I have received confirmation through a tweet that "vocals have been permanently removed"
I believe that statement about as much as I can jump off the roof of my house and start flying. The vocals may disappear for a while, whether it be months, or a number of years, but they'll be back again. They're always gonna keep "experimenting".
I'm curious why after nearly 2 1/2 years they "suddenly" want to go in a new direction with their selection of music again. I doubt it's because viewers complained, it wouldn't have taken this long to make changes again.
Speaking of the LF in general, when are they ever going to come to the table about adding more forecast products? I don't mind the LFs being 1 minute long, but for pete sakes add some freakin' variety to the lineup already. Throw in some metro/regional maps, almanac, climate data, something! I'm not saying they should cram all of that into 1 minute, but it wouldn't hurt to have each LF display different information throughout the hour like it used to be.