Spring Rubber

I noticed over the past several weeks that for the solo-hosted shows that originate from the small studio (America's Weather Center and Fox Weather @ Night), they now roll in a monitor behind the host, which displays a background similar to the stand-up desk's background in Studio W. Previously, the hosts of these shows had the small studio's natural background behind them.

They did a simulcast for Hurricane Ian in 2022. I believe it will take a major hurricane of catastrophic impact for that to happen again.

This tells me that he already has inside info that TNT won't be retaining any sort of NBA contact. I'm sure that will be revealed shortly after the NBA Finals end, and then TNT will gear up for its farewell season.

Looks like Fox Weather was surprisingly overstaffed today. Kendall Smith joined Britta and Craig on Fox Weather First today. Can't remember the last time that show has featured three meteorologists before today.

This is now the third iteration of that headline intro graphic (it was originally used on AMHQ last decade before making it to Weather Underground a few years ago). The good news is, the purple background behind the headline text looks a lot more readable than the background on the previous Weather Underground graphic.

I have no idea what's happening with weekends anymore. Fox Weather First was hosted by Michael Estime and Kendall Smith today. As for Fox Weather Live... it's Stephen Morgan and Kathy Orr. (Stephen was given Monday-Wednesday of this past week off to compensate) Both Craig Herrera and Bob Van Dillen worked Monday-Friday this past week. Craig did 4 days on Fox Weather First and 1 day of Weather Command. Bob did America's Weather Center the entire week. It's possible that they might be giving America's Weather Center to Bob. I noticed that on the Thursday edition of the show, they did a segment called "Bob's Bet," which was a trivia question at the end of the show between himself and the guest he was speaking to, with the stipulation that "Closest answer chooses tomorrow's music." This seems like something that you would expect to see if they're trying to shape the show around Bob. As always, I won't hold my breath. We'll see what happens in future weeks.

Looks like nothing's permanent for Fox Weather First. Michael Estime is alongside Britta this morning, and Craig Herrera is going to be on Weather Command instead. It was the exact opposite yesterday. The afternoon America's Weather Center shift is indeed just a rotating cast of meteorologists, with Michael Estime or Bob Van Dillen most common during the early half of the week, and Jane Minar being most common in the second half of the week. Others pitch in as needed. Steve Bender is still the host of Fox Weather Live from 6pm-9pm ET with Kiyana Lewis being a contributing meteorologist to the show.

Couple observations from the weekend and today... Apparently there was a scheduled edition of Fox Weather @Night with Haley Meier last night on Sunday night. I'm wondering if this show might be turning into a Sunday-Thursday night "get you ready for your next workday" type of show. This would make sense if true. Craig Herrera did not appear over the weekend; however, he's on Fox Weather First with Britta this morning on a Monday, which always used to be his day off. Is he possibly going to take weekday mornings on a regular basis? Michel Estimate seems to have worked a dual shift between Fox Weather First and Fox Weather Live on both Saturday and Sunday. Surely that can't be the long-term plan for weekends, right?

Since the NYC weekday edition of NewsNation Now debuted last year, they kept this strange dichotomy where the Chicago edition with Nichole Berle features a logo with white text on a blue background, while the NYC edition with Connell McShane features a logo with blue text on a white background. I figured they might go for a unified look on the weekends, but nope. The NYC edition hosted by Anna Kooiman uses the blue text w/white background logo, while the brand-new Chicago edition hosted by Adrienne Bankert uses the white text on blue background logo, despite the fact that the NYC/Chicago timeslots are reversed on weekends. Looks like it's the originating city, and not the timeslot, that determines the logo.

Looks like the first public announcements of Any's original hiring at Fox Weather were around October 6, 2021. Jason's hiring was announced much earlier on June 24, 2021. Thinking that means his bio might get removed very soon.

With the tornado warning in Lake County right now, WMAQ stood alone as the only one in the market to not break in with live coverage, due to carrying the closing laps of the Indy 500. The thing that surprised me is that there was a good 5-minute span where they weren't even airing a warning crawl on the screen when the tornado warning first was issued. Looks like they got the crawl working now; however.

Oh wow, didn't realize she was Chris Warren's wife. This makes 4 Jen/Jennifers on air for TWC. One full-time (Carfagno) and three freelanceers (Gray, Lopez, and Watson).

Uhh, when did the weekend early afternoon slots switch to all news programming? I don't see anything about that, but apparently that happened sometime in the past?

I honestly thought she was going to step away from weather altogether and become a political commentator.

Based on what was written about Freeze, that makes total sense if true. As for Frazer, not sure about that one. I'm kinda shocked.

Is there a link with the details of the new lineup?

Thank you for this update. I would have had no idea this was happening and definitely would have been surprised by it tomorrow.

Wow, looks like even for an SPC High Risk day and at least 7 active tornado warnings. TWC isn't going to do full overnight coverage. Todd Borek came in and did coverage from like 1am-1:30am ET, but right now, they're back to long-form. Their competitors at Fox Weather are no better. They dropped live coverage at 12am ET. They're just running automated weather maps ever since. Guess the days of overnight tornado coverage are over, across the board. Only hurricanes will keep the networks up all night from now on.

Yeah, Jim is absolutely the only pre-1995 on-air talent who is protected from layoffs. Pretty much everyone else from that pre-1995 era has been laid off sometime during the NBC era or the Allen Media era from 2008-Present.

Truly sad to see one of the longest tenured on-air staffers go, and I feel for all of the folks behind the scenes that lost their jobs today, on the 42nd anniversary of the network, no less.

Hi, I just found out that this website is back online. Yeah, I've noticed that Amy hasn't been around. There have been no mentions of her on the air. I noticed on her Instagram that she recently posted an old pic of herself in the Fox Weather studio from last hurricane season, while talking about the upcoming hurricane season in her message. However, nowhere in the text of her message did she mention Fox Weather. At the end of the day, I don't know what to make of it. This is the type of stuff you usually see when a network is just letting someone's contract run out, without ever having the intention of bringing them back on the air.

I know, I almost don't recognize her without them, lol.

Looks like this is probably an effect of IBM selling The Weather Company to private equity. Looks like the deal closed on Feb 1st, and just like that, the digital mets were gone after only one month. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240201709190/en/Francisco-Partners-Completes-Acquisition-of-The-Weather-Company It's a shame for everyone who lost their job in this process.

Steve Bender is back this week. It appears that Fox Weather Live has been reformatted around Steve as the host, with Kiyana as a contributing meteorologist on the show. It appears that the show has been moved permanently back to Studio W with a ton of walk-and-talk segments similar to Ian Oliver's show. In fact, Kiyana was the contributing meteorologist to both Ian and Steve's shows today. Kendall has remained on Fox Weather First Weekend for the past 4 weekends and has appeared on Weather Command Mon/Tue (and select Wednesdays) alongside her former co-anchor Stephen Morgan for multiple weeks now. Amy started the month on vacation and then went to SXSW on behalf of Fox Weather last week. I'm assuming she'll be back pretty soon. I guess we'll see where Kendall, Marissa, and Kiyana will appear once Amy returns.

Marissa Torres is back from maternity leave today, but interestingly, she's on Weather Command and not Fox Weather Live. This makes me wonder if the fact that Kiyana has been "filling in" on Fox Weather Live Mon-Fri for the past several weeks is actually part of a permanent change.