Spring Rubber

Oh, did Alicia already go on maternity leave? I haven't been following.

Makes sense that they're doing slow updates to keep the set fresh. It's such a tiny studio space that it's probably not worth doing anything entirely new. Plus, the existing set still looks modern.

Yep, he has filled in for Hoda several times. I also wonder how he's holding up lately. Sad, it's an end of an era. I always kinda felt like this was coming after Hoda got the main anchor role. Hoda & Kathy Lee was bound to come to an end sooner rather than later.

I guess it's just to be considerate to the weeknight team? I'm sure they would bring them in for major breaking news, but in the case of SNF, they must like to have several months' notice to bring them in.

Tonight, we saw the difference when the Bears are scheduled to be on SNF from the beginning of the year versus a flexed SNF appearance. The previous two Bears appearances on SNF were scheduled when the season started, so WMAQ had their weekday team on the Sunday night newscast after the game. Tonight's game was flexed to Sunday Night Football about 4 weeks ago. With such comparatively short notice, WMAQ did not have their weeknight crew tonight. However, with Michelle Relerford still on maternity leave, they did have Marion Brooks co-anchor tonight so that they wouldn't have a solo newscast like they've been doing on weekends for the past three months.

WGN added a 10pm newscast tonight for the blizzard coverage.

While WGN and WMAQ have Tom Skilling and Brant Miller in tonight, WLS is using Tracy Butler and Phil Schwarz together on team coverage. I'm kinda surprised, since I figured they'd definitely want Tracy there tomorrow morning, as the blizzard will be continuing through the morning commute. I wonder if Tracy will also appear on the 10pm tonight or if she'll go home after this newscast and come back in the morning.

Am I missing out on something in that Instagram post?

I just found out that Alicia Roman is pregnant and due in February. She made it public in August, but I haven't been watching the station much as of late. [MEDIA=twitter]1034214347474497536[/MEDIA] I'm sure Pete Sack will cover weekend evenings, but I'm curious how they'll cover the weekday Monday and Tuesday 11am shifts since Pete is usually working his teaching job. Maybe move Kalee to Monday-Friday and try to get Pete to cover all weekend morning and evening shifts? Maybe find a freelancer to cover gaps as needed? Maybe get Andy to stay later on Mondays and Tuesdays so that Kalee can just stay on her normal shift?

Part-timer at WLS = Everyone in Chicago knows who you are Full-timer at WBBM = No one in Chicago knows who you are

Also, in an apparent surprise move, Chris Berman returned to SportsCenter yesterday evening with his traditional "The Blitz" segment featuring the day's NFL highlights. Looks like ESPN decided to not announce it ahead of time. Back in September, we were told that Berman was only being brought back for 5 short pre-recorded Friday segments throughout the NFL season and that there was no agreement in place for him to do highlights. New ESPN management is now working with him to try to get him to work select Sundays throughout NFL season. He's already got personal plans in place most Sundays, but ESPN hopes to bring him back for about 25% of the Sundays this season. https://nypost.com/2018/08/20/the-head-of-espn-is-behind-chris-bermans-tricky-return/ I know Berman has his detractors, but man, did I miss his unique style of reading the highlights this past year and a half.

Demetrius always did the 4-6am and 11am-1pm newscasts from 2015-2017, right? That's gotta be an annoying shift. He probably had to come to work at 2am or earlier and didn't get to leave until after 1pm...all for just 4 total hours of airtime.

The entire midday crew is out today. Patrick Elwood and Amy Rutledge are anchoring with Morgan doing weather. Weird seeing an entire crew being out on a perfectly standard weekday in October.

Prior to 2006, the Cup Series was the only thing that got customized number treatments on any networks. Every lower NASCAR series as well as all racing from other sanctioning bodies got generic number treatments.

Yep, that actually looks proper. NBA might be their nicest current package. Far better than the abomination that is the Monday Night Football package.

Well, that's certainly a surprise. Didn't see that one coming.

What the heck? They don't have anyone else available in a pinch?

So it sounds like there's not going to be any daily highlights or general sports news shows on the network going forward - only specialized shows for each individual team. Plus, there's rumors that the entire network might end October 1st next year when the Cubs leave, and the rest of the teams' contracts end. This all feels like the beginning of the end of NBC Sports Chicago.

Instead of doing a news update during the late halftime show, WFLD carried the second segment of the Visa halftime report and then did a brief local segment with the Bears Gameday Live crew during the ensuing commercial break. Does anybody remember if WFLD did a news update during the week 1 late halftime show?

Aww, that's a shame. I liked seeing the rain out snow when it actually rained or snowed.

I haven't watched too many WMAQ newscasts lately since I no longer work at a place that has it on their TV 24/7, but last week, I noticed that instead of live camera views on their video wall, they've been using stock photos of the skyline. Is this standard now, and how long has it been going on?

I wonder if WGN is still planning on doing a late Saturday newscast with the late start to tonight's Cubs game. Edit: Yes, they do. They just advertised it during the game broadcast.

Yeah, I feel like WMAQ is not very strong with branding their personnel to specific newscasts. It's like after Stephan Holt left, they were in no rush to officially name a replacement and were perfectly fine with advertising their morning news with just Zoraida, Andy, and Kye.

Tornado Warning in McHenry right now. WLS was the only local station prepared to go live here on this holiday afternoon with Larry Mowry. Everyone else is in normal programming. Edit: I think he might be upstairs in the weather center. His mic sounds like he's not in the studio itself. Edit 2: WMAQ and WBBM started their coverage about 10 minutes after WLS. WGN and WFLD are deeply engulfed in sports and are staying with sports programming.

I saw the ad this past Sunday, but I had no idea that it was new, so I didn't say anything.