Our Senior Producer, Charlie Moore, was out sick yesterday so I was in the front row and since the title of this isn't "Blog from the Front Row" (That just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?) I didn't have an entry last night. Sorry.

Last night Charlie was sick and tonight Charlie's panel was sick, electronically speaking. About two minutes before the show started Charlie said "hello" to Anderson and Anderson said "hello" back except Charlie couldn't hear him.  That's not a good thing just as the show is about to go to air.

Compounding the situation was the fact that only one of the two preproduced pieces needed in the first seven minutes of the show was done. We have a big digital screen on the "NASA" wall in the control room that allows us to quickly see which pieces are ready for air and which aren't. When something is pink it means it's not ready. I don't like pink. It turns white when the piece is ready. I like white.

Charlie came up with the workaround of swapping seats with the line producer until engineering could reset his panel. (It happened to me once before too when I was in that seat. Engineering claims that Charlie and I both emit some sort of electromagnetic field that shorts out the panel. I know nothing of electrical engineering but that doesn't sound plausible to me.) 

While he was handling that mini-crisis, I checked with the tapes producer and satellite lines coordinator who both assured me that the missing piece that was slated to go to air in about 6 minutes would be there. It was coming from DC and was being handled by a producer, Katie Ross, who they swore had never missed a deadline. (There's a lot of trust required in this business.)

Katie still hasn't missed a deadline because at just about the time that Charlie was back in his seat with a fully functional panel, the last pink line on the NASA-like board turned white.

See you tomorrow. Maybe.

Sean Yates, Sr. Producer, AC360