Spring Rubber

lol, figures they make a huge change on a day I'm stuck working a huge data project at work and didn't have a chance to tune in a single time today. Looks like Fox Weather Live is currently on with Steve and Marissa, and the show has moved back into the main studio W again. Wonder what tomorrow's schedule will bring. Curious how "permanent" this arrangement will be.

Based on the FTV post, Robach's show will be a weekly show. So either this will be an expansion of Sunday programming, or a replacement for one of the Sunday hours of NewsNation Prime on Sundays, or they'll throw a curveball and replace one night of some established weekday show with Robach's show, a la what MSNBC does on Monday nights. Earlier in this thread, I predicted incorrectly that Dan Abrams wouldn't be long for NewsNation. I was wrong. They inked Dan to a new multi-year deal. https://www.newsnationnow.com/press/newsnation-dan-abrams-agree-to-multi-year-extension/ And last but not least, NewsNation completed its weekday lineup today 9/25, as Connell McShane became the anchor of the 3-5pm ET block of NewsNation Now. With the move, Nichole Berlie now anchors the 1-3pm ET block of the show. https://www.newsnationnow.com/press/connell-mcshane-joins-newsnation-as-anchor-of-newsnation-now-from-3-5-pm-et/ McShane's edition of the show originates from the NYC studio. With this, the 2pm ET hour is now the last Chicago-based hour of programming each weekday. I feel like we're re-living CNN's exodus from Atlanta all over again. Just now it's NewsNation's exodus from Chicago. I *guess* the making and dayside shows will probably stay in Chicago for a while, but I could see an all NYC/DC schedule coming in some number of years from now.

Looks like at the end of August, during Hurricane Idalia when the whole network exclusively used the main Studio W during landfall coverage, they took the opportunity to replace the anchor desk in Studio A (former Fox Business studio). As previously noted, after Fox Business stopped using the studio in early 2023, the studio is available for the Fox Weather team to use throughout almost the whole week, but on Friday afternoons, the studio is used to pre-record The Journal Editorial Report ahead of the show's Saturday airing on FNC. Previously, from March to August when Fox Weather first started occupying the space, Fox Weather would use a separate anchor desk for its own programming, while the FNC show would use the original desk inherited from Fox Business. In this previous look, you can see the FNC / previous Fox Business desk parked in the back left behind Steve Bender. That white horizontal LED bar is part of the surface of the desk. Starting the week after Labor Day, both the Fox Weather Desk and the FNC desk were scrapped from this set and replaced with a new desk: This new desk also has an optional raised telestrator platform that can be added whenever they deem it useful: (looks like in the above shot, someone forgot to put the TV monitor in place behind Marissa/Nick, leading to that empty space with wiring/metal grid being exposed.) The telestrator platform is just an added perk that's not used on every show. Heck, it's not even used on Fox Weather Live every night. I think they're still trying to sort out when they want to use it. The meteorologists are still able to telestrate using the MS Surface tablets in front of them, in lieu of the telestrator platform. This brand new desk is now used both by the Fox Weather Team and by The Journal Editorial Report on FNC. With this change, Fox Weather First no longer gets kicked out of this studio on Friday mornings so that the FNC team can re-arrange the studio for their show. On the other hand, America's Weather Center is still unable to use this studio on Friday afternoons, presumably because it directly conflicts with whatever timeslot the FNC show is recorded. Most Friday editions of America's Weather Center have been originating from the Expert Desk in Studio W, but one Friday in August, they used Studio K as a one-off. Also with this change, it appears that the weekday edition of Fox Weather Live no longer moves from Studio A over to Studio W for the 8pm-10pm ET block. They now seem to stay in Studio A for the entire 4-hour show. With that being said, Studio A has easily taken over as the primary studio (by hours) for Fox Weather: Weekdays: 5am-9am ET - Fox Weather First - Studio A 9am-12pm ET - Weather Command - Studio W 12pm-3pm ET - America's Weather Center - Studio A 3pm-6pm ET - Fox Weather Now - Studio W 6pm-10pm - Fox Weather Live - Studio A Weekends: 6am-9am ET - Fox Weather First Weekend - Studio A 9am-12pm ET - Fox Weather Live - Studio W Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it just seems odd that Fox Weather is pushing the majority of on-air hours into Studio A, which is vastly smaller and less impressive in terms of appearance than Studio W. Part of me is wondering if the powers that be are looking to repurpose Studio W away from Fox Weather and give that studio back to FNC, and thereby push the entire Fox Weather operation into Studio A. It's total speculation, but it just seems really odd to reduce Studio W's usage down to only 6 hours on weekdays and 3 hours on weekends. I'm sure Fox Weather isn't a great money maker for Fox News Media, so I could see them wanting to repurpose the much bigger Studio W back over to the FNC side of things in the future.

Fox Weather did a 180 from their lackluster Hurricane Hilary coverage and is going all-in on the weekend coverage for Hurricane Lee. They stayed live all overnight Friday night into Saturday and are staying live all afternoon and evening on Saturday. They brought in a significant portion of their weekday hosts and staff to cover the event from start to finish. Also of note, comparing 2022 to 2023, in 2022, Bryan Norcross handled both hurricane landfalls (Ian and Nicole) from his work-from-home setup. In 2023, Norcross flew to NYC and handled landfall coverage for both Idalia and Lee from the studio.

