Spring Rubber

Fox Weather ended control-room-produced coverage at 6pm ET. They have switched to automated weather maps with Kendall Smith doing live break-ins at the update desk. So far, the only live update was at 6:14 pm ET, and it lasted for like 60-90 seconds.

The on-air staffing shortages are starting to show. It appears that sometime within the past few weeks, Katie Garner has departed from Fox Weather. The link to her bio has been removed from https://www.foxweather.com/personalities - based on the web archive Wayback Machine, her bio was still linked there on March 15th, but now she's gone. Steve Bender is still on paternity leave, and Brigit Mahoney was also out of the office the second half of last week. As a result, they had to work through Friday night's severe outbreak with only 4 on-air mets after 3pm ET. The way they handled it was to have Ian Oliver bookend the coverage by hosting 3pm-6pm ET and then again from 1am ET through the rest of the overnight. Meanwhile, from 6pm-1am ET, they rotated between Kendall Smith, Stephen Morgan, and Marissa Torres in mixed shifts. For example, they started that block of coverage with Kendall and Stephen, then switched to Marissa and Stephen a few hours in, and then switched to Marissa and Kendall a few hours later. Ian did the 1am ET hour from the main studio with a fully-produced show. They sent the control room/production staff home at 2am ET, so Ian moved to the update desk where they can do live break-in coverage that's controlled by the meteorologist. From 2am ET onward, they alternated between automated weather maps and live break-ins hosted and controlled by Ian at the update desk. On Saturday, they extended live coverage until 6pm ET. Craig and Jane hosted the usual 6am-10am ET shift, while the normal second shift crew of Michael and Kiyana moved later to the 2pm-6pm ET shift. The gap was bridged from 10am-2pm ET with a combination of Michael and Stephen hosting in the studio and Amy Freeze hosting from home. As of the 2am ET update from the SPC, the severe threat for today 3/26 has been upgraded to an Enhanced Risk with a 10% hatched tornado risk for this afternoon and evening. With such short notice, I'm unsure if both Fox Weather and TWC will be able to staff coverage for this evening.

And just as I say that, TWC is not running the streaming show tonight. I admire their...inconsistency?

Last week on Thursday 3/16, TWC quietly launched a new streaming show every weekday evening from 8pm-11pm ET. It's definitely available on all of their streaming apps (Roku, etc.), but it's unclear if it's also available on the streamtwc.com site or not, and I can't test it, because unlike the streaming apps, their website doesn't allow you to log in with your TV provider's credentials. You need a subscription to watch via the website. Anyway, the new streaming show is much more off-the-cuff and conversation-based than their TV product. One of the new personalities on the show is Heather Zons, who is one of their behind-the-camera meteorologists. She was given the opportunity to co-host this show on occasion. Last week, the Thursday/Friday shows featured her and Dr. Postel. This week, the Monday/Tuesday shows featured Carl Parker and Todd Borek. Curious to see who will host the rest of the week. It will be interesting to see what happens on Friday of this week when there's a big severe weather event in the forecast. Will they pre-empt the streaming-only show for standard live extended coverage on the linear channel, or will they direct all viewers to the streaming platform? By the way, the new show is so "experimental" right now that it doesn't even have a name. When they come back from break, they just say, "Welcome back to our new streaming show..."

Eh, you know how it goes... the less they make mention of it, the less they figure the viewer will even be aware. I did notice this morning that Amy was doing more dynamic stand-up segments, instead of being confined to the desk like she usually is. She first got up from the desk while on the air, walked to the video wall to present her own stand-up weather segment; then she walked over to the Expert Desk to talk to Ian, and then she walked over to the touchscreen to talk to Britta. I have a feeling that the reason why Amy and Ian were only on-air for one hour (instead of three) yesterday is because they spent most of the day meeting and rehearsing these ideas to make the show feel more dynamic.

Weather Command is back on the air today from the main studio W. It seems like for whatever reason, they simply would not do the show under that title while they were on the temp set. As for why they were on the temp set, I guess either lighting upgrades, or something was physically broken? Nothing appears to be changed with the studio that's visible on-air.

Today was super weird. The whole morning used Studio K as a temp set again. They returned to the main Studio W at 3pm ET with Fox Weather Now. I didn't have much time to watch while working, but I didn't notice anything different about the set from a quick glance. The schedule today was (times EDT): 6am-9am - Fox Weather First w/Kendall Smith and Britta Merwin 9am-10am - Fox Weather First w/Kendall Smith and Brigit Mahoney 10am-11am - Fox Weather Live w/Brigit Mahoney and Kendall Smith (yes, they changed the show title this hour and also swapped their positions at the desk in reverse this hour) 11am-12pm - Fox Weather Live w/Amy Freeze and Ian Oliver 12pm-3pm - America's Weather Center w/Kiyana Lewis and Kelly Costa 3pm-4pm - Fox Weather Now w/Ian Oliver 4pm-6pm - Fox Weather Across America w/Marissa Torres and Brigit Mahoney 6pm-7pm - Fox Weather Across America w/Stephen Morgan and Brigit Mahoney 7pm-10pm - Fox Weather Live w/Stephen Morgan and Marissa Torres 10pm-1am - Fox Weather @ Night w/Kiyana Lewis (pre-recorded, as always) So yeah, just a total mess today. Ian and Amy only did one hour together this morning. Kinda feels like they were in a meeting or rehearsal or something else important enough to keep them off the air for the 9am-11am portion of the schedule. Staffing was so short today that Brigit might as well have pitched a cot there - working a split morning/evening shift. They basically went the whole day with almost every meteorologist either working outside their normal shift or working a double shift. Given that the network did return to the main studio halfway through the day, tomorrow should tell us if the Weather Command branding is alive or dead. (Edited with the rest of today's schedule, plus the fact that I forgot Kiyana Lewis filled in for Michael Estime today.)

