All Work and No Play...

Ugh. I hate days like today.

Get in to work, start putting together my show for 6 p.m.

Braves highlights, Little League Highlights, Little League score. That'll fill a minute-forty-five, maybe two minutes max of local stuff... if i stretch it. I have to fill four minutes.

Ok. Tour de France highlights. There's another 0:30 or 0:45. Oh, and the Hawks are courting Kenyon Martin. Now we're getting somewhere. I've got three minutes easy.

The only other thing I can do is preview the Wardogs game. They're playing tonight, so I won't be able to use it again at 11 p.m., but I can fill a minute with it easily. There's my show.

Of course, I'll have to drop the Wardogs preview and the Tour de France and the Hawks stuff for the late newscast and replace those things with highlights from stuff going on tonight, but that's ok. I get all my stories written and edited around 5:50... plenty of time to be on the set by 6:22 (when the sports segment starts).

Then six o'clock rolls around. I look up at the TV in my office. Hmm. There's a WNBA game on. Hmm. There's still about two minutes left in the game.

At 6:03 my phone wrings. It's the producer. She tells me that if the game ends before 6:10, we'll have to drop the sports segment.

The game ends at 6:08. Sports is dropped.

I only have two stories that I can save and re-air at 11:00. So, I wrote and edited the Tour de France story, the Kenyon Martin story, and the Wardogs preview story for nothing. They all have to be replaced by new things for the late news.

Stupid, stupid job. I'd run away and join the circus, but clowns creep me out.