The Weather Channel

[HSV cheesehead 99]

I wonder if they are going to invest more in their augmented reality sets/improve on them with these renovations to the main studio. Speaking of which, are any parts of their AR sets physically real?

[Spring Rubber 705]

9 hours ago, HSV cheesehead said:

I wonder if they are going to invest more in their augmented reality sets/improve on them with these renovations to the main studio. Speaking of which, are any parts of their AR sets physically real?

It's just one big green screen room, essentially. There's no physical elements used, at least not in any of the live stuff.

[TennTV1983 804]

11 hours ago, HSV cheesehead said:

I wonder if they are going to invest more in their augmented reality sets/improve on them with these renovations to the main studio. Speaking of which, are any parts of their AR sets physically real?

 

Half of The Weather Channel's main studio is hard set while the rest is a massive chroma key area for their Immersive Mixed Reality (IMR) segments. There are no physical elements over in the chroma area as everything on screen is computer-generated.

Edited December 7, 2023 by TennTV1983

[Georgie56 3307]

The digital meteorologists have been laid off (the TV mets are staying).

 

 

 

[Spring Rubber 705]

19 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

The digital meteorologists have been laid off (the TV mets are staying).

 

 

 

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.

[walsh.ryanmj 0]

On 3/25/2024 at 2:20 PM, Spring Rubber said:

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.

Damn shame. I'm amazed at how people do this too - just stand in the middle of a bunch of green and they're able to maneuver the screen and all the apps and coherently give a forecast. Maybe we'll all get used to it with AR in the future

 

[Georgie56 3307]

More layoffs, among them long-runner Mike Seidel.

[Spring Rubber 705]

2 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

More layoffs, among them long-runner Mike Seidel.

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.

[Newsjunkie24 506]

It stinks to see Mike go. He was so great all those years at TWC, and you'd think with how many years he was there, Byron would want to keep him. He was a very hard worker and had so many great moments on the air. I know he's 68, so I'm not sure what's next with him, but it's still awful. It'd only be worse if Jim Cantore was among the layoffs, but I don't see that ever happening.

[Spring Rubber 705]

20 minutes ago, Newsjunkie24 said:

It stinks to see Mike go. He was so great all those years at TWC, and you'd think with how many years he was there, Byron would want to keep him. He was a very hard worker and had so many great moments on the air. I know he's 68, so I'm not sure what's next with him, but it's still awful. It'd only be worse if Jim Cantore was among the layoffs, but I don't see that ever happening.

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.

[nickp 337]

I consider mike seidel to be staple of my childhood when I watched the weather channel for fun

[Megatron81 263]

All the best Mike Seidel in the next chapter shame that he got the ax at TWC.

[Spring Rubber 705]

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.

[NBC 5 Chicago 191]

TWC is changing up its schedule.

 

AMHQ has been extended an hour weekdays to 1pm EDT replacing Pattrn. 

 

Pattrn has been moved to weekends at 1pm EDT following Weekend Recharge. Still hosted by Stephanie Abrams and Jordan Steele. It was the same episode on Saturday and Sunday. 

 

Weather Underground is no more with a new show called Weather Unfiltered replacing it from 1pm-5pm EDT ending its 9 year run. The new show will still have Mike Bettes, Alex WIlson and Dr. Rick Knabb as hosts. They were teasing a new look and feel. I'm guessing just new show graphics and not a company wide graphics change which they've had for over 10 years now.

 

Pattrn makes sense to move to weekends as it constantly gets preempted due to severe weather coverage. This may have also been impacted by the recent layoffs. 

 

Weather Underground has been one of my favorite shows. I think the new show is going to lean into Mike, Alex, and Dr. Rick Knabb's quirkiness, games, etc. more. I've always liked and appreciated that. It made their show fun than the a just straight forward here's the weather show. 

[GoldenShine_10 96]

On 5/7/2024 at 12:40 AM, Spring Rubber said:

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.

 

One option in the late nights is to simulcast local coverage, although that requires getting rights to such.

[T.L. Hughes 890]

6 hours ago, NBC 5 Chicago said:

TWC is changing up its schedule.

 

AMHQ has been extended an hour weekdays to 1pm EDT replacing Pattrn. 

 

Pattrn has been moved to weekends at 1pm EDT following Weekend Recharge. Still hosted by Stephanie Abrams and Jordan Steele. It was the same episode on Saturday and Sunday. 

 

Weather Underground is no more with a new show called Weather Unfiltered replacing it from 1pm-5pm EDT ending its 9 year run. The new show will still have Mike Bettes, Alex WIlson and Dr. Rick Knabb as hosts. They were teasing a new look and feel. I'm guessing just new show graphics and not a company wide graphics change which they've had for over 10 years now.

