Another day, another dollar. That's the approach for me every day I wake up now. I was hoping it would take more than 2 weeks for me to feel that way but eh, whatever. Woke up around 11am today but yet again, that means get out of bed 45 minutes later. Really, my cell phone alarm is just not effective enough. No worries though. I don't plan on getting to work until 2:30 anyways, my time of arrival according to the work schedule. Well, as I get set to eat a bowl of cereal and surf the web for a bit, I check out ESPN.com and there it is. The sight of a promo for the MLB Futures Game on ESPN2 at 12:30pm. Now, for most people, that's not a big deal. For me, it was a kick in the shin because I am supposed to tape the event for my show at 6 and 11. So there goes my 2 hour rest. I immediately get dressed and head out the door, mad at myself for lack of better planning.
I immediately pop the tape in and then sit down and think...what am I going to do now? I decide to go back to the Peach Jam and find a story. I have an idea of doing a story on kids from the Class of 2012, the youngest of the bunch. Since I show up when only one is in action, I chronicle him. Of course, he doesn't score one point while I shoot him he rest of the game but at least he is active. I ask to talk to him after the game and he's cool with it. When I ask him to spell his name and all his info, I hear something that makes me cringe: He's in the Class of 2011. I think twice about the interview but you know, he's still young so it worked. Now, the kid is 6'9, 219lbs and darn good so for all I know, I just interviewed the next Lebron or Carmelo. His name is James McAdoo. If he hits it big, remember that I interviewed when he was nothing special (though Roy Williams and Wojo were watching him VERY closely all game).
After stopping for lunch at another new place (working hard to not repeat places until I hit them all), I head back to the station and get all my stuff done pretty quickly. After yesterday, I worked hard to make sure stuff gets done an hour before the show. Even with all my hard work, my cast couldn't be fully complete until I had updated Braves and Greenjackets (our minor league Class-A team) scores. Both are playing during the show. Not to mention also I had to get the final scores from the golf tournament preceding our newscast (CBS). Well, it's 6:05, and the golf is running late. I decide the heck with updating the cast and settle for what I have. That's the time I would've abandoned anyways if the show were on. Down in the studio, we are all on standby, just waiting for the golf to end and begin our show. But then, Kenny Perry decides to bogey the last, setting up a 3-man playoff. That's at 6:15pm. Now the way it works is that anything before 6:30 is our time so if golf would've ended at 6:15, we had a 15 minute newscast till we throw it to NYC for national news. But it didn't. Now if it would've ended from 6:30 to 6:45, we supersede CBS Evening News and they have no cast. If after 6:45, we have no cast and whenever golf ends, it goes to NYC. The latter is what happened. Golf ended at 6:49, meaning all my hard work and hustle for the 6pm was for naught......or was it?
Since my 6pm cast was't shown, I copied and pasted the entire cast to the 11pm. Yep, copy and paste...what a great tool. The only things changed from the cast were updating the scores from the games and putting final highlights for golf. It literally took me 20 minutes to do. With that much time left, I had plenty of options. I could go back to Peach Jam and find a new story for tomorrow at 6pm. I could try to make a package out of the 15 year old kid I interviewed earlier. Or I could go for ice cream with my weekend anchor team. I chose the latter and loved it. After getting back from Brusters, I put my package from Saturday on the web, attempted to add scores (to no avail), and archived video for the weekend so I could go home earlier. The 11pm cast was a cakewalk on air and just like that, the first full weekend with the full weekend team was done. I'm telling ya now, we are by far the best in the market. Bring in the ratings!
WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: Well, as kind of mentioned earlier, I wish I would have planned better and actually known what time that Futures Game was. I just figured it was later in the day but no, it was at 12:30. Yea, that means no matter what I would have had to go to the station but at least, I could've planned going there and then going back home for two hours until I had to go back. But I was too flustered and just stayed. Another thing I learned is that while I agonized a lot about my job search and even a little bit about my college search, I have no envy for these high school players, especially the really good ones. They have the best college coaches looking at them, watching their every move and mannerism. That's a lot of pressure on a 15-17 year old kid. And then, after this whole thing, they're gonna get 10-15 coaches recruiting them, pitching to them the same money (full ride with perks), which means these kids have to then weigh all those intangibles. Yea, it's a good problem to have but man, talk about a big decision. Think about it. My choice between Northwestern, Syracuse, or OU was a big one in my mind. Professionally, maybe not very big since no matter where I would start as a sports guy, I would make the same amount of money, or a bit less. For these kids, the wrong college decision could make the difference between millions of dollars later. And finally, the last thing I learned is that working the weekends is going to be a lot of fun. It's laid back since there are only about 6 of us there compared to about 30-40 during the week. I can wear shorts and a t-shirt while I work and can even watch Family Guy twice as I did today. Plus, my anchor is 23 and my weather guy is 26, and both are great. As I said earlier, we are the best weekend team and it's because we mesh well. Now, let's just hope I mesh well with the weekday crew. 5 days of Matt and Richard, Meredith and Bob this week...and I am definitely the odd man out.
5 down, 8 to go.
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