Spring Rubber

John Marshall actually departed from Fox Weather in September 2022. Looks like he's been doing his own thing on social media ever since.

The pre-recorded format of America's Weather Center continued last week Tuesday-Friday (Monday 7/10 was the only fully live day), and here again today Monday 7/17, they're still doing the pre-recorded solo-hosted show. Not a fan of the direction this is going. It's starting to look like live editions of America's Weather Center are being phased out. We're heading back to the late 2021-early 2022 afternoon abyss. Here I would think that people would want to tune in during their lunch breaks and watch live, but maybe their viewership numbers didn't bear that out?

On Saturday 7/14, Bob Van Dillen hosted his first full show. He hosted Fox Weather Live alongside Craig Herrera. Michael, Kiyana, and Rick were all off today, I believe. I was at work and missed basically all of it. Craig and Jane were back together again on Fox Weather First Weekend as well. Craig hosted at least part of both shows, but it's unclear if he did the full 8 hours or not. I kinda doubt that he did. No idea if some of the hours were solo-hosted or if a different meteorologist joined either Jane early in the AM or Bob in the PM hours.

Bon Van Dillen had his first appearance actually presenting the weather on the air today. While Fox Weather Now was hosted by Ian out in the field, Bob was performing the in-studio host duties, at least for the 3pm ET hour. It looks like they switched to Adam Klotz for the 4pm and 5pm hours, as they wanted to ease Bob into the role today. America's Weather Center was back to the pre-recorded solo host nonsense today. Looks like Michael pre-recorded everything very early in the 12pm ET hour, and the same stuff aired over and over throughout the rest of that hour plus the 1pm and 2pm ET hours. Not a fan of this. Hopefully this will stop once Bob is acclimated to full-time host duties.

Forgot to mention - regarding this past weekend... Kiyana on the early shift with Craig and Jane on the second shift with Michael and Rick appears to be permanent...for now at least. Another change this past weekend (July 8-9) is that Fox Weather First Weekend moved into Studio A (the former Fox Business Studio), matching the Monday-Thursday iteration of the program, while Fox Weather Live remained in its usual Studio W home. As you may have noticed, for both Fox Weather First and America's Weather Center, I've mentioned that the Monday-Thursday programs originate from Studio A. Well, as it turns out, Studio A is still used by FNC on Fridays to pre-record certain weekend programming. So, on Fridays, Fox Weather uses their old setup of shooting Fox Weather First in Studio W and shooting America's Weather Center in Studio K. By 6pm, FNC is done using Studio A, so the Friday edition of Fox Weather Live uses Studio A just as the show does throughout the rest of the weekdays. That being said, I'm not a huge fan of Fox Weather First being confined to Studio A. It's your big morning commute show - so why put them in a tiny studio rather than using your biggest and best studio? From everything I can tell, there's no tear-down/set-up involved for Weather Command, and they seem to do perfectly fine with having the Friday editions of both programs originate from Studio W. On the other hand, they do remove several cameras, monitors, and sometimes even the anchor desk during Fox Weather Now, so it makes sense for the shows that bookend it - America's Weather Center and Fox Weather Live - to use an alternate studio while the set-up and teardown processes are taking place. That being said, let's compare the look of America's Weather Center using Studio A versus Studio K: Studio A (Monday-Thursday) Studio K (Friday - and previously every weekday prior to April 2023) Personally, I'm a fan of seeing physical set pieces and not just video wall backgrounds, so I much prefer the studio K setup for the show, and I wish they'd go back to it Monday-Friday. Plus, studio K has real windows along the right side of the studio, and it was nice getting to see an outside view during the midday hours.

Ah ok, so this show is going to be a full-time commitment. Makes sense. Thanks for the info.

If Sarah Jindra is hosting, and if she's also going to be staying on the morning news, is it safe to say that Spotlight Chicago will probably be pre-recorded, either earlier in the day (that is, if the show will film daily), or perhaps well in advance (if they'll film multiple episodes at a time and churn them out later)?

https://www.foxweather.com/watch/play-681e8dd62000a01 Looks like for Bob Van Dillen's debut today (video linked above), they did an introduction segment for him on Weather Command; however, they didn't have him host any shows today. Amy, Kendall, and Kelly were off today, and Ian is on assignment in Vermont covering the flooding live on scene. Stephen filled in for Amy as host of Weather Command (Michael and Jason split duties sitting in Stephen's seat today). Kiyana filled in for Kendall, Brigit filled in for Ian (with Adam Klotz taking Brigit's normal role), and Fox Weather Live with Steve and Marissa is airing in a pre-recorded loop in place of Kelly's show. America's Weather Center was a normally fully-live show with Michael and Kiyana today.

