Spring Rubber

Thank you for the heads-up. I knew something was up with why Early Morning was being kept with temporary hosts. This explains why... because they weren't quite ready to roll out the new format show, yet they were desperate to cut Carr from the staff. Ouch, that's brutal. I was not surprised when they cut weather out of the evenings, but to cut weather out of the mornings, that comes as a shock to me. My best estimation is more hours of content, but with continued significant turnover in personnel and in the schedule.

I was glad when Fox Weather Wild got canned, simply because it allowed the addition of another hour of live weather programming. I do agree that it should have been kept at least on a semi-regular basis, not as a nightly show. It was cool to see Kendall host the show today from Chicago, not because of severe weather, but because of really nice weather.

I'm looking at their YouTube content, and I'm seeing that after Mitch Carr was laid off, Early Morning has continued on Friday and Monday with Nick Smith hosting. If the plan is for Early Morning to be cancelled, maybe it's pending a retooling of the rest of their morning schedule, perhaps in the week(s) following Memorial Day?

Today, Fox News chief meteorologist Rick Reichmuth worked the 10am-2pm ET shift alongside Michael Estime. Overall, it's not clear what's happening with weekends. Ever since the start of May, Jane Minar has only appeared as a M-F fill-in, rather than on her normal Wed-Sun shift. As a result, all month long, they've been rolling with only 3 regular weekend mets. The first weekend of May, of course, is when Tom Wachs flew in to cover. The second weekend, Brigit Mahoney worked the weekend and then took the ensuing week off on vacation. And now, the third weekend, Rick Reichmuth from the Fox News side is covering. Also, the weekday schedules after 3pm ET remain bizarre, as well. Ever since early April, they seem to follow this general rule: - If there are a total of 5 mets available after 3pm ET, they run with the "normal" schedule: -- 3pm ET: Fox Weather Now with Ian Oliver -- 4pm-7pm ET: Fox Weather Across America with Brigit Mahoney and Stephen Morgan -- 7pm-10pm ET: Fox Weather Live with Steve Bender and Marissa Torres -If there are 4 or less mets available after 3pm ET, they run with a shortened schedule: -- 3pm-6pm ET: Fox Weather Now with 2 mets hosting (some combo of Ian, Brigit, and Stephen, or a fill-in if needed - whoever isn't off. For all intents and purposes, this show might as well be Across America, but they use the Fox Weather Now branding, and it's hosted from the main studio instead of the former Fox Business studio, like Across America normally would be.) -- 6pm-9pm ET: Fox Weather Live with Steve Bender and Marissa Torres With that second setup, live programming ends one hour early. It seems very annoying to have this inconsistent of a schedule, and believe me, the latter setup has been happening a LOT lately. As for Kelly Costa, she's been in NYC a lot more often lately. There's barely been any appearances of Kelly from Orlando as of late. Wonder if the Orlando operation is being phased out.

And now they've added a super tacky "News for All America" tagline on the screen not in one place, but in two places! Both taglines alternate with the channel logo and the show logo. The taglines seem to appear once every minute or so.

So turning into a 24/5 news network means cancelling your live 6am ET show...

With the way that the CNN bug and the lower third are now physically connected, I feel like it would look much better to have the CNN logo aligned with the lower third text. But yeah, without seeing where people's names and titles will be displayed, and how things will look when the lower third isn't up, it's hard to say for sure.

For the weekday 1pm-3pm ET block, they went with Keleigh Beeson the full week Monday-Friday, and it's Beeson on there again today. Zouves anchored her normal weekend evening shifts. Maybe they're going to be swapping the weekday 1pm-3pm ET anchors on a 2-week rotating basis. Zouves did her two weeks, and now Beeson is on her second week in that slot.

On Wednesday night, NewsNation aired a 2-hour edition of Cuomo from 8pm-10pm ET, to provide post-event coverage of the Trump Town Hall that aired on CNN. As a result, Dan Abrams Live was bumped from the schedule entirely that night. Banfield aired at its usual time immediately following Cuomo. I'm trying to remember... wasn't there at least one other time that Dan Abrams Live got bumped for an extended edition of Cuomo? Or maybe I'm thinking of the night that it was bumped for the Trump arraignment coverage that was co-hosted by Abrams, Cuomo, and Vargas... can't quite remember. Either way, for Dan to be entirely bumped from the schedule like that in the middle of the week on a busy news cycle, it makes me wonder if his show isn't long for the network. I've always personally felt like he launched the show at NewsNation mainly to keep a presence in the cable landscape while he jockeyed to bring Live PD (now On Patrol: Live) back on the air. I remember how the early days of the NewsNation show contained a lot of content favorable to the Live PD audience. Now that he's accomplished the return of that show, I feel like he's not going want to keep doing live TV six nights a week forever (Mon-Thu on NewsNation / Fri-Sat with On Patrol: Live [plus pre-recording the Friday NewsNation show in advance]), in addition to his daytime radio show and all of his business ventures. My personal take is that Dan will remain on NewsNation for now, but if the network comes across the opportunity to hire a super high-profile primetime host, I think Dan and the network would amicably part ways so that NewsNation can give the high-profile host a slot, while Dan can focus on the 1,000 other companies he either owns or works for.

