News anchor falls asleep during wxcast

[Bureau Chief]

http://kutv.com/video/?id=24552@kutv.dayport.com

At least the station is handling it with a sense of humor rather than pretending it didnt happen!

[ISTHISTHINGON?]

I once had the morning weather guy fall asleep on the show. My co-anchor and I turned to cross talk, and snnnooozzzzzeeeeee. Funny stuff.

[Laughing Angel]

How in the world does this happen? It takes a certain amount of adrenaline to anchor a live show. I'm so amped up when I'm on the air I couldn't fall asleep if I tried.

[Pregnant Reporter]

I anchored the morning show in small market middle america for awhile, and we had a pre-taped segment called "Ag Watch."

I'm sure nobody needs an explanation of how Ag Watch could put you to sleep, but it was a bonafide farm dude with a bushy mustache and a huge hat sitting on a hay bale giving way too much detail about sorgham prospects and cow vitamins.

Anyway, Ag Watch ran between 4:00-6:00, and every.single.day. the prompter operator fell asleep. I never had prompter after Ag Watch.

Since he was also the overnight engineer, he didn't answer to anybody in news and the chief engineer didn't care. Finally they broke down and bought me a foot pedal.

[Brain Cramp]

I used to work with an anchor who would lay his head on the desk during every commercial break. Sometimes he'd fall into a dead sleep and the camera guys would have to yell at him to wake up. More than a few times the camera caught him lifting his head up off the desk as he'd say "Welcome back to Live at Five!"
He was also an alcoholic who drank on the job so he may have been passing out during commercial breaks.

[Signature on File]

That was about as fake as I have seen.

[Fargin Icehole]

Fake (and stupid).

I had an anchor fall asleep during the 6pm weather once. She got a good elbow to the ribs from the main anchor.

How stupid can you be? :rolleyes:

[Buck T. Trend]

I used to direct (and later produce) a morning newscast. More than once I had to get in an anchor's IFB coming back from weather or a break and tell them to "WAKE UP!"

I've also had camera ops, prompter ops, audio ops, and even a show producer fall asleep during segments.

I'm not perfect... I got caught myself taking a catnap once or twice during the weather segment.

[Tripe Face]

Once, decades ago when I was an altar boy, I fell asleep during the priest's sermon. It was six am and I was beat. My brother was the other altar boy and could have smacked me... but he let me snooze away.

Good thing it was 6am weekday mass, so only about 2 dozen old people were there... half of them were probably asleep too!

[MitchCumstein]

My first gig, producing as a young buck just a few months out of college, an AM show. It was a bear for all of us, up and into work at 2:45am, also produced the noon show. Home by 1pm.

Anyway, one day the mikes are just dead, no audio as the anchors start. The audio guy is across the hall, in his little glass room facing the studio, separate room from the TD, Director and me. I run to the little room, and the door is freaking locked, I look closely to see our audio guy, not only sleeping, but with a string of drool just pouring into our audio board.

He was some long haired DJ who actually overnighted at some radio station, and then came in and ran audio for our newscasts.

I banged on the door and woke him up, he jumped up like there were rats nibbling at his feet, and potted up the audio and the saliva-soaked board actually still worked.

[News Is Broken]

Hey will you guys be quiet? I'm trying to sleep over here. graemlins/sleep.gif

[McCovey Cove Returns]

One of the more interesting incidents I saw was a couple jobs ago. Our morning show had just launched, new folks and what not. They cut to a two shot and the male anchor was staring off into god knows where, not even squared up to camera. His eyes were half open, the guy had dozed off and was supposed to read the next story. His co-anchor's reaction was priceless.