The Point Radio: The Weather Channel’s New Morning Champion
Transcript
The Point Radio It's my proud news, sports, pop culture in the morning on the Weather Channel. It's all part of AMHQ that rolled out this week and the new host Sam Chambi is here to talk all about it. Plus a new member of the Doctor Who family and not a good month in the comic stores. Let's get to The Point.
This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. It was dark, it was dreary, it was cold in February, especially at the cash register in comic stores. With sales of comics being down a combined 10.39%.
Overall when compared to sales in 2013 during the same month. A lot of folks blame weather in the Northeast, however it was a short month with only 4 weeks and usually that does help pick up comic book sales. All that being said, here are the 10 best selling comics in comic book stores during the month of February. Starting at number 10 with Marvel's all new X-Men number 23. Walking Dead takes in a couple of spots at number 9 with number 122 and Walking Dead number 121.
At number 8, the reboot of Fantastic Four's first issue hits at number 7. At number 6, Superior Spider-Man number 28. At number 5, Justice League number 28 from DC. Number 4, Superior Spider-Man number 27, Point Now. At number 3, first issue of the Wolverine reboot from Marvel.
At number 2, Forever Evil number 5 in the best selling comic of the month in comic stores in February was Batman number 28 from DC. Your pop culture channel. AMHQ is the new morning information show on The Weather Channel. With the addition of new sports and entertainment reporting in addition to weather. It takes the network in a different direction and I'm curious as to what it will be like.
So to get the answer to that, I went to the host, Sam Champion. Well, I gotta tell you Mike, this for me is the way that morning television should be. And being in that business for a long time, it always bothered me a little bit because you know I'm from Paducah, Kentucky. And so, you know, those are my people right in the middle of the country in the heartland of America. And by the time we got a morning show, it was tape delayed.
Like, you know, New York gets it fresh and live on the East Coast. But you get a show that's like tape delayed and by the time it gets to the West Coast, it's 3 hours old. So, you know, I think that was fine when the news cycle was 24 hours. But we're not a world where that happens anymore. I mean, news breaks on Twitter every minute and Facebook and Instagram.
And it happens now. Like, that's the news cycle. So to get a show that's tape delayed, to me, a new show, I don't like that feeling. And it made me a little uneasy. So this show will air live and this is the way we're gonna break it up. We know our first hour is East Coast-centric.
It's, you know, it's 7 a.m. on the East Coast and folks are getting ready to go. And we gotta get them going with the weather that covers the entire East Coast and we can. Because our first 15 minutes is gonna be explaining those weather patterns and how they affect you and timing it out for you during the day. And then news, a little bit of business, a little bit of pop culture, because you need to know all those things. Your friends are gonna be talking to you today.
So you need to kind of get that and then you need to get out the door. Our second hour, now, which we know some of the folks on the East Coast will still be with us and watching because we're fun and I promise you that. And I think you got a chance to see that this morning. But a lot of our headlines and our target weather is gonna be in that second hour, the center of the country. Because we know we're waking you up right then.
You're getting up, you need to know what your forecast is. You need to know what your weather stories are and you need to know how it impacts your travel, your commute, your plans for the day. So we're gonna do that for you from Chicago all the way down to the Gulf Coast. Hey, New Orleans, guess what? We're waking you up with what you need to know.
Then on that third hour, we think we've got some people that are gonna stay with us because we're gonna do some fun segments. They're gonna be talking about things that everybody needs to know. So I think we're a three hour show that the East Coast will enjoy that third hour. But guess what that third hour really is to the West Coast? That's their wake up live.
So for the first time, they're served by a national morning show that is giving them heavy weather concentration for them live. So whatever's going on in Santa Barbara, in LA, in San Francisco, in the Bay Area in general, in Portland, Seattle, you know, Bellingham, Washington. You're gonna be able to get the our information and our experts telling you what's going on with your weather and your climate on the everyday part. So you know what it is. Then we're gonna fill you in with your news and sports and your headlines and pop culture.
So you don't have to keep the clicker in your hand with a coffee cup and surf all morning long. Guess what? You can carry two coffee cups now because you can just sit back and enjoy it. And we're going to start shipping information out to you in every section of the country live and get you ready to walk out the door. Handling new sports and entertainment features is new to the Weather Channel.
So are they gonna be treated in any different way? No, you know, and here's the thing. I think information's changed, Mike. And I would love to let I think we just break down and make this a two hour conversation and get the audience calling in to talk about how information has completely changed. So, you know, you don't kind of everybody's getting information right now.
