Spring Rubber

Fox Weather has added one more hour of live programming to their schedule. America's Weather Center now starts at 2pm ET instead of 3pm ET. This appears to be a permanent change, as the show time has been updated accordingly on their "Schedule ticker" that sometimes appears in the lower right corner of the screen.

Well, clearly they have some work to do as far as getting a wireless mic/IFB system set up at WOFL for the Fox Weather meteorologists. Katie Garner took over from WOFL at the top of this hour, and as you can see from behind her head, her mic and IFB are hard-wired into a wall port instead of being wireless. This certainly looks rather uncomfortable and also potentially dangerous if you walk just a few too many steps away from the wall.

There are at least two, possibly three damaging tornadoes confirmed on the ground right now in Arkansas. Fox Weather has been live already for several hours. TWC is again not covering it because to them, "Weather doesn't happen on weekends". Jane Minar did confirm a few minutes ago that the coverage we're seeing at night is from their new WOFL bureau. She mentioned that Katie Garner will be hosting tonight's live coverage from Orlando. So looks like both Kelly Costa and Katie Garner are now in place to start hosting from Orlando. All we saw last night was just that single camera setup with the touchscreen and plain blue background. I'm sure that's again what they'll be using tonight. I'm curious to see if they'll be building a proper set down there in Orlando or just sticking with a very simple setup. I guess it will depend on if they plan on broadcasting there on a daily basis or if they plan on only using a single-cam setup for extended live coverage hours.

Looks like Kelly Costa made her on-air debut at the top of this hour. I don't recognize this studio at all...so is this at WOFL?

There's severe weather with numerous tornadoes happing now in Iowa. Fox Weather is covering it live. TWC is not covering it. Fox Weather is 1000x more attentive to severe weather/tornadic events, while TWC has a massive bias toward tropical systems and winter storms. The execs over at TWC seem to like tropical/winter weather better because they're a "sure bet", and they have multiple days in advance to schedule on-air shifts and send meteorologists out into the field. Severe weather, on the other hand, is more prone to have less days notice in advance, and also a greater chance of being a total bust if the tornado outbreak fails to materialize. TWC seems to have no interest in covering an event that's not a "sure thing". One note about Fox Weather's coverage is that they're not using a control room / main studio / multiple hosts. It's just nonstop solo-hosted "emergency break-in" style coverage with Jane Minar where she stands at the podium near the weather center and controls the broadcast herself using the touchscreen on the podium. I don't know why TWC refuses to do something like this when they're unsure of the potency of a severe weather event. It seems pretty cost effective compared to having a full staff there during off-peak hours, and at least it gives Fox Weather the ability to be live to cover this outbreak, especially when things get a lot more severe than originally forecasted.

Wow, nobody else was available today, eh? Very rare to see your weeknight evening meteorologist have to do a split shift like that.

I can't say I'll ever understand the shifts they use to staff the network. This morning, I saw that John Marshall was filling in for Stephen Morgan in the 9am-12pm block of Sunrise. To my surprise, John Marshall is back on the air now as the "third meteorologist" on America's Weather Center alongside Craig and Amy. I'm surprised they still have him on his usual afternoon spot despite doing the morning fill-in shift, especially considering that Craig and Amy are both in today.

https://www.robertfeder.com/2022/02/24/robservations-fox-32-hires-anita-blanton-morning-anchor-courtney-cronin-cover-bears-espn-len-kaspers-sonic45-releases-video/ Fox 32 brings aboard Anita Blanton to co-anchor Good Day Chicago, but wait, Feder's saying just as part of a rotation and not as a permanent co-anchor? So just to get this right because I don't watch them on a regular basis, they haven't had a permanent co-anchor pairing to date? And they still won't even after hiring Anita?

Wow, that's a surprise out of left field. I see that they have already announced that Katie Garner and Kelly Costa will be the meteorologists based out of that location. Katie Garner has been with them in NYC since December, while Kelly Costa just joined them this past week from WWLP-TV in Springfield, MA. Kelly Costa announced on Twitter that she will be primarily based in Orlando, but she will be also flying to NYC as needed. I'm guessing that Katie Garner will be doing the same. I'm confused why they would even need additional fill-in help in NYC, considering that they already have Kiyana Lewis, Steve Bender, and Jane Minar available as fill-ins, plus they're already super overstaffed Monday-Wednesday because they have Craig, Amy, and John there in addition to everyone else that works Monday-Friday. The only thing I can hope is that the addition of the Orlando bureau means that they'll be adding an additional daily live show from there. I hope they're not planning on only using it on severe weather coverage days.

Between this and Al Michaels possibly leaving NBC, this could be the offseason where only CBS's top NFL broadcasting team remains intact. This would exceed even the 2002 offseason in the number of changes in the top broadcast teams.

I feel like any time I've glanced at Prime since the Gabby Petito case happened, Prime has only been showing missing persons or other true crime stories. Bear in mind, I only check for like 30 seconds every few weeks. Do they feature anything else on that show anymore?

Are all markets limited to the exact same hours of 10am-11am ET on weekdays and/or 10am-12pm ET weekends, or does each station have the ability to pick different hours to air?

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!