Remember the early days of Fox Weather (Oct 2021-Mar 2022) when they didn't have enough staffing to provide live programming during the early afternoon hours on weekdays? Back then, they would go into automated weather maps during the early afternoon. Well, it looks like we're seeing a variation of that this week. From what I've seen, both the Wednesday 7/5 and Friday 7/7 editions of America's Weather Center took on a somewhat pre-recorded type of format. I *think* but am not entirely sure that on Wednesday, Craig Herrera solo-hosted the entire show; however, show was presented in short pre-recorded chunks, including weird stuff like having a top-of-the-hour teaser and opener at :15 past. I didn't see any live radar or live weather data. All of the maps shown were either forecast maps or maps explaining weather that happened earlier in the day. Thursday 7/6 was a normal fully-live show with Kendall and Craig together. Today 7/7 was weird because both Craig and Kendall hosted separately. Craig hosted the 1pm ET hour. Kendall hosted the 2pm ET hour (no idea who hosted the 12pm ET hour). The show was produced similarly to the Wednesday show, where there was no live radar or live weather data, but it felt like they were updating the segments throughout the day, as they were providing the SPC forecast outlook updates as they were released during the course of the program. Both the Wednesday and Friday solo-hosted shows were produced entirely from the Expert Desk in Studio W using a single-cam setup. There were no secondary cameras and no wideshots of the studio used at all during the program. The Thursday normal fully-live show was produced in the former Fox Business studio, which has been the normal Monday-Thursday home of America's Weather Center for the past several weeks. (Side note: Jason Fraser recently noted on air last week that the former Fox Business studio that they now use is known as Studio A)

This almost makes me think he's destined for Weather Command. They've been having a hard time consistently having three personalities on that show every day (oftentimes falling back on just two people on the desk as of late), so maybe this will give them the opportunity to finally have three consistent personalities on that show for a change. I could be wrong, maybe they do give him a lower-profile position on America's Weather Center and let Michael and Craig split the week on Weather Command again. A third possibility is putting Bob on Fox Weather First and having Jason join the Weather Command team instead. Guess we'll find out on Monday.

Yeah, nothing's permanent, but I guess we'll say what's "official" for now. Yeah, Stephen is officially on Weather Command with Amy, while Brigit is officially on Fox Weather Now with Ian. Technically speaking, Amy and Ian are the sole official hosts of their shows, so idk what to even call Stephen and Brigit. They're not hosts, but they appear constantly throughout both programs to the extent that they might as well be. Today, Fox Weather is going with a shortened weekend-esque holiday schedule as they always do. However, it was mostly the late afternoon and evening hosts, aside from Marissa, who were called to host the holiday shows today. Britta was paired with Steve Bender on Fox Weather First 6am-10am ET today, and then Ian and Brigit hosted Fox Weather Live from 10am-2pm ET. What *is* new today, however, is that starting at 2pm ET, instead of going into long form, they're doing the "untitled overnight loop" show, hosted today in NYC by Ian Oliver, but still produced using the same automation software that's normally used on Kelly's overnight show.

This actually happened a year ago. No idea why that website is publishing this as "news" today. lol

Weekend schedules continue to be fluid. Today, Kiyana and Jane swapped places (Kiyana alongside Craig on Fox Weather First Weekend; Jane alongside Michael and Rick on Fox Weather Live). I noticed that Rick has been given a more active role on Fox Weather Live. For the first two hours of today's show, he was a full-on "third" host sharing basically equal on-air time with Michael and Jane. Rick's shift ended at 12pm ET; however, for the 12pm and 1pm ET hours of the show, they re-aired a couple of segments featuring him from earlier in the morning.

So the physical CBS 2 logo on the desk was kept, eh? I figured they would have turned that section into a video screen as well, trying to plan ahead for one day phasing out the CBS 2 logo in the future.

If only they could have found a way to emulate the text-drawing of the original WeatherStar 4000, especially the clock in the upper right corner that blinks as the seconds tick by. Or heck, even a non-blinking clock in the upper right corner would be cool too.

I'll be curious to see how many different cities are covered on the Retro 8s. Going to have to remember to DVR it tonight. Also of note, because "Weather Doesn't Happen On Weekends™", both Retro 8s and Twilight Live are only scheduled to air on weekdays; however, because the TWC programming day starts at 5am ET, this means that Retro 8s actually airs Tuesday through Saturday morning at 4am ET while Twilight Live airs Monday through Friday morning at 5am ET. Also, it looks like they have already dumped the Byron Allen game show from their schedule. They must have gotten some backlash for that.

