I spent awhile Election Night in the newsroom of KGTV in San Diego. They set me up on a computer at the Assignment Desk so I could check out the election returns coming in from the Secretary of State's office.
They had the police scanner on, the fire scanner on and various video feeds. Complete sensory overload. I asked the guy at the assignment desk how he gets any work done in that environment. He said after awhile you learn to filter it all out.
At about 10:15 p.m. they led me onto the set during a commercial break with news broadcast in progress. The results weren't looking too good for us but I was ready to give my analysis. They had a representative from the Yes campaign on the set to and I was interested to hear his analysis of the results as well.
We came out of the commercial break and the two anchors started asking us questions. I quickly realized they weren't asking us about the results, instead they were expecting us -- two hours after the polls closed -- to debate the issue!
I was so not mentally prepared for that. For half a second I thought about telling them how stupid it was to expect us to debate the pros and cons of a ballot measure after the polls were closed.
But like a good trained monkey I hit my mark and went for the key points. Maybe a bitter version of the key points, but the key points nonetheless.
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