Spring Rubber

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 So now you've got this awkward situation where the outdated forecast bar is displayed on anything that they choose to rerun at a later date - be it reruns of Fox Weather Wild or any clips of their severe weather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.

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.