Cuomo officially moved into the big new NYC studio starting tonight. They made a big deal out of it, with him ending the show by walking into the control room and saying hello to the crew in person. Also of note, Banfield originated from the big NYC studio Monday-Friday June 12th-June 16th and Monday-Thursday June 19th-June 22nd. She did the Friday 6/23 show from the traditional flashcam setup, presumably back up in CT. It's unclear if she was just visiting NYC for a couple of weeks or if she's going to start coming there more regularly now. We'll have to wait and find out. During the live toss between Cuomo and Abrams tonight, they joked about how Abrams is still stuck on the old set and that Dan's not "jealous or anything". Side note about Banfield: over the past few weeks, they have slowly evolved the graphical look of the show to remove all of the last vestiges of the original NewsNation dark blue and gold color scheme (the last show on the network to carry those colors), instead switching to a graphics set of varying shades of purple. It took like 3-4 weeks for them to complete the rollout, starting with the logo bug in the bottom right corner, then the double boxes, then the wipes, and finally, on June 12th, the opener. This video from the show last week gives an example of some of the new purple graphic elements, like the wipe and the double boxes. Believe me, you're not missing much with the opener; they basically just changed the logo at the end of it to match the new purple color scheme.

Yeah, they gave Amy Monday-Thursday off last week and had her start the week on Friday. She hosted Weather Command and apparently Outnumbered on Friday, then Fox Weather First Weekend on Saturday, and then Fox Weather Live on Sunday. Weird thing is that on both days, instead of Amy directly filling in for the person who was actually off, they time-shifted the regulars who were present that day. On Saturday, Kiyana was off; however, Jane shifted down to fill Kiyana's slot, while Amy filled in for Jane's normal slot. On Sunday, Jane was off; however, Kiyana moved up to cover Jane's slot, while Amy filled in for Kiyana's normal slot. On both Saturday and Sunday, Rick Reichmuth was a third host on Fox Weather Live. However, unlike back in May when they were having Rick fill-in for the primary hosts, it seems that they're not doing that anymore. There was a significant severe weather event on Sunday afternoon, and again, neither Fox Weather nor TWC went live to cover it. During Fox Weather's first year of existence, they had enough on-air staff to have one meteorologist present on weekend afternoons and evenings to host live break-in coverage without the need for a production staff, which gave them an edge over TWC. Now it seems that they have gotten complacent with just ignoring any severe weather after 2pm ET on weekends. You watch, both Fox Weather and TWC will go live Monday morning with aftermath coverage of Sunday's severe weather, talking about how destructive the storms were. It's hard to take either of the networks seriously when they weren't there to cover it live, when it mattered the most.

Wow, weird to see a total reversion to a previous graphics package in the TV news biz. I've seen cases where someone new takes over shortly after a graphics change, and there's a swift changeover to something completely different (but new), but it's super strange to see a revert back to a previous package. Is there any time in the past that this has ever happened anywhere across the TV news landscape?

This week so far: - They had barely sufficient staffing to run a live full schedule until 10pm ET on both Monday and Tuesday. Amy is out this week, so Stephen has been hosting Weather Command all week. Staffing wasn't great enough to have a three-person show on Monday and Tuesday, so Weather Command was reduced to a 2-person show both days (this has been happening a lot lately). Kiyana had to do a double shift on Fox Weather First/Weather Command on Monday, while Michael had to do a double shift on Weather Command/America's Weather Center on Tuesday. - Brigit is back in NYC, and she indeed appeared on Fox Weather Now both Monday and Tuesday. It's not a full host role, as Ian is still considered the sole host of that show. I guess you could say that she's a "contributing meteorologist" on the show, appearing multiple times per hour. - Jason returned from his initial paternity leave today. Like we saw with Steve Bender earlier this year, I would think Jason will probably defer the rest of his paternity leave until a few months out from now. If that happens, plus we know that Marissa goes on maternity leave in a few months as well, this is a major wake-up call that the network needs to staff up if they have any hopes of functioning in the second half of 2023. idk if they want to hire staffers or just go with freelancers, but they need some sort of plan for when Jason and Marissa are out later in the year.

