Spring Rubber

Looks like another weekend schedule change: As of apparently yesterday 9/9, both weekend morning shows have been reduced to three hours each, and a pre-recorded weather show hosted by Haley Meier (in the same format and production style as the weekday Kelly Costa overnight show) has been added, starting at 12pm ET. After three weeks of them running a super modified weekend schedule due to hurricane coverage, it appears that the 4-host format of Fox Weather Live, previously seen on August 12th, is here to stay. The current weekend schedule as of 9/9/23 is: 6am-9am ET: Fox Weather First Weekend with Craig Herrera and Kiyana Lewis 9am-12pm ET: Fox Weather Live with Michael Estime, Jane Minar, Bob Van Dillen, and Rick Reichmuth 12pm-8pm ET: Untitled Fox Weather show with Haley Meier (same 30-min pre-recorded format as the weekday Kelly Costa show) 8pm-2am ET: Long form programming 2am-4am ET: Night Light 4am-6am ET: Long form programming (runs until only 5am ET on Monday mornings since the weekday edition of Fox Weather First starts at that time) On a side note, since we didn't discuss this earlier, I will say that Fox Weather poured a lot more hours into Hurricane Idalia coverage compared to Hurricane Hilary, since Idalia was well-anticipated as a storm that would make US landfall as a major hurricane. I believe Fox Weather outpaced TWC in hours of coverage during the weekend and the weekday overnights leading up to landfall, and they far outpaced TWC in the number of hours of primetime, overnight, weekend coverage during the aftermath of the storm. After the storm's August 30th landfall, Fox Weather showed coverage of the aftermath nonstop all day throughout the rest of the week and the entire weekend, not returning to a regular schedule until Labor Day. To be clear, not all hours of aftermath coverage or pre-storm weekend coverage were fully live, but at least it wasn't the standard faire of long form that TWC was airing during the overnight hours as soon as two days before landfall and during primetime as soon as two days after landfall.

The look definitely gives off those simplistic vibes of the ABC MNF days. I would say that a completely revamped graphics package is long overdue this year. Seems like the perfect time to roll out a new, simple look.

The choice of light blue and purple in the title bars kind of hearkins back to the late 2000s - early 2010s-era graphics. You know, these... Wonder if the entire on-air look will go back to this color scheme again.

Just noticed with the Idalia coverage that TWC has switched to Carhartt for their field-reporting gear. Apparently this change went into effect May 2, 2023 with the network's 41st anniversary. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-weather-channel-television-network-and-carhartt-announce-new-apparel-partnership-introducing-a-fresh-look-for-the-networks-meteorologists-301813055.html This is the biggest change to date, because gone are the blue raingear outfits previously offered by Lands End, and before them L.L. Bean and Columbia. With the new Carhartt deal, the raingear worn by the field meteorologists is all-black, and during clear conditions, the field mets wear gray Carhartt work shirts. Looks like with this deal, the color scheme is more on-brand with Carhartt itself, rather than TWC. The TWC logo is still featured on all apparel, just the colors are more in-line with Carhartt's typical offerings.

Not a fan of this style of graphics. Just looks ridiculous to me.

Haley Meier is hosting her first regularly-scheduled show today on Fox Weather Live alongside Michael Estime. Michael gave her a warm welcome to the desk at the top of the hour. For someone who is fresh out of college, she's pretty good at this. If I hadn't read up on her background, I never would have known that she wasn't a broadcast veteran coming from another station.

So apparently Fox Weather leaves the "hype level" up to the producers of a given show, rather than it being a network-wide decision. As you may know, there's currently a tropical invest located off the Yucatan peninsula that has a high chance of development into a tropical storm/hurricane that could enter the Gulf of Mexico and impact the US mainland around the middle of next week. Today, despite this just being a disturbance in its early stages, and not even a Tropical Depression yet, the 6am-9am ET edition of Fox Weather First turned all of the studio lights red and replaced all Fox Weather First graphics with the network's tropical graphics. Every other show so far today, including the solo-hosted 5am ET hour of Fox Weather First, Weather Command, and America's Weather Center, were all produced using each show's normal graphics, and normal studio lighting colors. Surprised that this type of decision is left up to each show's producers and isn't made at a network-wide level.

It's been such a pain for the last 7 years that The Weather Channel brand is used by two separate companies. While the TV network technically has its own website, they almost never refer to it because they know people will inadvertently go to IBM's TWC website instead. I kinda wish the tech assets and the TV network could get sold to the same owner and unified again.

Looks like even today on Sunday afternoon as Hilary has made landfall, Fox Weather went into "prerecorded loop" weather programming with no live radar, no live warning info, etc. Looks to me that just like yesterday, they're only planning to do live updates about every 3 hours when a new advisory is released. I feel like we're witnessing the downfall of Fox Weather. If they can't even stay live for a once-in-a-lifetime weather event, just because it happened to occur on a weekend, they're toast.

