Over the weekend, tornado warnings went up in the Charlotte area and many viewers were looking for WCNC Chief Meteorologist Brad Panovich.

Panovich works for the Tegna station and he could not be found on air, because he is serving out his mandated Tegna furlough.

At a time when viewers need him, Tegna has him on furlough, so they can save some more money to buy advertising and mailers to try and keep their current board members.

But, Panovich did not sit this storm out.

The WCNC Met set up shop on Facebook and going live from his house, as many as 13,000 viewers were tuned in watching him track the storm.

After almost 2 1/2 hours into his live stream, he sort of explained why he wasn’t on WCNC’s air, which he should have been.

“Usually if I’m working on air, which I am not able to this week and I’m not able to say why, but it is related to Covid-19. And it’s not that I’m sick or anything, so I’m not saying that, but I’m just saying just like many people, some people are being forced to take a week off with no pay. That is basically why I’m not on TV and I’m only working as an amateur meteorologist today, showing you these severe thunderstorms that are moving through the area and the tornado warnings we have right now.”

So basically he was still doing his job, but he wasn’t getting paid.

But, here is the problem. He was doing the same thing he does at his job, but he was not getting paid to do it.

At Tegna’s WUSA in DC, staffers are told that when they are furloughed they are not allowed to work in any capacity, including social media.

“We were told that we can’t even tweet out a news story, or we will have to serve another week of furlough,” said one WUSA staffer to FTVLive.

The staff at WUSA questioned management over and over about what they can and can not post while on furlough? They were told, they can not post anything that could be seen as job-related.

But, Brad Panovich doing was doing a Facebook Live to over 10,000 viewers as wicked weather passed through the area.

Didn’t he violate the furlough rules? Is he now going to have to take another furlough week?

Since this is Tegna, who knows.

Panovich knows that it’s his job to keep people safe when bad weather moves into the area. He made the call to go live and do his job, despite the fact that he was not getting paid. Good for him!

As for Tegna, they seemed to be more worried about saving a few bucks.

The company should be ashamed when you start furloughing TV news people during a pandemic and during severe weather season.