The news cycle is right now. So we're gonna we don't have to be we don't have to be entertainment to tell you entertainment. You know what I mean? And if you're if you're online, you're surfing a bunch of different places. You're looking at Gawker.
You're looking at you're looking at BuzzFeed. You're looking at probably E online. You're looking at entertainment tonight online. You're getting you're getting all your you're kind of putting together your own information, your own entertainment report by surfing all these different sites and all these different experts. So here's what we are an AMH queue for you.
We're curating that information. We're giving you what everybody's talking about those top trending topics and subjects. We're giving you a little bit of each one of those enough to get you out the door. I do not think that we are your solo source for information all day long. I'm not that stupid.
I know that you're on your phone every minute of the day trying to get new headlines and new information from every source that you trust. We're gonna get you started. So we're gonna tell you what everybody's gonna be talking about throughout the day. We're gonna tell you the sources that are already talking about them. We're giving you that entertainment news in a different way.
I'm not I'm not showing you. I'm actually not taking a picture of someone's behind on the beach going who's got the better but in the bikini. That's not my that's not my entertainment reporting. My entertainment reporting is more of a pop culture thing going. Here's the stories that you're gonna need to know to talk about with your friends to feel informed and here's the sites that are carrying them today.
And here's how many hits that video has had. I think it's a much more informed entertainment report and it's the same for business and it's the same for news. Will there be ties to social media making it possible for viewers to interact with Sam and the rest of the host? Definitely because the difference with the Weather Channel is we're already all platforms. So likely we're on your phone.
We're on your tablets and we're we're on you know, we're our dot-com is a leader. So in hits by the way in eyeballs, we're not talking about tens of millions. We're talking about hundreds of millions of people that use the Weather Channel and use our our products. So and you may not even know that you're using it when you use weather dot-com. That's the Weather Channel.
That's us. So so you're already using us and so we're getting that information out there. But now we're gonna start pulling information in. If you've ever watched me do TV mic, the one thing you know is I keep a computer up in front of me all the time and I usually have my phone in my hand. And and so when I'm doing I've got Twitter on, I've got Facebook on and so I can give you real-time information from the National Weather Service in Lafayette, Louisiana.
If there's a storm moving through that way, I can tell you hey, they just said there's two inches. There's two inches of rain an hour in Lafayette, Louisiana. And by the way, I just got a I just got a picture from Carol who's in Lafayette. Let me show you what that looks like in her yard. So that's the way I do information.
I do information about fresh, you know, it's about now. It's about keeping in touch with people. Long time morning fixture Al Roker moves into a new slot at a 5 30 to 7 a.m. show leading right into AM HQ. And that's raised a couple of questions. Yeah.
Yeah, it's it's funny because people are just freaked out by Alan. I am the same place and it makes me laugh because Alan I have been friends for for, you know, 25 years now. Here's the truth about that that kind of friendship that we are competitive with each other. So when I was when I was working in a different place than Al was I wanted my life shot to be better than Al's typically we were in the same town at the same place covering the same big weather event. But I definitely wanted my shot to be better and he and I would laugh about it.
I'm like, Hey, I was down in the water. Where were you? Hey, I was above. Who are you? But but we've always been friends.
Well, now we're working together. We're on the same team. We're on the weather channel. He's proven that people want weather first thing in the morning. So at 5 30 in the morning wake up with Al is giving it to him and then we're going with a full service morning show.
We're doing we're doing not just weather but weather sports news entertainment, you know, and trending information pop culture. We're doing it all in a three hour format and we're working together. So he'll grab that audience will build on it and we hope it's going to be great for the weather channel that will become the center of information for a brand new group of people who are interested in morning weather. So for those who are just meeting Sam for the first time I had to ask what's his secret origin? How do you get into all this?
I got it. You know, it's a longer story. I'm going to try to make it short. But but when I got into TV, I was a jack of all trades master of none. I just did whatever anybody would let me do at a TV station.
And the first time I got onto a weather computer to build the graphics for the meteorologist, I fell in love because it was a visual representation of what weather is and I understood it for the first time. I never understood it in classes in school because I couldn't picture it. But as soon as I could picture it, as soon as I could show the audience, this is the front. This is the defining line of your changing weather. And when it gets to your town right here at this hour, there's going to be rain clouds 40 mile an hour wind.
And then when it moves through two hours later, the temperature drops 20 degrees when I could show that to people and they had control of their weather because they could control their schedule. I loved it. See more of Sam of the host of weather channel dot com. And of course, amhq every weekday morning at seven on the weather channel. It's a few days away from the start of spring, but even better than that, here's the latest in pop culture.
