My brief career as a TV “talent”

I slept late this morning. For the past few months I’ve been getting up early on Thursday mornings to do a two-minute (at most) television spot with my former partner, Spokesman-Review restaurant reviewer/wine columnist Leslie Kelly. But Leslie has departed for a brighter, or at least hotter, future .

Here’s what I will be missing:

6:30 a.m.: Arrive at KHQ studios . Use my special pass to get through three locked doors. Step past the busy control booth to the large news room, which is eerily empty, and quiet, but for a handful of camera operators and technicians and weatherman George Maupin running back and forth. Maupin smiles and says hi.

6:40 a.m.: Begin to get nervous as air time approaches, especially when I notice that, once again, I have misplaced the ear piece that I was given just before our first show. I have to beg someone, anyone, to find me a replacement.

6:47 a.m.: I am desperately trying to lace the microphone cord up through my shirt, clip the radio remote onto my belt and another bulky piece of electronics into my pocket and adjust the volume to hear the producer give me last-minute instructions. Leslie, meanwhile, is sitting next to me on our little movie-type set (which actually is set before a big blue screen that, on the television screen, makes it look as if we’re sitting in a theater). She is telling me what she is going to say so that I can play along. I grunt my reply.

6:51: After Trooper Bob (Pat? Mike?) gives us the road conditions, Dave Cotton and Shelley Monahan — who, I have to add, are sitting in another room, completely out of sight —give us our intro. And we’re on …

6:53: … and just like that we’re off. The 90 to 120 seconds have passed as if we were on the Millennium Falcon and Chewbacca had flipped the hyperdrive switch. We hear a disembodied “thank you” from the control room, we strip off the electronics, say goodbye to reporter Sean Owsley (a genuinely nice guy) and leave.

7:01: We’re drinking coffee, maybe at Joe’s, and laughing.

But no more .