Spring Rubber

Fox Weather is going in-depth on the two tornado warnings in Texas right now. They're pre-empting all commercial breaks and focusing on both of these tornado warnings nonstop, instead of deviating to less-urgent topics. Update 8:41am CT - they are currently simulcasting KRIV's coverage of the tornado warning in Harris County, TX. Presumabily to give the Fox Weather crew a quick break. 8:42am CT - back to the Fox Weather studio.

Glad to hear that. Something that TWC would never do these days. I didn't have the energy to stay up any later to find out, so thanks for watching and letting us know. Was it Jane the entire night, or did they switch it up at some point?

Night Light began at 12am ET. At the end of the previous shift, they said to stay with Jane Minar overnight for more information, so I'm not sure if they mean that Jane will only break in if there's tornado warnings issued or what the plan is. Jane's already been live for like 5 hours already, so I don't see her being around for much longer if that's the case. TWC also ended their live coverage at 12am ET, so I guess it's the race to...be the same. Update: Jane did a quick scheduled 1-minute segment at 12:15am ET, then back to Night Light. So maybe updates at :15 and :45 or something like that...

Indeed, isn't it lovely? How much you want to bet they spend another few years in rotation mode now.

So they've revealed another on-camera area that's being used on these "small studio" shows. Also, with this segment, we saw the introduction of Jane Minar working in this additional space. Unfortunately, the segment was a total disaster, as the maps on the screen were unable to advance. Jane also asked for help in advancing the maps, but to no avail. They bailed out of this segment very quickly, as Jane tossed it back to Ian at the desk to continue to the next topic.

They're using Steve Bender as the third meteorologist on this show, in place of Kendall Smith, who was on at this time yesterday. Kendall was used as a correspondent this morning on the AM shows, reporting on the Nor'easter live from Fox Square, outside their studio. So basically swapping both of their on-air roles between correspondent and in-studio meteorologist.

Interesting, so Steve Bender is only listed on their website as a field correspondent, but here they are using him as an in-studio meteorologist today. Wonder if other field correspondents will also be used in-studio throughout the week/on weekends?

Despite America's Weather Center's first day of coverage originating from the main studio, their second day of coverage is originating from the same "secondary" location where yesterday's edition of America's Weather Tonight originated. I wonder if going forward, the main studio will be reserved only for their "big" shows of Fox Weather Sunrise, Fox Weather Skydome, America's Weather Now, and Fox Weather Wild? I wonder where in the building this secondary studio is. They never seem to do any wideshots in here based on the way last night's coverage west, so I can only assume that this is a pretty tiny setup with probably nothing more than one anchor desk and one stand-up monitor. Some pics of this secondary studio: They are using a chroma key wall on this setup as well... And, uh... nice overhead lights?

Redder than ever... And they have also added a box in the lower right corner advertising their all-night coverage, just like TWC.

Weird, and they just as quickly backed off of it and went back to normal. I think they're definitely toying around with "how RED to we want to go right now?"

The intro graphics used at the top of the hour:

Market competition did not take long to put TWC into action. TWC just announced that they will be live "all evening long" with severe weather coverage tonight. When they say this, that typically means going until 12am or 1am ET. Of note, they are doing this tonight with an Enhanced Risk area and only a 5% tornado probability. In recent years, TWC has only extended their coverage in cases of Moderate Risk 15% tornado probability, and to-date in 2021, they seem to have raised the standard to High Risk and 30% tornado probability, as there were several 15 % Moderate Risk tornado days in 2021 that TWC completely blew off and ended coverage at the usual time. They only did extended severe coverage on March 17th and March 25th this year, both High Risk days. This is clearly a case where they feel the need to stand up to Fox Weather in their 2nd day on the air, trying to win the severe weather coverage game tonight. Will be curious to see how Fox Weather responds after 10pm ET if TWC stays live later than that. EDIT: I just realized they're doing this because of the Nor'Easter instead of because of the severe weather in the plains. That makes a lot more sense. Modern TWC only cares about bad weather in the northeast and the tropics and basically disregards every horrible event that impacts the rest of the country. So this is actually right in line with modern TWC standards. Now I'm actually curious if both networks will blow off the severe weather in the plains and just focus all resources on the Nor'Easter coverage instead. I just tuned into Fox Weather, and they're already in all-red graphics mode "FOX Weather ALERT" for the Nor'Easter coverage.

Looks like Fox Weather Wild repeats at 10pm ET, and it's an exact repeat of the 9pm ET hour, including the severe weather warnings from last hour and everything. That's a pretty bad idea. Wonder if they're just going to repeat this hour over and over again until 1am ET.

Yeah, it reminds me of a newsmagazine live show. Like the Access Hollywood of weather, but with live weather coverage inserted at the start of certain segments.