The entire rest of programming today has been done from Studio K as a temp set as well. Just like Weather Command, Fox Weather Now did not air today. The 3pm ET hour was billed as America's Weather Center with Ian Oliver and Kelly Costa hosting together.

Something seems to be up at Fox Weather yet again. So far, all shows today have been using the small studio K as a temp set, and the 9am-12pm ET show Weather Command has instead been branded Fox Weather Live today. Amy and Ian appear to still be hosting, albeit with no third co-host. It's unclear if the Weather Command show has already been cancelled or if they're just not branding the show the normal way because they're not in their main studio.

He tweeted a few weeks ago that he started paternity leave... They must have some amazing paternity leave benefits there, even to the point that they can be deferred some number of months after the child's birth. IIRC, the baby was born back in like Nov/Dec. He took like three weeks of paternity leave back then, came back and worked the final few weeks of Dec, all of Jan, and the first half of Feb, and now resumed his paternity leave. Think this is his fourth week off now on this segment of his paternity leave. Wonder how many weeks they get total.

Yep, that's right - those are the only O&Os that participated in that segment. On the studio side of things, another change took place last week starting March 1st. Wasn't sure if it's permanent, but it appears to actually be permanent-ish. The 4pm-7pm ET show Fox Weather Across America has been relocated into a smaller studio previously used by Fox Business up until January 2023. Last week, they were doing stand up segments in there... But as of this week, they seem to mainly be doing sit-down segments at the anchor desk. The Microsoft Surface tablets on the desk are being used as telestrators for the maps. As for why they moved a whole three-hour show out of the main studio? I can only venture to guess it's because the producers of Fox Weather Now wanted all of the cameras and monitors that would normally be set up for Across America to not clutter the studio during their show. Before Across America was moved out of Studio W, this whole area between the Expert Desk and video wall was full of cameras and monitors facing the main anchor desk. Now it seems like they're clearing out the studio of all excess cameras and monitors every single day just for Fox Weather Now (Brigit Mahoney pictured hosting, as Ian Oliver is out this week). Seems like the powers that be deemed having the studio clear of the camera and monitors was worth moving the entire 4pm-7pm Across America to a different studio. This means that during the PM hours, only the 3pm-4pm ET Fox Weather Now and the 7pm-10pm ET Fox Weather Live originate from the main Studio W. Seems like a massive waste. Comparison shot of what the studio looked like during America's Weather Now previously. I thought it kinda looked cool with the cameras and monitors for the main anchor desk being in place, but I guess they thought differently. From a February edition of the show:

As was briefly mentioned previously in this thread, it used to be the case that from Fox Weather's inception in October 2021 until November 2022, they did those "Across America" pre-taped segments near the top and bottom of every hour, featuring four O&O mets giving the general regional forecast for their specific region. Those segments were taped by the O&Os twice each weekday, morning and evening, and once each weekend for the mornings. After early November 2022, this segment was so scaled back that one could argue that it was virtually eliminated. When the "Across America" segment does run now, it only features a single O&O met talking about one specific region, and it doesn't even seem to run every day. They run it maybe once or twice a week for 30 seconds. Aside from that, we really only see the O&O mets on Fox Weather when they're out field reporting on a big event, whether it be Tom Wachs or Ian Leonard when big snows came to Milwaukee or Minneapolis, respectively, or Sue Serio reporting on the pre-Super Bowl Eagles hype. As far as the discontinuing of the original version of the regional "Across America" segments back in November, I have to wonder if it was the O&Os that complained about having to produce these pre-recorded hits twice a day, or if it was a corporate decision where the folks in New York didn't see the value of the segment. If it was pushback from the O&Os, then I would wonder if there would be issues with getting them to participate in any other type of localized forecasts. Heck, even when "Across America" was fully-fledged on Fox Weather, there were only like 10 O&Os that participated, with WTXF in Philly being the only one in the northeast that would participate. In the southeast, only the two Florida O&Os participated.

What I forgot to mention earlier was the extremely poor handling of the severe weather outbreak on Wednesday night 3/1 last week. While the Thursday 3/2 severe weather coverage was stellar, with round-the-clock coverage all through the overnight hours into Friday, their Wednesday night into Thursday morning coverage was...well...completely absent. The risk level on Wednesday night was 10% sig severe tornado, 30% damaging wind, 30% sig severe hail, yet they still ended live programming at 10pm ET, and they didn't even have a meteorologist there to break in live when needed after that point. It was like they threw all their eggs into the Thursday night basket (which again, was great continuous live coverage, btw), and simply didn't have the resources to put even a single meteorologist on the Wednesday night shift.

At this point, I'm starting to wonder if the dayside programming will even remain in Chicago or if the eventual goal is going to be to move everyone to NYC or DC, just like everyone else in the national media game.

Thank you for bringing this up. I meant to post about it but forgot. Kendall was on solo all night Sunday 2/26 from somewhere around 6pm ET until Midnight ET. From about 6pm-7:30pm ET, they were having her do about 10 minutes live, followed by 20 minutes of automated weather maps, rinse and repeat. Then shortly after 7:30pm ET, the severe outbreak intensified to the point that they could no longer stay in automation, so Kendall had to be fully live for the rest of the night until Midnight ET, at which point, they went over to Katie Garner in Orlando mixed in with automated weather maps again. I also couldn't believe that they couldn't get anyone else in there to give Kendall a break for all those hours. I'm glad they did stay fully live at the height of the outbreak, though. When I saw how much automated weather maps were being mixed in early on, I was concerned that they were going to completely drop the bomb on coverage.