 

Pattrn makes sense to move to weekends as it constantly gets preempted due to severe weather coverage. This may have also been impacted by the recent layoffs. 

 

Weather Underground has been one of my favorite shows. I think the new show is going to lean into Mike, Alex, and Dr. Rick Knabb's quirkiness, games, etc. more. I've always liked and appreciated that. It made their show fun than the a just straight forward here's the weather show. 

Is Weather Unfiltered a new show or just a rebranding of Weather Underground? Considering the show was created when TWC and the Weather Underground website were under the same ownership, it sounds more like a brand licensing agreement to use the WU name for the show lapsed (separate from TWC’s existing content agreement with The Weather Company) and they rebranded the show accordingly.

 

It always struck me as odd that AMHQ had been extended to the noon ET slot during severe weather situations, rather than extend WU one hour early, given AMHQ’s (as its full and abbreviated names indicate) intended as a morning show. (Granted, it’s still morning in the rest of the country while it’s noon in the Eastern Time Zone, but up until now, dating back to at least the 1995 creation of WeatherScope (although there was no daypart-based titling for that program from 1996 until the relaunch of its forecast shows under the Weather Center brand in 1997), noon ET was usually the delineation between TWC’s morning and afternoon schedules.)

 

And, at least, the network added an hour of non-documentary programming on weekends, even if it’s not technically a weather forecast program.

Edited May 13, 2024 by T.L. Hughes

[Spring Rubber 705]

10 hours ago, NBC 5 Chicago said:

TWC is changing up its schedule.

 

AMHQ has been extended an hour weekdays to 1pm EDT replacing Pattrn. 

 

Pattrn has been moved to weekends at 1pm EDT following Weekend Recharge. Still hosted by Stephanie Abrams and Jordan Steele. It was the same episode on Saturday and Sunday. 

 

Weather Underground is no more with a new show called Weather Unfiltered replacing it from 1pm-5pm EDT ending its 9 year run. The new show will still have Mike Bettes, Alex WIlson and Dr. Rick Knabb as hosts. They were teasing a new look and feel. I'm guessing just new show graphics and not a company wide graphics change which they've had for over 10 years now.

 

Pattrn makes sense to move to weekends as it constantly gets preempted due to severe weather coverage. This may have also been impacted by the recent layoffs. 

 

Weather Underground has been one of my favorite shows. I think the new show is going to lean into Mike, Alex, and Dr. Rick Knabb's quirkiness, games, etc. more. I've always liked and appreciated that. It made their show fun than the a just straight forward here's the weather show. 

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

[NBC 5 Chicago 191]

Kind of underwhelmed by the Weather Unfiltered change. No real graphics like they implemented with Storm Center or with what they had with Weather Underground. There's no intro or coming up graphics or anything for the new show. Only a logo swipe is visible. You can see the new logo here. Maybe something more will come soon. 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2024 by NBC 5 Chicago

[NBC 5 Chicago 191]

Jennifer Gray, who is meteorologist Chris Warrens wife, started freelancing at TWC. She debuted May 11. She spent 10 years at CNN.

 

 

[Spring Rubber 705]

12 hours ago, NBC 5 Chicago said:

Jennifer Gray, who is meteorologist Chris Warrens wife, started freelancing at TWC. She debuted May 11. She spent 10 years at CNN.

 

 

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).

[NBC 5 Chicago 191]

Weather Unfiltered finally got some show headline intro and animation swipes. They basically are reusing Weather Undergrounds headline intro and just put Weather Unfiltered' s colors in it. The music is what weather underground used. 

 

 

 

[Spring Rubber 705]

4 hours ago, NBC 5 Chicago said:

Weather Unfiltered finally got some show headline intro and animation swipes. They basically are reusing Weather Undergrounds headline intro and just put Weather Unfiltered' s colors in it. The music is what weather underground used. 

 

 

 

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.

[Spring Rubber 705]

TWC rolled out "new" graphics today. Why do I put quotation marks around "new"? Well, that's because they basically said to the graphics designer, "We want the same thing as our current look, but pretend you're a graphics designer working in the mid-to-late 2000s, early HD era."

 

My crappy phone pics likely do not do justice to the glorious, shiny 3D effects...

 

[NBC 5 Chicago 191]

Here are some more pics. I don't mind them. There is some depth to them now which reminds me of the HD era graphics (2008-2013) a bit. I was hoping for some new show opens to go with it. This is basically just a refresh.

 

Edited July 23, 2024 by NBC 5 Chicago

[Brettly 3]

I feel like the weather channel needs an entire new graphics and icons package! The refresh feels like a mash of old HD look and 2013 look together!