TV Q&A: Where did a KDKA-TV forecaster go?

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions every Wednesday at TribLive.com in a column that also appears in the Sunday Tribune-Review.

Q: I noticed KDKA hired a new weatherman, Rob Wilson, in place of the retired Kristin Emery. I saw him once and haven’t seen him since. What happened?

— Sue, Mt. Pleasant

Q: What happened to KDKA’s new weatherman? I think I saw him on TV only once. Is he still with KDKA?

— Colleen

Rob: Wilson is a freelancer who will fill in occasionally, rather than a direct, full-time replacement for Emery.

I’d initially heard the station would hire an Emery replacement and when I asked what shift Wilson would work besides weekend mornings, it was explained that he wouldn’t be a regular presence. Instead, Wilson will appear on KDKA “as needed” on weekends and in evening newscasts.

Expect to see more of Wilson over the holiday season when fill-in freelancers tend to get put to work more often.

Q: This morning (Nov. 17), KDKA-TV promoted a story that was supposed to be on the 5 p.m. news about school safety zones and as of 5:40 p.m., it still hadn’t aired. The way they promoted it, I thought it would be a top story. I’m losing faith in KDKA.

— Ralph, Greensburg

Rob: If Ralph had only waited five more minutes!

For at least two decades, especially during sweeps months like November, those highly promoted reports have almost always aired at 5:45 p.m.

Q: Why did Xfinity Channel 1181 go from Roar to True Crime Network? What’s the reasoning here?

— Chad, via email

Rob: Comcast opted to drop the Sinclair-owned Roar channel in June, just a few months after the channel changed its name from TBD TV. No particular reason for the change was given beyond it being part of Comcast’s regular channel updates and negotiations with content owners (e.g. likely financial reasons).

Roar is still available locally, per WatchRoar.com, over the air on Channel 8.3 and Channel 22.4, on Verizon (Channel 464), Amazon Prime Video (Channel 124 and 2196) and on YouTube TV.

Q: Do you think there’s any likelihood that “Picket Fences” might be streamed in its entirety any time soon? It’s an awesome show and while I’m pretty adept at collecting and managed to compile all four seasons, at least the last two were never commercially released. The sound quality can be an issue and I could REALLY use closed captioning. HELP!

— Mitch, Newport News, Va.

Rob: I would like nothing more! Along with “China Beach,” “Homefront” and “Twin Peaks,” “Picket Fences” was one of the foundational shows that cemented my desire to write about TV for a living.

Per JustWatch.com, only season one is available to stream for a price on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and Fandango.com. It does not stream anywhere currently as part of a subscription streaming service, although at least one season streamed on Hulu at one point, but it’s no longer carried there. (“Picket Fences” was made by 20th Century Fox, which Disney bought in 2019.) I don’t know if Hulu simply had the rights to the series for a short period or if no one watched and they dropped it for that reason.

It’s possible “Picket Fences” could show up on a digital subchannel, but I could find no evidence that it is playing on one currently.

Weirdly, “Picket Fences” was evidently popular in Germany, because you can buy a complete series box set on Amazon, but it’s in a non-U.S. format. To play the German discs in the U.S. would require a multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player. But the product description claims the episodes in this set are available in English and German.