Spring Rubber

Fox Weather Wild remained off the air Tuesday night, with a live hour of America's Weather Now at 9pm ET with Nick and Marissa, still covering the aftermath of the deadly storms. The SPC just issued a Moderate Risk area for Wednesday (10% Tornado, 45% Significant severe damaging wind threat) for IA/MN/WI. Looks like another very damaging severe weather night ahead, this time mostly a damaging straight-line wind threat with some embedded tornadoes possible. Either way, it looks like both Fox Weather and maybe TWC should plan for another busy night of coverage.

Forgot to mention this earlier, but Fox Weather bumped Fox Weather Wild off the schedule tonight, presumably because hosting a lighthearted show would not seem appropriate given the recent events. They opted for reruns of weekend long-form shows instead for this evening. Also, for whatever reason, the show that's normally America's Weather Tonight used the America's Weather Now branding and was done from the main studio instead of the small studio. I understand using the main studio, but I don't understand the reasoning behind using the Now branding instead of Tonight.

I don't personally see him wanting a Monday-Friday live nighttime show at this point in his career, but hey, who knows.

I can't say I'm surprised. I read that he expressed criticism at some of the opinion content that has come out of the organization, so I guess his departure at the end of this contract is the next logical step in the process.

Looks like Fox Weather is currently airing the long-form shows that would have normally aired last night, in lieu of the usual automated weather maps that would normally air at Noon ET.

I hate localized coverage because satellite viewers can't receive it. Also, if they had enough staff to produce continuous live programming, why not air it to the entire country?

John Marshall and Amy Freeze took over coverage at 4:56am ET. It seems that because they already have a naturally-long shift until 12pm ET, they basically woke up and came straight to work and went on air an hour earlier than normal with no time to prep. John Marshall admitted on air that he did not have a chance to see the horrific Mayfield, KY video until they showed it on air. He watched in horror at what he was seeing as the control room played back the video. He seemed to not be aware that there were deaths in Kentucky until they told him over his IFB. It's a hard situation to be in when the network doesn't have enough staff on standby to make everyone's shifts a bit shorter, but still way better than TWC, which has still only been providing very short 45-second updates at :00 and :30 of every hour while failing to cover the storms the rest of the time. Edit: After KY Governor Beshear's speech ended at 5:10am ET, Jane Minar picked up the coverage from the solo update podium in the other studio. She thanked viewers for staying with Fox Weather and informed viewers that live coverage will resume soon. They put the stream into an automated series of maps customized for the severe weather event, showing automated live radar/watches/warnings. There is no audio whatsoever, presumably because the normal music used in automation is way too cheery, and they don't have anything more appropriate readily available. I think the production team realized that having John and Amy in the building was no help if they haven't even had a chance to be briefed on what's going on, especially since they have to go live on Fox Business in less than 50 minutes. I'm going to guess that they called an immediate production meeting so that they can get up to speed on everything and go live on Fox Business at the top of the hour much more prepared. I don't blame them.

Fox Weather is going to cover it live all night long with minimal commercial interruption. Meanwhile, TWC went to long form at Midnight ET and said that they will only occasionally break in with updates for the rest of the night. During a weather crisis, kudos to Fox Weather for sticking with this. Shame on TWC for ignoring a deadly emergency because it's not affecting the northeast.

Fox Weather is understandably on an alternate schedule in order to provide full coverage for this tornado outbreak. Nick Kosir and Marissa Torres did the 5pm-9pm ET block. Looks like Steve Bender and Brigit Mahoney did the 9pm-10pm block, and now I'm surprised to see that Nick and Marissa are back for the 10pm hour. I'm guessing surely this must be their last hour before handing it off to a different team, right? Edit: Brigit is still on during this 10pm ET hour in the "Weather Command" area. Edit 2: Steve Bender and Jane Minar took over a few minutes early at 10:55pm ET.

But the NewsNation weather department is booming! (Oh wait, it's not )

Did the entire 6-hour show maintain the "America's Weather Weekend" branding?

