For Spokane, it’s prime time at 4 a.m.

Pirates, dancers and the mayor were among the crowd gathered before daylight Friday at Riverfront Park for a chance in the spotlight of national television.

At least 250 people gathered at 4 a.m. along the Spokane River, holding signs, cheering and hoping to appear on “The Early Show,” which CBS broadcasts live on the East Coast, but three hours later in the West. Spokane was the eighth stop on the show’s 16-city “Great American Vacation” summer tour.

The carnival-like crowd gathered under floodlights next to a camper that is part of the convoy “Early Show” weatherman Dave Price is using for the tour. Price repeatedly led the audience in shouting “What’s going on in your area?” and he delivered the national weather along with Spokane trivia – about the clock tower and Expo ‘74, for instance.

Signs held up to the cameras ranged from a neon green “I Love You Kristina” placard to “God Bless Our Troops” to “Dave, can you make me famous?” One early riser held a campaign sign for a judicial candidate, even though most of the show’s national audience couldn’t care less about the race.

Price sipped from a glass of local wine.

“It’s not just for breakfast anymore,” he said. “Cheers, here’s to Spokane.”

Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession called the event a “wonderful thing for us.”

“Spokane, to a significant degree, depends on national recognition,” he said. “Tourism is a major part of what we do here.”

Hession may have been one of the few people present for whom the hour wasn’t much of an issue. He is known to show up at City Hall about the time most people are getting out of bed.

Sporting an oversize pirate mask, Whitworth College senior Renee Huggins joined eye-patch-wearing senior Teresa Zeitler and several other students in a contingent supporting the Whitworth Pirates. They slept about three hours Thursday night. But it paid off: Both appeared in a crowd shot in the national broadcast.

Ben Mancke sat near the Carrousel, playing his guitar. He said that in retrospect he might better have spent the morning doing chores.

“I’m trying to promote a disc I printed, and I thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell I would get to play or something” on television, he said. That plan didn’t pan out, so Mancke put his guitar away and joined the crowd.

Danielle Molle, a member of the dance team for the Spokane Shock arena football team, was in the crowd with other dancers and the team’s mascot, Shox the Fox.

“I think most people pulled all-nighters,” she said.

Price culminated the show by awarding a vacation to Bermuda to surprised Joyce Bergman, who recently retired after 33 years as a teacher’s assistant at Orchard Center Elementary School in the West Valley School District. Bergman said she has never flown or traveled beyond the Northwest.

Bergman was nominated by fellow teacher’s assistant Rikki Andrews, who got her friend to attend the event by saying that the school was receiving a grant.

“She’s awesome, and she loves kids so much,” Andrews said. “And there is no one more deserving of a vacation.”