Spring Rubber

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.

They've totally lost their way. They're re-airing the 7pm ET hour right now, including live severe weather warnings and live radar from and hour ago. Ridiculous.

Last week, Kiyana hosted the Monday edition of Fox Weather Live alongside Steve Bender. Steve Bender fell ill and missed Tuesday-Friday. Haley joined Kiyana on Tuesday night during the severe weather coverage. Kiyana hosted mostly solo Wednesday-Friday, with Haley joining her like once per hour. This week, Steve Bender is on a scheduled vacation. Tom Wachs from Fox 6 Milwaukee is filling in for Steve all week long. Not sure what's going on with the assignments, but Kiyana has been doing Monday-Friday last week, and I think possibly this week too. Kendall Smith filled in for Kiyana on weekend mornings both this weekend and the previous weekend.

I wonder what the long term plans are for the 5pm hour on weekdays. It was decided that upon moving into the Chief Meteorologist role, Demetrius would take the 6pm and keep the 4pm, while leaving the 11am/Noon/5pm open. Yesterday, it was Mike Janssen covering the 5pm hour. Looks like he's doing the 11am and Noon hours today as well. I'll be curious to see if he'll stay on weekends and share 11am, Noon, and 5pm duties with someone else, or if maybe this will be a bridge to a permanent weekday 11am/Noon/5pm role for him.

End of an era. Growing up watching Tom constantly over the past 30 years, it's hard to believe this day has finally come. Enjoy retirement, Tom! Side note: During the 6pm hour today, they talked about the fact that the parts of the 2005 Nicolas Cage movie The Weatherman was filmed on the WGN News set in 2004, with Tom serving as Assistant Director / advisor behind the scenes. https://wgntv.com/celebratingskilling/the-making-of-the-weatherman-with-tom-skilling/ Ironically, the movie was filed on WGN's old set in May 2004, but they were on their new 2005 set by the time the movie finally released. Does anyone know if WGN had to make any special arrangements for their actual newscasts while the movie filmed in their studio? Or was the long break between the Noon newscast and the 9pm newscast back then a long enough gap to do all of the movie filming without disruption to their actual newscasts?

Weekdays: 5am-9am ET - Fox Weather First - Britta Merwin and Michael Estime (Mon-Tue) / Craig Herrera (Wed-Fri) 9am-12pm ET - Weather Command - Amy Freeze, Stephen Morgan, and a third rotating OCM if available. 12pm-3pm ET - America's Weather Center - Jason Frazer 3pm-6pm ET - Fox Weather Now - Ian Oliver and usually Kendall Smith, sometimes others instead. 6pm-9pm ET - Fox Weather Live - Steve Bender and I guess still Marissa Torres (She's still on maternity leave. During most of her leave, it was Haley Meier Mon-Wed and Kendall Smith Thu-Fri. I think Kiyana Lewis is doing the Mon-Wed editions now that Haley is on the overnight shift.) 9pm-5am ET - Fox Weather @ Night - Haley Meier (endless overnight loop after the first hour is done live) Weekends: 6am-9am ET - Fox Weather First Weekend - Craig Herrera and Kiyana Lewis 9am-???pm ET - Fox Weather Live - I honestly don't know what they're doing with this show anymore. It seems like they're starting long form early at 12pm ET some weekends, while other weekends, they are airing pre-recorded editions of this show several hours into the early afternoon. Hosts are some random combination of Michael Estime, Jane Minar. Bob Van Dillen, and Rick Reichmuth.

Looks like the music on the weekday evening version of Fox Weather Live has also been replaced by generic production music.

When Tom first announced his retirement, if you would have said that the last big sticking snow event he was going to cover would be in mid-January, and that he would be covering a possible severe weather outbreak on his penultimate day on the job, most people would have laughed... but it's certainly looking like that's how it's going to play out, based on the latest guidance from the SPC. However, it's looking like the rain might change over to some wet snow (and probably non-sticking snow considering how warm it'll be for the three days prior) during the day on the 28th, so he might actually get to cover somewhat seasonally-appropriate weather on his very final day.

I haven't been watching much Fox Weather lately, but I just tuned in and noticed that the overnight show has been given the Fox Weather @ Night moniker back, and the show is being produced by the control room with a full set of graphics, inserts, and music again. And I noticed that Haley Meier is hosting on a Thursday, which was always one of her days off... So I checked the bio page, and sure enough, Kelly Costa's bio has been de-linked. Her last social media post about Fox Weather seems to be on February 13th. Looking in the past, she tweeted on February 14, 2023 that it was her 1-year mark with Fox Weather. Sounds like she had a two-year deal that was not renewed. This makes sense, as it's seemed like Fox Weather has had very little interest in keeping the Orlando operation going ever since Katie Garner left. Back in June 2023, when they changed Kelly's backdrop from the Orlando skyline to a fake background of the NYC Weather Command area, compounded with the fact that they never hired an Orlando-based replacement for Katie, I had a feeling that their tiny Orlando outfit would come to an end sooner rather than later. Wishing Kelly well on whatever comes next.

This definitely looks a lot more "2020s big network" than the earlier design.

I noticed that as well. It's also ironic considering that Weather Command pretty much only uses its own music during the intros now. That show tends to always use "severe weather" music during teasers and when going to break now. Another change that happened, I believe, sometime during December, is that America's Weather Center's music was changed to a very serious-sounding production track. I'm not a fan at all. Sometime during the past week or two, the weekday edition of Fox Weather First began splitting its time between Studio A and Studio W. I know the 8am ET hour originates from Studio W, and the early morning hours originate from Studio A (as seen on the videos they post), but I haven't watched live early enough to see what time they switch studios. On days that don't feature serious weather situations, they do not use the anchor desk for the Studio W portion of the show. Instead, they use a small coffee table with raised chairs positioned in front of the curved video wall. It looks like they still use the anchor desk on serious weather days.