Not sure if anyone has been watching America's Weather Tonight, but I noticed that this show seems to be in a different location. Not sure if they're just in a small corner of the same studio or if they're in a separate, smaller studio.

Interestingly, with the exception of the addition of the Phoenix station, the other stations used were the same ones as this morning. Wonder if we'll see some other cities produce these segments each different day of the week.

America's Weather Now began as-listed at 5PM ET. Craig Herrera and Amy Freeze were done with their shift at the end of America's Weather Center and were replaced by Nick Kosir and Danielle Gersh for this show, but oddly enough, Kendall Smith, who was the "third wheel" on the previous 5-hour edition of America's Weather Center, continues to appear on this hour of America's Weather Now. I'm wondering if she will finish out this hour and then be replaced by a different third wheel on the next hour. Seems like every show has two main anchors and then a third meteorologist who doesn't sit at the anchor desk. Also, seems like they're a lot more willing to break the fourth wall with some of the camera shots being used during this program... EDIT: I just wanted to add one more thought... From adding up the number of meteorologists listed on their personalities page, there are only enough of them to fill the weekday programming schedule if they continue having three meteorologists on every shift. The only way they could possibly be live on weekends is if they stop doing this "third meteorologist" thing after launch day and instead use these extra meteorologists in solo shifts on the weekends instead. I'm starting to wonder if they actually don't intend to be live on the weekends at all...

Interesting that it's been the same O&O loop that's been playing since 6AM ET. The fact that this loop begins by saying "Good morning" in the 12PM hour makes it juuusssst a bit stale now.

The stream works fine for me in Chrome. Would you happen to have any add-ons that might be blocking it?

Just came here to say this. Funny that they didn't even get their own programming schedule right in their on-screen ads. I wonder if other dayparts won't match up, either. I love the unoriginal programming name. The Weather Channel's two daytime shows are "America's Morning Headquarters" and "Weather Center Live", so Fox's answer is to create a show called "America's Weather Center".

Apparently they even have a physical cardboard cutout of this mascot as well. Courtesy: Bloomberg - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/fox-weather-launches-in-challenge-to-weather-channel

Interesting, so according to this, they are going to be live with just this team for six hours straight. If they are indeed truly live for the whole time and don't do any type of pre-records, then wow, that's quite a long time for any continuous broadcast, especially when their commercial breaks are only two minutes, and the frequency of said breaks is not very often at all. I don't think I know of any live program, national or local, that does a continuous 6-hour broadcast with the same on-air team. That's a lot of talking!

Courtesy of their on-screen promo graphics in the bottom right corner, here's the programming schedule... Interesting to see that Sky Dome is such a long program compared to all of the other programs. Makes me think that maybe the Sky Dome portion of the schedule will be a mix of live and pre-recorded programming to fill that midday chunk of the schedule. I wonder what "Fox Weather Wild" is...if it's just a fancy Fox branding for a live program or if it's some time of long form program that showcases wild weather, akin to TWC's primetime programming? I'm going to guess Night Light will be a live-to-tape style program that recycles hourly from 1AM-5AM, much like the old days of TWC's pre-recorded overnight hours. Since these programs are all advertised as weekday-only. I wonder how much, if any, live weekend programming they'll have. I speculate we might have to wait until this upcoming Saturday to find out. I hope they don't largely ditch weekends the same way that TWC does these days.

Yeah, even TWC in its heyday didn't do live programming overnight. The old days when TWC was all weather, all the time; they would be fully live from 5AM ET - 3AM ET, and then they'd repeat the 2AM hour at 3AM and 4AM before going back live at 5AM. I wouldn't quite expect Fox Weather to do that many hours live, as I don't believe the demand for live programming that late at night exists anymore. It will be interesting to see how they handle severe weather that goes past their normal live hours, and honestly, just to see how they handle severe weather in general, even during their normal live hours. The good thing is that we won't have to wait very long, as there is severe weather in the forecast Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week, with the Tuesday severe weather looking the worst of the bunch. One of the huge flaws with modern TWC is that as the years go on, they disregard more and more severe weather that occurs outside of their normal live hours. It has gotten so bad that TWC basically doesn't even have the staff available to continue coverage later in the day even if conditions merit doing so. The SPC basically has to issue a High Risk area these days to even get the TWC execs to think about approving additional live hours. Even on days that the SPC issues a Moderate Risk lately, TWC still ends programming at 8pm ET on Weekdays and 1pm ET on weekends regardless of how bad the actual weather is. I would like to see Fox Weather put in some serious, in-depth coverage during TWC's off-hours and force some competition in covering severe weather.

Oh shoot, didn't realize they were going live this early in the morning. I just tuned in. Have they announced what their live stream hours will be? Are they planning on being live 24/7, or are there going to be certain dayparts where they recycle repeat programming?