Spring Rubber

Yeah, looks like Bryon had planned time off. He's been gone since Tuesday.

WMAQ outlasted everyone with the severe weather coverage, staying on the air until 12:10 A.M. They were in a shootout with WLS for who would end first, with WLS wrapping up 5 minutes earlier at 12:05 A.M. WGN wrapped up at 11 P.M. WFLD wrapped up at 10:45-ish WBBM ended at the usual 10:34 P.M. because they needed time to re-air the entire CBS primetime lineup with the season premiere of Big Brother. WMAQ was a little short-handed tonight with no Byron Miranda, no Alicia Roman, and no Rob Stafford. They had Dick and Allison anchoring, with Brant and Pete doing the weather. Since Byron was off today, they had Trina Orlando on the road in Storm Chaser 5. I was a little disappointed to see no Byron today. I hope this was just scheduled time off rather than a sign of things to come. I enjoy his style; in fact, seeing him on the 11 A.M. news while at work is a highlight of my day.

WGN waited for Rich to retire to bring back the talent opens. They just aired a brand new 10pm talent open with Lauren Magiera. Did the 10pm ever even have a talent open since day one? I never remember seeing them.

Oh, they have Dan and Rich there tonight. Dan did the 9pm report, and Rich is gonna do the 10pm report. That's certainly "different"...

So wait, is Rich not actually present tonight?

Wow, I was amazed to see that, too! I'm glad they got the whole team together tonight.

Based on the teaser, it looks like it's gonna be Demetrius doing the weather rather than Jim. That's a shame that the entire crew won't be together. I started watching WGN in 1995 when I was 5 years old. Little did I know at the time that it was the first year of that weekend news team. It's been nice of WGN to keep them together for so many years.

Looks like WMAQ eliminated the standard closing to the 5pm news in favor of a full-screen teaser for NBC Nightly News and the NBC 5 News at 6. The WMAQ anchors talk about what's coming up next on Nightly News and on the NBC 5 News at 6 before tossing directly into Nightly News with no actual closing to the newscast.

They used one during the 4 AM hour of the morning news on Memorial Day. I think they maybe still use them on weekends, too? Not completely sure.

Did WGN drop the weekday 9pm talent open? Haven't seen it in a long time.

Does Pete currently work full-time behind the scenes, or is he just part-time or per diem?

A couple parts of it look cool, namely the cold front with the transparent effect, but the rest of it looks clunky and silly. It looks like Larry is being overtaken by the graphics surrounding him.

Any chance they give the 4 PM to Byron Miranda and have Brant start at 5? Always seemed weird to me that Byron is only on the air for an hour every day except for when Brant is off.

Something seems a little different in the Weather Center...

In one last hurrah, Troy is filling in for Phil tonight.

Aw man, I'm gonna miss Stefan. All the best to him in New York.

Looks like they're not going to debut anything in time for February sweeps, so... maybe they'll have something for May sweeps?

I guess I'm not surprised. I never really realized that he was coming up on his retirement, but I guess I should've been it coming.

So when's he starting on-air officially? The week after this?

Don't even remind me of the slew of political ads we're gonna see over the next 10.5 months. I'm dreading it.

ABC7 has now gone so far as to do tag-team meteorologists on a Saturday morning. They've got Cheryl working alongside Troy right now.

At least a hyped Tom Skilling is always fun to watch.

Oh, and this isn't specific to the 10 pm news per se, but as of about a week ago, they stopped having the sports anchor stand up at the desk. They're now seated at the desk, squeezed in between the anchor and the round "table" at the edge of the desk. Might as well eliminate that round "table" thing on the desk. I guess it's not used for anything anymore. And wow, that was a very rushed and disjointed close to the newscast.

lol, I'm on the floor right now.

Yeah, I don't understand their strategy. Why not just extend the 9 pm newscast to 10:00 on the dot (instead of 9:57) and start there with the actual top stories?