To Dream, Perchance to Sleep
Morning TV news shows have one thing in common: they are all created by the chronically sleep-deprived.
For much of the last forty-plus years I lived my dream of working in television, anchoring what are commonly known as “morning shows.” These pre-sunrise news programs feature hosts who are perpetually glib, smiling and peppy, men and women who energetically help us wipe the sleep from our eyes and start our days on the right foot.
What most viewers don’t realize is that these on-camera professionals, though surprisingly coiffed, personable and animated for so early in the morning, almost always have a common and ever-present thought permanently embedded in their brains: If I don’t get some sleep soon, I’m going to collapse.
That’s because the morning “show” usually involves an overnight “shift.” For several years on The Weather Channel I co-anchored “First Outlook,” the initial program out of the starting block every day beginning at 4:00 AM. That meant I had to be at work by 2:30 to prepare for the show, which meant my alarm clock was set for one AM.
That’s not the morning. That’s the middle of the night.
“First Outlook” ended at 7 AM, and after I completed several other daily duties, I was usually headed home by about 9:00.
“What a great schedule!” some of my friends remarked. “You have the entire day free!” And I would have had the entire day, except for one detail—a body’s requirement for sleep. Unfortunately those of us on an overnight schedule never seemed to get enough of it. Because I actually enjoyed my school-aged kids and wanted to be around them, going to bed at five in the afternoon was out of the question. So instead of one eight-hour period of sleep, I slept in two shifts of three to four hours each. This allowed me to nap in the afternoon, then wake up and have dinner with my family and help with homework until about 9:00. But ask anyone who sleeps that kind of split schedule and they’ll tell you that spending a total of eight hours in bed usually doesn’t add up to eight hours of shuteye.
Even with a sleep mask and ear plugs, I never found it easy to rest during the day. In addition to the daylight and noise that inevitably leaked through, my mind could never completely disengage from the long list of tasks I could be doing and probably should be doing while the sun was shining. And when my second sleep shift began at nine PM I could never escape the clamor the rest of my family made watching TV (complete with surround sound and subwoofer) and talking (or arguing) at normal levels.
Like so many others with similar jobs, I tried to turn a blind eye to the countless articles in health magazines about how sleep deprivation kills people. Heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, anxiety, memory loss, a weakened immune system and mood swings are all expected results of such a routine. For me, some of those maladies became a reality. Heart disease? Check. Anxiety? Yeah, probably. Memory loss? Maybe. I’ve forgotten.
There were other threats even more real. It sounds like hyperbole, but consider my “regular” schedule for years at a local TV station in Seattle: Three days a week I did my weather reports on the early morning newscast, then stayed and did the hour-long noon newscast. With a little luck, I was out of the building by 2pm, which usually meant a ten or eleven-hour workday. On Saturday and Sunday, my shift turned 180 degrees. On those days I was responsible for the evening newscasts, which meant coming in at 2:00 in the afternoon and working until midnight. On my days off I tried to coax my body into a “normal” sleep schedule to accommodate my family’s waking hours. The result was that my confused body clock never really knew what time it was. I often found myself wide awake at night but drowsy in the middle of my on-air shift or driving home from work. Coffee had no effect and sometimes even made it worse. I was constantly counting the minutes until I would be able to sleep again.
That’s when it got dangerous. It was my job to pick up the kids from school, about 20 minutes from our house. That was just enough time to drift into dreamland behind the wheel. At least once a week I pulled onto the shoulder to rouse myself with a quick jog around the car, and I’m convinced that more than once, angels worked overtime to wake me up a split second before I ran off the road or plowed into the car in front of me.
I’ll never forget the day I fully realized how confused my body was. It was the dead of winter in Seattle when gray skies and early sunsets often darken the landscape well before five in the afternoon. One day I woke up suddenly from a dead sleep, my eyes immediately focusing through the darkness on my alarm clock. It read 4:40. Aghast and instantly awake, I dialed the TV station’s number on my bedside phone and punched in the extension of the morning show’s producer. A woman who worked the dayside shift answered, “KIRO-TV news.”
Panic in my voice, I squawked, “I overslept! Tell everyone I’ll be there as soon as I can!”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then the producer, obviously grasping what had happened, calmed me in a soft and even voice, “Nick, it’s 4:40 PM. Not AM. It’s afternoon, not morning. Go back to sleep.”
No one else at the station had a schedule quite like mine. When I finally got the courage to tell my boss (a 9-to-5 worker) about the personal problems my hours were causing, the reply I received was, “We do newscasts in the morning, at noon, in the evening and late at night. So, that’s when you’ll work.” There was no sympathy, no real comprehension; and I fear all I really succeeded in doing was acquiring a label for myself of “complainer.”
Some of my friends probably saw me that way too. During the years I anchored the early morning show for The Weather Channel, I was a part of a midweek evening Bible study group with some of my church friends. One evening I confessed to a group member that I had endured a particularly hard week, that I was exceptionally tired, and that I would have to skip that night’s study. “I’m tired too,” my friend replied, “but I’m going to drag myself there. And if I can, you should too.”
I wanted to tell him, “The difference in our situations is that eight hours from now you’ll be snuggled in your warm bed sawing logs, while I have to be awake and at my absolute best in front of about a million people.” But I resisted. He wouldn’t have understood anyway.
None of these stories will come as a surprise to those who have weathered similar schedules. Amy Sweezey, a friend and colleague who recently retired from a local TV station in Orlando, wrote on Facebook about her years of doing morning TV news programs. She related a statement she often heard from well-meaning friends: “Oh, (after so many years) you must be used to it by now,” they told her.
“Nope,” Amy wrote, “I’m not used to it. It doesn’t get easier. My body doesn’t adjust. I’m just tired. All the time. I live with a sort of fog over my life. Anyone who has ever worked this kind of shift ‘gets it.’ And those who haven't, don't.”
So true. My bosses didn’t get it. My friends didn’t get it. Even my wife and children didn’t completely get it.
Does this mean I didn’t like my job? Did I really undergo forty years of torture in order to make a living? Of course not. Lest anyone think I am writing this with a “poor pitiful me” attitude, please know that I loved television. I am grateful that for more than four decades I worked in the kind of worthwhile and gratifying profession that, as a young man, I had always dreamed about. And not all of those years were spent on the morning show either. But like so many people before me, I have learned that TV broadcasting is no “glamour” job. It does have small moments of glamour, but because of the odd hours, those truly dedicated to the craft have to work extra hard to enjoy a productive family life and meaningful friendships outside work. It’s a fact I wish were better understood by viewers, by broadcast executives, and also by starry-eyed broadcasting students who have the same dream I did. Make no mistake; the profession has its rewards, but I can honestly tell you this: sleep usually isn’t one of them.
© Nick Walker 2020
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Powering through sleep deprivation in the early 2000s. Nick and Kim Cunningham on “First Outlook.”