Jennifer was gone from TWC freelancing like mid 2021 through early 2023 during her WSB-TV stint. Similarly, Julie Martin was gone from TWC freelancing for basically all of 2022 into early 2023 when she was doing a lot more work for Scripps News. She now says on her LinkedIn that she's a freelancer for both companies simultaneously. TWC's in a tough spot right now as both Molly McCollum and Colleen Coyle are on a near-simultaneous maternity leave (I believe Molly just went on leave this past week, while Colleen had her baby in mid-to-late April), so I suspect that we'll be seeing a lot more of Jennifer and Julie from now through July.

I don't understand NewsNation's scheduling, but Zouves anchored this entire weekend, meaning she worked 7 days straight Monday-Sunday. With that being said, that leads me to believe that it's going to be someone else in the 1pm-3pm ET slot on Monday and Tuesday this week. We'll see.

From what I've seen, WNYW has had no involvement with Fox Weather since its inception. I've never seen any of their meteorologists or reporters participate in Fox Weather in any way. WTXF in Philly is the only O&O in the northeast that has had any involvement in Fox Weather.

For the first time ever, an O&O met has been tasked with filling in on Fox Weather. Tom Wachs from Fox 6 Milwaukee has flown to New York, and they just announced on air that he will be filling in for Michael Estime this weekend Sat/Sun from 10am-2pm ET on Fox Weather Live.

Zouves did the full Monday-Friday shift again this week. Last weekend, Beeson introduced herself as "in for Natasha Zouves". Wonder how long that will keep happening if this arrangement remains in place.

On the air, Vivian would often talk about how 76º is the perfect temperature. To this day, I still associate that temperature with Vivian every single time I see a forecast of 76ºF.

Jeff recently came back in... I believe 2021 for the first time since his original departure. I haven't seen Vivian at all since she originally left.

Another thought is that maybe they purposely don't want to commit anyone to the 1pm-3pm block either because A) They're exploring poaching a big name talent, and adding them to the lineup would shake up the schedule (possibly forcing Behrle into the earlier timeslot), or B) They're contemplating launching a daytime talk/panel discussion show at some point, potentially at or around 1pm ET. I do hope they're able to add something more to the weekends before late 2024, but I don't know if they're still contractually obligated to air a certain amount of hours of Blue Bloods/Last Man Standing on the weekends still?

Zouves was given this full weekend off after anchoring 7 days in a row from Sat 4/22 through Fri 4/28. Keleigh Beeson filled in both Saturday and Sunday of this weekend. I'm guessing that during this upcoming week, we'll start to see the rotation of anchors on the 1pm-3pm ET block.

NewsNation ran with Natasha Zouves all five days this week, after she also anchored the prior weekend. I'm guessing they wanted a consistent anchor from 1pm-3pm ET for the first week of this new schedule. Maybe they'll give her this weekend off and then switch to her split weekend/weekday schedule next week. ...or maybe she'll just work 9 days in a row if they don't have anyone available to fill in this weekend, lol

I hope Micah recovers, as well. I know back surgery is always hit or miss... I could foresee Tom cutting out the nighttime newscasts and just keeping the 5pm and 6pm at some point.

With the move into the new DC studio this past Monday, On Balance got a new logo and graphics. Compared to The Hill, they use a smaller desk for On Balance that's intended for Leland and only one guest.

Oh wow, that's Brigit's first field assignment ever, IIRC. I wonder if this means they're gonna throw her out there in the raingear to report on it live tomorrow as the actual severe weather event happens.

Biggest surprise for the new schedule today is that the entire 10am-5pm ET block originates from the main studio, all with the anchors sitting in the exact same position up against the right-side video wall. I really thought that at least one of the shows would switch it up either by hosting from the newsroom or by hosting in the main studio, but from a different position, especially Behrle's show, but nope.

I see that leading up to the schedule change, the weekend Edition of NewsNation Prime has been moved back down into the main studio. (From checking YouTube clips, looks like this change happened April 8th.) The weekend show had previously been using the newsroom set ever since the weekday edition of Prime was discontinued.

There is a rather significant tornado outbreak tonight (worse than the SPC's 5% tornado outlook would have implied). I give TWC huge props for pre-empting the 8pm-10pm ET block of long form programming on the linear channel with nonstop live coverage, something they probably would not have done if they didn't already have Carl Parker and Todd Borek in the house for what was going to be the streaming-only show. But, you'll probably notice I said 8pm-10pm ET, right? Exactly, TWC dumped coverage and went back to long form at 10pm ET even though there were (and still are) multiple tornadoes on the ground. Over at Fox Weather, they did the exact same thing and dumped live coverage at 10pm ET (as is their regular schedule). I guess both networks equally agree that weather doesn't happen after 10pm ET, just like weather doesn't happen on weekends.