Typical Day
Marion "Tex" Ballhog—a sportscaster for a regional TV station about an hour west of Detroit—hears his alarm go off at 4:30AM and he shoots out of bed, ready to start his day. After a quick shower and shave, he grabs the morning paper and heads into the station.
Somehow Tex is able to drive, eat a donut, drink a cup of coffee, and listen to sports radio all without causing any major traffic issues—or he's able to do that today, anyway.
By the time he gets into work at around 5:30AM, Tex is pretty well informed about all of the major developments in the world of sports since he laid his head to his pillow seven hours earlier. He dusts some powdered sugar off his suit coat and drops by his office for a quick refresher.
The workday officially begins with a 6:00AM production meeting. Here the morning's headlines are established and the stories to be covered are fleshed out. Once the meeting gets out, Tex retires to his office so he can go over his notes and begin to plan out his commentary. He also double-checks his tie for any missed donut or coffee spillage.
At 7:58AM, the make-up woman does her last-looks and wipes a little bit of powder off Tex's forehead. Good thing too, because at 8:00AM it's lights, camera, action as he goes on the air.
For the next two hours, Tex covers all the day's most gripping local sports stories, as well as a lead-in of national coverage on the Olympic hero who was caught using performance-enhancing monkey spit. Tex isn't sure how that one works, but he goes bananas over all the monkey-related puns he gets to use.
At 10:00AM, after the second hour of news has wrapped, Tex packs up and heads out of the studio to interview a local linebacker from the city's home team. It's for a segment that'll be airing later that evening entitled "Why Do They Have to Hit People So Hard?"
Some of the other sportscasters like to phone it in or rely on their assistants to do most of the actual research and interviews for them, but Tex actually enjoys going out and meeting the athletes. This is why he got into the biz in the first place—not to smile into a camera and look pretty.
After a fairly routine interview, followed by a much more exciting lunch—a cobb salad is always exciting—Tex is back in the studio to film the afternoon show at 2:00PM. This one is taped instead of being shot live, so he can be a little looser with his flubs; they'll just fix it in post-production.
By 3:10PM (there were a few flubs), the afternoon show is wrapped and Tex is done shooting for the day. Before leaving the studio, he stops by his office and hops on his sports blog to write a couple hundred words.
He knows that sportscasters come and go and he could be out like yesterday's garbage at a moment's notice, so he works hard to endear himself to the masses—hopefully he'll provide them with something they don't feel they can just get from the next person; a true connection.
Now he'll head home and figure out what to do with the rest of his free time. Just kidding, he knows exactly what he'll be doing: watching the game and some reruns of SportsCenter.
It's part of the job, but he'd probably be doing it even if he'd become a tax accountant. What can we say; Tex really likes sports.