbacks? Looks like the live program known as America's Weather Center will be no more, as America's Weather Now moves to 3pm ET, and it looks like Fox Weather Wild returns full time at the new time of 7pm ET, further eroding live weather programming in the evening hours. Not good to see. Not sure if America's Weather Center will be kept as the name of the automated afternoon loop or what. Also not sure what happens to the on-air afternoon shift, as this change will surely eliminate the need for having 3 afternoon meteorologist shifts.

Wow, talk about two overplayed concepts in graphics design: comic book styling and heavy use of italics.

Looks like they stopped the work from home today and went back to same-studio social distancing. The setup with the monitors appears to be the in-studio Fox Weather Command area, except they covered the area where the producers usually sit with a monitor to display the show's backdrop. Edit: While two-person shows are fully in studio, looks like they're still using work from home if there's a third host. Marissa Torres is at home tonight while Brigit Mahoney and Ian Oliver are in studio.

Looks like Fox Weather Wild returned to the air this week, and based on the graphic on the bottom of the screen, I'd say that the new episode must have aired on Wednesday. They're airing it in reruns right now on the stream. That's another brand new thing at Fox Weather this week: They decided to start utilizing something akin to TWC's LDL (lower display area) to display at the bottom of the screen a rotating forecast for cities across the country. Since launch day, they've used this only during the daytime automated blocks, but as of this past week, it's now being used during all live shows. The problem? It's being run from the control room on the chyrons, unlike TWC where it originates from master control. So now you've got this awkward situation where the outdated forecast bar is displayed on anything that they choose to rerun at a later date - be it reruns of Fox Weather Wild or any clips of their severe weather coverage that they might reuse on a special someday. The other quirk is that since it's built into the lower thirds, it disappears momentarily anytime an opener or a transitional effect runs over it. During the first block of this episode of Fox Weather Wild, Nick and Marissa expressed how good it was to be back but that it's a bit awkward to be doing the show remotely and having to deal with some of the delay in the feed as they talk with each other and with the guests. I got the impression that they were planning on keeping the show off the air until Fox lifted their remote work COVID protocols, but after being off the air for 4 weeks and still no lift in protocols, they must have decided that they should go ahead and start producing the show remotely. I do have to wonder if it's only going to be weekly instead of nightly at this point. I didn't catch if they said anything about that.

Do we know if the show is still starting at 6am ET on the streaming platform or if they adjusted the entire show's start time to later?

I guess the COVID isolation woes keep progressing. Effective last Wednesday 1/5, over half of the meteorologists are anchoring from home, and today, even the FNC newsroom was used as an alternate hosting location. (oddly enough, the behind the scenes Fox Weather Center was not used today. Wonder if they're now having to avoid that area due to an outbreak or something.)

Congrats to Patrick on working his way back to the anchor chair after all this time with WGN!

That's a good point. Maybe we'll have to wait and see what happens after a few weeks, maybe longer if it's a prolonged outbreak in the building. EDIT: I just checked in on their automated programming block. They have removed every show from the little advertising slider in the lower right except Sunrise, America's Weather Now, and America's Weather Weekend.

I thought that last week's scaled-back schedule might be due to the holidays, but now it seems that last week's schedule change might be permanent? Both last week and today, live programming ended at 8pm ET every weeknight. No America's Weather Tonight, and no Fox Weather Wild. The latter show just did that one special Christmas episode on December 23rd, and that was it. No other episodes since December 9th. The 9am-12pm ET block is still called Fox Weather Sunrise. Looks like the silly Sky Dome branding is gone for good. That's about the only one of these changes I can get behind. Otherwise, the fact that the amount of live hours per day is cut down to just 6 hours in the morning every day and 5 hours in the afternoon on weekdays...not good. Also effective today 1/3, the network moved from simple social distancing (implemented on 12/22) where each meteorologist hosted from a separate side of the main studio, to now exercising full separation of the meteorologists in separate rooms. For the whole day today, they had only one meteorologist in the main studio while the other meteorologist hosted from the stand-up podium near the behind-the-scenes weather center.

RIP Jeff, and I feel so bad for his son having lost both parents at age 11. I can't even imagine...

Wow, I had no idea that they used the same opener format from 1999-2001 (albeit with different colors and a different background) as the 2001 package.

Looks like they may have simplified their schedule even further? The Sky Dome show is gone as of today, and the 9am-12pm ET block is under the Sunrise branding instead. For the past two weeks, we observed that the America's Weather Tonight show branding was gone, as the entire 5pm-9pm block was being billed as America's Weather Now. Of course, at the beginning of the month, the weekend morning block was completely renamed as America's Weather Weekend, ditching the Sunrise and Sky Dome branding. At this point, I would not be surprised if they ditch the America's Weather Center branding and also merge that with America's Weather Now since it's just a two hour block. Unless maybe they won't do that because they count the 3-hour automated block as America's Weather Center, technically.

And you can add another meteorologist to the mix - Kiyana Lewis, formerly of News 12 Bronx/Brooklyn.

Keep 'em coming! WBBM is just going to be the former-NewsNationers at this point.

Fox Weather Wild returned to the air tonight for the first time since December 9th. Ever since the December 10th tornado outbreak, they had been airing an extra hour of America's Weather Now (still with Nick & Marissa) in that timeslot. The 7pm-9pm ET block is still in the America's Weather Now name and is still originating from the main studio instead of the small studio. Looks like both the America's Weather Tonight name plus the regular usage of the small studio might be a thing of the past.

Gotta love the meteorologist in the Hawaiian shirt and the consistency of that forecast.

Looks like Katie Garner (pictured right), formerly of Fox 8 WGHP, has joined Fox Weather. It also looks like Fox Weather has started enforcing social distancing in the studio as of today. The meteorologists have not been sitting together at the anchor desk all afternoon.

I'm curious how feasible it would be to have the bug's logo also be present on the lower third as a pixel-perfect match to the on-air bug, so that should the on-air bug not be present, the lower third would still have the logo there.

It's an uphill battle being the last in the market to introduce a 4pm newscast, but here's wishing them the best of luck.