Sadly, like TWC, Fox Weather buys into the "Weather Doesn't Happen on Weekends" mantra. If severe weather is hitting on a weekday, they'll be happy to cover it all night, but if it happens on a weekend, they don't have the resources to cover it unless it's pre-forecasted to be a major event several days in advance. As for the overall schedule, I never noticed this before, but I see that they actually publish program guide data on the Roku Channel. The new weekday schedule is officially: 5am ET - 9am ET: Fox Weather First (Britta solo during the first hour) 9am ET - 12pm ET: Weather Command 12pm ET - 3pm ET: America's Weather Center 3pm ET - 6pm ET: Fox Weather Now 6pm ET - 10pm ET - Fox Weather Live 10pm ET - 5am ET - Fox Weather (overnight half hour loop - runs later until 6am ET Friday night into Saturday morning) Weekends remain essestially unchanged: 6am ET - 10am ET: Fox Weather First Weekend 10am - 2pm ET: Fox Weather Live 2pm - 1am ET Various long form programming 1am ET - 6am ET Night Light (Only runs until 5am ET Sunday night into Monday morning) As we've seen, on weekdays, the end time of Fox Weather Live is realistically all over the place. When short-staffed, they'll end at 8pm ET. If fully staffed, they *may* go until 10pm ET, but it doesn't seem super reliable at this point. We'll see what happens going forward. So yeah, Fox Weather Across America is officially dead. I'm assuming Stephen will remain on Weather Command going forward. Hopefully Brigit is back from her field reporting this week, so maybe we'll get to see if she also joins Weather Command or if she joins Ian on Fox Weather Now instead. From the two days that I have stayed up/woke up to watch the 5am ET hour of Fox Weather First, it appears that the first segment of the hour is now called "Britta's Basics," to help give some personal ownership to Britta for her solo hour of the show. Edit: Watching deeper into the hour, they also have a segment called "Britta Knows Best" at about :20 past the hour. This one actually has its own lower third graphic. They're definitely trying to brand this new 5am ET hour around Britta. Edit 2: There is a reprisal of the "Britta's Basics" segment at the bottom of the hour as well. Edit 3: Janice Dean joins Britta at roughly :40 past the hour for a discussion-oriented segment. Apparently this is a daily thing, as Britta ended the segment by saying, "See you tomorrow!" At :45 past, the co-host of the 6am-9am ET show (today it's Kiyana) joins Britta at the desk to preview the upcoming 6am-9am ET show.

We previously mentioned how during the month of May, there were several weekends where Rick Reichmuth from FNC co-hosted the weekend edition of Fox Weather Live as a fill-in for Michael or Kiyana. Well, I noticed that on the weekend of June 3-4 and then again this weekend, they have still brought Rick onto the show, this time as a third host, alongside both Michael and Kiyana. From what I can tell, he has a smaller percentage of segments per hour than Michael and Kiyana, but he's still part of the show on what feels like a semi-regular basis. Not sure if the arrangement is going to stay this way, or if it will continue to evolve. We'll see.

Kelly Costa did a mix of live and recorded segments through at least 2:40am ET. The only reason I know this is because right now at 3:40am ET, they mistakenly have a segment in the prerecorded loop from exactly one hour ago, which contains live radar and tornado warnings/severe t-storm warnings from last hour. Same thing that happened last night, where a previously-live segment with active radar and warnings mistakenly aired in the pre-recorded loop an hour after it first aired live. Kelly did record some different non-time-sensitive segments earlier tonight that should be airing right now. Looks like they've got the wrong playback file loaded up.

Tonight, with the severe weather outbreak ongoing and Kelly Costa back, they stayed fully live until 10pm ET and then switched to a mix of live weather updates with Steve Bender plus non-time sensitive material with Kelly Costa that's meant for playback on the overnight loop. Not sure what went wrong, but Steve's live 11pm ET radar update wound up in the recorded loop, and it re-aired at 12am ET, showing a bunch of old radar info and old severe thunderstorms from the previous hour. I hope this doesn't persist through the entire overnight. Edit: They got it fixed for the 1am ET hour.

From everything I can tell, TWC ended their streaming primetime live weather show at the end of May. I went to watch it several weeknights in June, and I saw that it wasn't on. Even tonight with the severe weather outbreak, TWC ended live coverage at 9pm ET on cable, and they did not do a streaming show tonight. I opened their Roku app, and the app claims that there's a separate feed for live severe weather coverage, but when you choose the special feed, it just streams the long form program feed that's currently on the cable channel. Also, on AMHQ this morning, Jen and Alex officially welcomed Dr. Postel to their 9am-12pm shift on a regular basis. He had previously been on the show only every other week, as he alternated weeks with Carl Parker when the streaming show existed.