Spring Rubber

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.

Looks like they don't have a long-form program for the 8pm ET hour tonight. They're airing the automated maps from Night Light but with the music that's used during automated America's Weather Center. The program itself is unbranded without anything except the Fox Weather bug on the screen. Oh, and the sun is still realistically up on the west coast as it should be.

I really like the KABC opens best, while I prefer the KGO lowers.

Fox Weather states that due to the flooding event in South Carolina, they're doing an extra two hours of live coverage until 2pm ET under the Sky Dome branding. John Marshall and Kendall Smith are the hosts of these extra two hours.

Interesting...combo reporter and meteorologist hybrid role...trying to make the most of their personnel.

Woah, that comes as a shock...to have a host change only 8 days into the program. Did Danielle allude to continuing at Fox Weather in a different role, or are we kind of not sure right now?

I am surprised that they weren't able to get the graphics rolled out prior to November sweeps. Sounds like they're still planning to roll out the graphics prior to the new year for at least some stations...

Looks like the bios page on Fox Weather's site is incomplete. Marissa Torres is currently filling in for Danielle Gersh, but Marissa doesn't have a bio on the site. Found this when I Googled her name: https://www.mediamoves.com/2021/10/fox-weather-adds-marissa-torres-ahead-of-launch.html Wonder if they have any other on-air personalities that we don't know about...

See guys, we're in Times Square so much that we put a camera shot of it on our VIDEO WALL!

Ok, that makes a little more sense as far as splitting up time shifts somewhat more equally. I wonder if that pair will anchor any other shows later today. They're still doing automated weather maps/skyline views as of 12pm ET. I think they also eliminated the :15 and :45 live updates during these hours. I didn't see one at 12:15pm ET. EDIT: A live update aired at 12:45pm ET with Kendall Smith.

Nice that they put city personalization into these opens with the logos and players on various buildings. Pretty cool compared to some RSN opens of the past.

Oh, weird. I think I tuned in during the 12pm ET hour and saw FWW playing. Were they doing the thing there they were interspersing a couple hours of FWW during the nighttime hours? Because I also saw FWW at 3am ET, then Night Light again at 4am ET. Danielle Gersh is today's afternoon update meteorologist. Her update segment right now has been a bit longer - a bit closer to 2 minutes instead of 1 minute, which is nice. Obviously, she's one of their main weeknight meteorologists, so that does make me think that the people who appear on these weekend updates might still be doing their regular 5-day weekday shifts. Guess we'll find out this upcoming week.

So Night Light is still on the air at 1am ET on weekends, and to my surprise, they are still doing live weather updates at :15 and :45, tonight hosted by Kendall Smith. One thing I've observed tonight and earlier today with Stephen Morgan is that these weather updates are being controlled by the meteorologist with no involvement of a control room. The meteorologist has a touchscreen on their podium where they press buttons to go live, to put up lower thirds, to take the maps full screen, and to send the stream back into the automated programming. I guess it's similar to what local station meteorologists do when they go live with severe weather updates, just with slightly more advanced capabilities. That also explains why when they were going live Thursday afternoon with tornado warning updates, the lower thirds for "Fox Weather Alert" were not animated. I guess they were running on this more basic production platform that's being run by the on-camera meteorologist. Now, does it make sense to be doing these live updates overnight when there's not really anything going on? Probably not. The weather geek in me and fan of TWC's old 24/7 format still appreciates it, but I can't imagine that it makes sense to have an on-air personality there for 6 hours overnight just to go live for one minute every half half hour, then sit around until their next 1-minute segment in the next half hour. Seems like a scenario where you would either want the meteorologist to have longer live segments in order to do a fully-fleshed-out forecast, or simply ditch the overnight meteorologist all together unless severe weather merits having someone on standby. Especially when they're in a position where they have to enter into automation on weekday afternoons due to lack of staffing, it seems weird to be burning on-air staff on the overnights.

Interestingly, "Fox Weather Rewind: Aviation Disasters" was recorded in Fox News Studio J instead of inside the Fox Weather Studio W. I would wonder if perhaps the show may have been recorded prior to the completion of the Fox Weather studio.