Trying to figure out if this is just NewsNation management doing a 180 and realizing that they need some form of weather presence, or if they just intentionally wanted to shed themselves of Jebaily for one reason or another.

I like the overall motif, but the wideness of all of the fonts makes me feel like I'm looking at a 4:3-designed graphic stretched to 16:9.

Looks like another weekend schedule change: As of apparently yesterday 9/9, both weekend morning shows have been reduced to three hours each, and a pre-recorded weather show hosted by Haley Meier (in the same format and production style as the weekday Kelly Costa overnight show) has been added, starting at 12pm ET. After three weeks of them running a super modified weekend schedule due to hurricane coverage, it appears that the 4-host format of Fox Weather Live, previously seen on August 12th, is here to stay. The current weekend schedule as of 9/9/23 is: 6am-9am ET: Fox Weather First Weekend with Craig Herrera and Kiyana Lewis 9am-12pm ET: Fox Weather Live with Michael Estime, Jane Minar, Bob Van Dillen, and Rick Reichmuth 12pm-8pm ET: Untitled Fox Weather show with Haley Meier (same 30-min pre-recorded format as the weekday Kelly Costa show) 8pm-2am ET: Long form programming 2am-4am ET: Night Light 4am-6am ET: Long form programming (runs until only 5am ET on Monday mornings since the weekday edition of Fox Weather First starts at that time) On a side note, since we didn't discuss this earlier, I will say that Fox Weather poured a lot more hours into Hurricane Idalia coverage compared to Hurricane Hilary, since Idalia was well-anticipated as a storm that would make US landfall as a major hurricane. I believe Fox Weather outpaced TWC in hours of coverage during the weekend and the weekday overnights leading up to landfall, and they far outpaced TWC in the number of hours of primetime, overnight, weekend coverage during the aftermath of the storm. After the storm's August 30th landfall, Fox Weather showed coverage of the aftermath nonstop all day throughout the rest of the week and the entire weekend, not returning to a regular schedule until Labor Day. To be clear, not all hours of aftermath coverage or pre-storm weekend coverage were fully live, but at least it wasn't the standard faire of long form that TWC was airing during the overnight hours as soon as two days before landfall and during primetime as soon as two days after landfall.

The look definitely gives off those simplistic vibes of the ABC MNF days. I would say that a completely revamped graphics package is long overdue this year. Seems like the perfect time to roll out a new, simple look.

The choice of light blue and purple in the title bars kind of hearkins back to the late 2000s - early 2010s-era graphics. You know, these... Wonder if the entire on-air look will go back to this color scheme again.

Just noticed with the Idalia coverage that TWC has switched to Carhartt for their field-reporting gear. Apparently this change went into effect May 2, 2023 with the network's 41st anniversary. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-weather-channel-television-network-and-carhartt-announce-new-apparel-partnership-introducing-a-fresh-look-for-the-networks-meteorologists-301813055.html This is the biggest change to date, because gone are the blue raingear outfits previously offered by Lands End, and before them L.L. Bean and Columbia. With the new Carhartt deal, the raingear worn by the field meteorologists is all-black, and during clear conditions, the field mets wear gray Carhartt work shirts. Looks like with this deal, the color scheme is more on-brand with Carhartt itself, rather than TWC. The TWC logo is still featured on all apparel, just the colors are more in-line with Carhartt's typical offerings.

Not a fan of this style of graphics. Just looks ridiculous to me.

Haley Meier is hosting her first regularly-scheduled show today on Fox Weather Live alongside Michael Estime. Michael gave her a warm welcome to the desk at the top of the hour. For someone who is fresh out of college, she's pretty good at this. If I hadn't read up on her background, I never would have known that she wasn't a broadcast veteran coming from another station.

So apparently Fox Weather leaves the "hype level" up to the producers of a given show, rather than it being a network-wide decision. As you may know, there's currently a tropical invest located off the Yucatan peninsula that has a high chance of development into a tropical storm/hurricane that could enter the Gulf of Mexico and impact the US mainland around the middle of next week. Today, despite this just being a disturbance in its early stages, and not even a Tropical Depression yet, the 6am-9am ET edition of Fox Weather First turned all of the studio lights red and replaced all Fox Weather First graphics with the network's tropical graphics. Every other show so far today, including the solo-hosted 5am ET hour of Fox Weather First, Weather Command, and America's Weather Center, were all produced using each show's normal graphics, and normal studio lighting colors. Surprised that this type of decision is left up to each show's producers and isn't made at a network-wide level.

It's been such a pain for the last 7 years that The Weather Channel brand is used by two separate companies. While the TV network technically has its own website, they almost never refer to it because they know people will inadvertently go to IBM's TWC website instead. I kinda wish the tech assets and the TV network could get sold to the same owner and unified again.

Looks like even today on Sunday afternoon as Hilary has made landfall, Fox Weather went into "prerecorded loop" weather programming with no live radar, no live warning info, etc. Looks to me that just like yesterday, they're only planning to do live updates about every 3 hours when a new advisory is released. I feel like we're witnessing the downfall of Fox Weather. If they can't even stay live for a once-in-a-lifetime weather event, just because it happened to occur on a weekend, they're toast.