Grape: We're here today with Virginia Ham, who works the overnight shift for an affiliate in a medium sized market. Virginia, good morning. Virginia?
Virginia: Huh? (rubbing her eyes) Sorry. Dozed off for a moment.
Grape: So, tell us about yourself. How long have you been working the overnight reporting shift?
Virginia: Oh, ten or twelve years. Wait, wait, it just seems that way. Seventeen months.
Grape: Sounds like you're counting the days.
Virginia: My contract is up in 152 days.
Grape: Doesn't sound like you want to renew.
Virginia: I want my life back.
Grape: So tell me about your typical day on the overnight shift.
Virginia: Well, I get here at eleven thirty when the evening people are going home. Then I sit by the scanner waiting for something to happen.
Grape: Can't you do something other than scanner stories?
Virginia: Well, they told me that when they hired me, but who the heck is available for an interview in the middle of the night? The only non-scanner story I've done is Black Friday. I'll tell you, the opening at K-Mart was a real thrill.
Grape: You just got off your shift. What did you do?
Virginia: Car wreck at one a-m. Then a live shot at the top of the show at six telling people there had been a car wreck five hours ago and it was all cleaned up and wouldn't affect their commute.
(At this point our breakfast arrives and Virginia tears into her pancakes.)
Grape: Hungry?
Virginia: You kidding? You're always hungry on this shift. You snack during the night, then you eat breakfast, go home, take a nap, wake up, eat lunch, take another nap, eat dinner, go back to sleep. Gained ten pounds on this shift.
Grape: I've heard some people say that being off in the daytime gives you lots of time to get things done.
Virginia: Yeah, if you want to go to the dry cleaners every day. I mean seriously, how much time during the week do you need to run errands?
Grape: So how's your life away from the station?
Virginia: Ha. I nice man took me to dinner Friday night and I was so tired I did a header into a bowl of lobster bisque.
Grape: Please don't do that now. I don't think you'd look good covered in syrup.
Virginia: I'm good. Sugar high.
Grape: So the social life...
Virginia: Social life? What social life? I'm always tired, parties start when I'm going to bed and my dates think I'm bored with them because I fall asleep during dinner. Then on the weekend I want to sleep late but I wake up at four in the morning anyway. By the time Sunday rolls around I can't fall asleep and then I'm exhausted on my first workday of the week.
Grape: So, bottom line, your advice to any reporter offered an overnight job is...
Virginia: Unless it is in a great station or a way to get your foot in the door at a network, leave skid marks when you are offered this job. No stories for your resume tape, no social life, and at this rate I'm going to put someone's eye out when the button on these jeans finally gives up the ghost.
Grape: Thank you for your honestly, Virginia.
Virginia. No problem. You gonna eat your bacon?
1 comment:
I've never heard of an overnight reporter. Most morning show reporters come in at 3 or 4 a.m. and work until noon or 12:30.
(That includes me for the entire week that I lasted doing it.)
The shift still stinks but it is possible to get resume material and it's also good practice for live shots because you might do half a dozen of them each day.
Any station bringing a reporter in at 11:30 p.m. to begin a shift is wasting resources.
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