Instead of working 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I'll now come in at seven in the morning and leave around eleven. The idea behind starting at 7 a.m. is to be able to produce breaking news segments the morning of the show (rather than several days before as is usually the case). A good example of this is the terrorist attacks in Norway. I found out about the attacks a few minutes before 8 a.m., and after a few minutes discussing the event with our host and executive producer, I was on the phone with relatives in Norway trying to track down someone who could tell us what was going on there. Thanks to Kristian Foden-Vencil, a reporter at OPB who's half-Norwegian, we ended up getting in touch with a man who was only 300 meters away from where the bomb went off. We had him on the show and he told us what it felt and sounded like. Awareness of the event to a completely produced segment in under an hour.
Granted, big events like that don't happen every day, nor do they always happen at a time that would allow us to cover them on our show. But as Dave pointed out the other day, we're a live show, and we ought to take advantage of it. I won't be putting together a news topper (a five or ten minute discussion on breaking news) every morning, but I'll certainly try. My plan is to spend 15 minutes each morning checking out the news and identifying possible leads. If something comes together I'll call my executive producer and see if she's interested. If it works out we'll be showing that Think Out Loud can turn around current, engaging discussions on a dime. That's the idea, anyway.