Because it looks like the commercial breaks are being run according to cable standards (more frequent and longer breaks compared to the streaming platform), on the web stream, they're having to air live camera shots at the end of the breaks, similar to the live camera shots like you'd typically see during the automated afternoon hours to fill the time before the live broadcast resumes.

Did the show get renamed to "America's Weather Weekend" with this change? To date, hasn't their morning shift simply used the same titles as the weekday morning shows?

Pretty surprising in the era of the internet that a story like this gets overlooked for over 4 months simply because small-town publications don't get read by big city folk.

I hope they aim to staff the 12pm-3pm block on weekdays and/or some afternoon hours on weekends.

Looks like Weekend Recharge, the show that occupies the same timeslot on the weekend as the second half of America's Morning Headquarters does on weekdays, also makes use of the couch. They brought in an extra chair for Dr. Greg Postel.

Thanks Nexstar!

I believe that deal only pertains to productions of Law & Crime network and not to any other work that Dan Abrams does outside of Law & Crime, unless there's documentation to the contrary...

As far as studio utilization, with this schedule change, all shows now take place in the main studio. (Weather Center Live previously took place in The Lab.) The only time throughout the entire day that The Lab was used was for two very short Dr. Knabb segments during each hour of Weather Underground at around :10 past and :43 past. For the rest of Weather Underground, Dr. Knabb spent the show in the main studio with the other hosts. It makes me wonder if they would consider ditching The Lab or just reserving it only for days that they do extended coverage in the evening/overnight hours. Another weird thing is that the couch area is effectively the centerpiece of the main studio due to its location, yet the couch is only used for the second half of America's Morning Headquarters. I have to wonder if they would also consider using the couch for either the first half of America's Morning Headquarters or possibly for either one or both of the weekend morning shows. The rest of the shows have to work around the couch area rather than utilize it, which effectively limits the types of wideshots that can be used during the other dayparts.

After many years of straying towards more business casual clothing, both Chris Warren and Tevin Wooten are wearing full suits on this new show. All of the rest of the dayparts still remain business casual. Guess they want to give primetime a more "professional and serious" tone. As far as the content of the program itself, only about 4 minutes of the 15-minute long top-of-the-hour segment were spent talking current weather. Most of the first few minutes were spent looking at video of Saturday's tornadoes, then a brief current weather update for like 3 minutes, followed by like 7-8 minutes of pre-produced video and discussion about the March 1993 snowstorm in the southern US and the impacts that the storms had on people at the time, and then finally a 1-minute outlook on overall temperature and precip trends to expect for the upcoming winter. Compared to the hard-weather content of Weather Center Live, I'm not a fan so far.

I mentioned in the Fox Weather thread a few weeks ago how odd it was for Fox Weather to debut a show called "America's Weather Center" while TWC already has "Weather Center Live" airing at the exact same time. Looks like TWC was quick to give up their branding and go for something more intense-sounding. Kind of sad to see the Weather Center branding, which has been a name at TWC since 1998, go by the wayside. I also have to wonder if some of these changes might be motivated by their competition at Fox Weather. As we know, Fox Weather does not have live programming from 12pm-3pm ET, so I wonder if TWC thought it best to put their top-billed Weather Underground show in a timeslot that Fox Weather isn't live, meanwhile placing the more "hard weather" Storm Center show during the later afternoon/evening in a timeslot where Fox is also doing live hard-weather programming. Here is a wide shot video of the studio showing where the new couch is located:

I noticed that they repositioned the monitor in their secondary studio, Studio K, to cover up the empty space behind the anchor desk. I'm glad they made this change. The fact that there are two endless black holes behind the anchors looks really bad; you NEVER want to have huge empty-looking gaps on your set. The moving of the monitor to a position directly behind the anchors allows them to block the empty holes in part by the monitor and in part by the anchors' bodies. Launch week: Now:

Oh my goodness; what are they thinking?!? That's the type of score graphic you'd think to put up when going to break, not during live game action!

What type of severe weather happened, and did Fox Weather cover it the entire time of the simulcast, or did they still cover multiple things?

For today's automated 8pm ET hour, they switched to using the America's Weather Center graphical setup, so we got live nighttime outdoor camera shots for the first time, combined with the usual daytime assortment of weather maps.