Early Hours

My alarm clock goes off at 3:20am. Sometimes I hit snooze, but I'm usually out the door by 4am. Not a lot of traffic, but it looks like that might be changing. USA Today this morning does their cover story on what they call "commuting creep." (Funny, I wrote that first as "creeping commute," which pretty much describes our rush hour traffic.) The article talks about how we're all living farther from work and leaving earlier just to get there on time. What's great about the article, at least to me, is that it goes on to talk about how this has changed other industries. Fast food places open earlier to serve drive-thru breakfast or coffee. Radio and television stations adjust their broadcast day. I experienced that first hand in Syracuse. I was hired to do the morning show at the NBC affiliate there. The broadcast started at 6am and ended at 7am, just before The Today Show. The following year, they moved the show back to 5:30 and added a co anchor (Jeff Glor, now national correspondent for The CBS Early Show). The next year, they moved us back to 5am. I got sick of getting up in the middle of the night and moved to Charlotte for better hours. We all know how that turned out! Funny story about that time in Syracuse. When we moved back to 5am they sent me and Jeff to New York City to tape a promo with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. They do a bunch of these with local anchors from all over the country. We were pampered in their makeup room and then herded out to the set. We had our 5 minutes (it was probably less) with Matt & Katie, making small talk and then saying our lines. I wish I had some tape of that promo - I probably look scared out of my mind!