It can't happen soon enough. Maybe just run 15 mins of weather and 15 mins of sports. Might improve their moribund ratings.
Your words are dead on. I used to do weather on a local NBC affiliate and the consultants were always going over the details in the ratings.
It turned out that hardly anyone was watching the local news from the beginning. The big jump happened in the second 15 minutes, occupied by weather and sports. Weather was at the very end of the newscast at that time.
After the ratings, weather was moved up to 10 minutes past the hour (to qualify being in the first 15 minutes for the ratings).
The news (first 15) portion of telecast went way up in the next ratings book, just like the consultants said it would, but the liberal reporters in the news room couldn't get over congratulating each other for what they did.