CBS is looking to reboot the odd couple. Thomas Lennon from Sean saves the world has been cast as Felix against Matthew Perry, who will be playing Oscar again. It's a pilot that is on the docket for CBS. Lennon is also an executive producer of the Comedy Central show at midnight. The Powerpuff Girls have moved over to a new realm this time steam.
The game on the new platform is called Powerpuff Girls Defenders of Townsville. And you have a couple of different ways to play either in the original or modern art style. Mojo Jojo is there as well as all the other regulars and it again, it's brand new one steam being released just this month and speaking of new platforms, the Adult Swim animated comedy, Rick and Morty tried an experiment with Instagram last week. The new episode was put up on that social media site before it debuted on television.
It was a little difficult though, because it had to be cut up into over 100 clips to fit the 15 second Instagram video limit. Another slightly dark gray cloud on the comic store sales for the month of February down again, a total of 6.71% with a decline overall of about 10%. But that was boosted up a little bit because of an increase in graphic novel sales. A lot of folks blame it on a very bad weather situation, especially for the Northeast. But when compared to last year again, down is down.
We'll check the entire list of numbers and give you what your top 10 best selling comic books were in comic stores as well. Coming up in just a little bit. Actress Keely Hawes, you know from Line of Duty and upstairs downstairs is joining the cast of Doctor Who as a new character called Miss Delphox. No word yet on whether it'll be a recurring story arc. However, she's billed as a powerful out of this world character with a dark secret.
Right now, Doctor Who is being filmed with, of course, the new Doctor Peter Capaldi and gentle Louise Coleman as well. And it's said to debut on the BBC and BBC America later this year reviving their tradition of end of the year miniseries. Sci-fi has given the green light to a new six hour series called Ascension written and created by Philip Levins from Smallville, who will also be the showrunner. Sci-fi says it takes place in 1963 when the US government launched a covert space mission, sending hundreds of men and women on a century long voyage on a starship to populate a new world.
But now that they're halfway point 50 years into the future, there's been a murder on board. Much like Battlestar Galactic did a few years ago, Ascension's six episodes will run in late November and early December on the Sci-fi channel. The point, the point, is what's cool. While you're wearing the green this week, you might want to think of spending a little bit when you hit the comic bookstores. I guarantee you're going to come away with some cool stuff.
Some of the things that we think you should check out begin with Dark Horse and a new run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Season 10 begins with the first issue and of course is written by Christo Skage and with a heavy hand involved by Joss Whedon as well. And a lot of folks say it's some of the best Buffy material ever. Hellboy celebrates 20 years and there's a bargain priced hardcover you may want to pick up with some beautiful sketches and rare artwork from the past 20 years by creator Mike Mignola. And again, it's bargain priced at just under 20 bucks.
The popular Witcher game comes to Dark Horse with a new series and a first issue this week. Written by Eisner, winner of Paul Tobin. And speaking of restarting over at DC, American Vampire begins with a new series called Second Cycle oddly enough. First issue done by Scott Snyder and Raphael Albuquerque as well. The Neil Gaiman Death characters collected in pretty much everything you need to read in a really nice trade paperback.
It contains some beautiful material and it's bargain priced this week too again from DC. Also this week from Mimi, Janoo series begins with a first issue. It is called Sovereign. It's billed as an epic fantasy in the tradition of Game of Thrones. That might be worth a look.
For Marvel, the all-new Ghost Rider begins with a new first issue and Daredevil starts over again with a whole bunch of covers and a number one this week. Loki, Agent of Asgard number one gets a second printing just like Ms. Marvel number one does. It's the second issue of Ms. Marvel out this week as well. And the WWE ongoing series from Paper Cuts. Second issue sold out, second printing of that in this week and a new one.
Third issue is out this week as well just a couple of weeks before WrestleMania. Check all these things out at the comic store near you. We've got a link to help you find them at the front of our website ComicBigs.com. You can try the comic book locator service on your phone at 1-888-COMIC-BOOK or another website called Find a ComicShop.com. That does it for right now, but we'll be back and we'll get back to Da Vinci's demons too to talk more to Laura Haddock and Tom Riley.
But what's coming up for season two of that? Plus by the time we get together, it'll be spring. What a good time to catch up on Pop Culture 24-7 and get the point radio dot com. Listen on your laptop or your desktop computer or take us anywhere in the sunshine on any mobile device you have, Apple or Android with a free app called iNet Radio.
Get that in the app store or on iNetRadio.com. The podcast turns up in the iTunes podcast directory every few days and two on websites like ComicBigs.com and MichaelDavisWorld.com. We'll take your tweets and your Facebook likes too under the point radio and we'll see you back here in a few days. Check out pointradio.com.
