In the first week of February, maps shown on KWWL during the weather portion of the newscast looked different. The map, which is still squashed vertically*, now only displays 21 counties.
Howard, Floyd, Franklin, Jackson, and Mitchell counties are gone, in addition to Crawford and Grant in Wisconsin and Jo Daviess in Illinois. However, Charles City and Prairie du Chien are still included in the map for forecast highs/lows.
Also during the first week of February, a tweet from Weather Services International said, “We are pleased to announce @KWWL in Waterloo, IA debuted #Max this week!” Compare the map in that tweet with Mark Schnackenberg’s Jan. 31 blog post. WSI is a subsidiary of the Weather Channel. Perhaps the two events are connected.
If this is a permanent change, KWWL has now shrunk to the bare minimum of the Eastern Iowa DMA, and Franklin County loses its place as a hub of Iowa television stations. As you can see on my Iowa TV maps and table (shameless plugs!), all of the counties dropped from the KWWL map are on at least one other TV station’s map (but does Charles City really prefer KTTC?).
So far, this is just for the daily newscasts; whether this also applies to severe weather coverage has yet to be seen. Schools in those counties still probably will send information in to the station. (For the record, the Super Bowl was unobstructed by a closings/cancellations scroll.)
*The map makes Tama County a square. Tama County is not a square. It’s not like there isn’t room for correct proportions!