Haley Meier made her studio debut tonight, solo-hosting the extended coverage of Hilary from 11pm ET onward. (Jane Minar solo-hosted the entire block from 2pm-11pm ET, mostly pre-recorded it seemed, but she kept returning occasionally for live updates, particularly near the times that new advisories were released. Seems like Haley's shift will be structured the same way.)

On a national level, TWC went to long-form at 1pm ET. They're scheduled to be back live from 5pm-1am ET, long form from 1am-5am ET, and then round-the-clock coverage begins starting Sunday at 5am ET. Fox Weather started a pre-recorded loop at 2pm ET solo-hosted by Jane Minar. They just went live with an update at around 4:50pm ET when the latest advisory came out. Unclear if they're planning any other fully-live programming throughout the later part of the day.

America's Weather Center is fully live today because Hurricane Hilary is expected to make a rare impact to the southwestern US. The past two days, a little bit of role reversal has taken place, as Jane has been the host, and Kendall has been the sidekick. She's also generally been the sidekick on Fox Weather Now most days since Brigit's departure. Seems like they're trying to move Kendall into Brigit's old slot while still keeping her involved with America's Weather Center as well.

You're right. It doesn't make sense for the live tag to be rounded on the left and squared off on the right. It actually looks really out of place. Looking at the screenshots from day 1 of the show, it looks like the full show title was all listed on a single line before.

Looks on this weekend morning/early afternoon, Fox Weather Live is taking after the weekday program by the same name: more people, less live... I started watching during the 12pm ET hour, and the show was already sans "LIVE" tag on the bug. Unsure if they just did a single live hour at 10am ET or if they also did the 11am hour live. Either way, the hours of live programming just keep eroding more and more by the week.

Curious to see if she returns to Weekend Recharge and if Lynette remains on that show as well.

Due to today's severe weather outbreak, America's Weather Center is fully-live today for all 3 hours. Bob Van Dillen is joining Kendall today; however, they're not being billed as co-hosts. Instead, Kendall is the sole "host", and she tosses to Bob occasionally for updates. She's at the desk, while he's standing at the video screen. Looks like the "one host" ideology of Weather Command and Fox Weather Now has rubbed off on America's Weather Center. That leaves Fox Weather First and Fox Weather Live as the only weekday shows that still have actual co-hosts.

I believe this is only featured during the extra time on weekend mornings when Fox Business is still in break, beyond the normal time that the stream would be in break. AFAIK, the standard stream breaks still use just the countdown clock (on streaming devices) or the "Download the Fox Weather App" slate if watching on their website.

On weekend mornings during the hours that there's a Fox Business simulcast, Fox Weather First Weekend always takes longer breaks than normal Fox Weather programming in order to account for the longer breaks that take place on cable. To date, on the streaming side, Fox Weather always filled this extra break time with a musical interlude featuring live camera shots from cities around the country. Looks like this weekend, they've finally decided to change it up and air actual weather information during the musical interludes, which is way more useful than the live camera shots.

The discussion desk grew to 4 people tonight with Rick Reichmuth joining the fray. (Yet we still can't have fully-live programming from 12pm-3pm ET anymore...)

Dang, that's unfortunate. I never liked the way they postured Ian as the host of the show and Brigit as the "second fiddle". Didn't seem fair to take Brigit out of a host role and move her into that type of position. I wonder if that had anything to do with her departure.

Nick is back on the show for discussion segments tonight, so I guess maybe it's just "whenever Nick's around" rather than any particular night.

Looks like the Nick Kosir discussion segments might be on Monday nights only. Didn't see him on there Tuesday-Friday last week, but he's back in studio tonight for the discussion segments.

I don't think we've discussed this, or at least, if we did, I certainly missed it... Haley Meier officially joined Fox Weather as a full-time meteorologist/multi-media journalist, effective July 24th. https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/fox-weather-names-haley-meier-as-full-time-meteorologist-and-multi-media-journalist/531034/ She was the inaugural recipient of the Fox Weather scholarship program in partnership with Mississippi State University. As part of that program, she appeared occasionally on Fox Weather this past spring, reporting on severe weather events in the southern US. Now that she has graduated, she is taking a full-time position with Fox Weather. Her official bio refers to her as "on-air meteorologist" https://www.foxweather.com/person/m/haley-meier I guess we'll see if she appears primarily in the field, primarily in studio, or both. Kinda makes it sound like both.

I saw that they were indeed live during that timeslot today due to severe weather. When I tuned in during the 2pm ET hour, it was Kiyana solo. No idea if someone else hosted the earlier hours or if Kiyana was solo the entire time.

As of today, Kendall was on the pre-recorded America's Weather Center while Michael was off. It seems like on the days they're both present, one of them gets assigned to America's Weather Center while the other one of them gets assigned to fill-in on any other random show on a given day.