I’m nearly asleep at my station around 07:461, and CBS’s The Early Show is failing to keep me interested. I’m a graveyard shift Master Control operator (MCO) for the local CBS affiliate, CBS7. I’d normally be gone after 07:00, but the morning shift MCO has jury duty, so I’m covering the next two hours of his shift until his jury duty is over. At that time, the “Week of Wishes” segment is playing, but I can hardly keep myself awake; I’m usually asleep at home by now. All the morning shift local news production staffers that would normally be in the Control Room are on cigarette break outside. Aside from the steady drone of audio from The Early Show, the whole place is quiet.
A “Special Report” intro plays that I completely miss, and host Bryant Gumbel breaks in for a moment, then footage of a smoking crater in the North Tower of the World Trade Center starts playing. Black clouds billow from the impact site like a knife wound bleeding upwards. I didn’t catch anything Gumbel said, but I’m roused from my reverie for a few moments trying to figure out if what I’m seeing is real or a clip from a movie. If that’s a clip from a movie that got played by accident, I think, some poor schmuck at CBS National just lost his job.
My unasked question is answered moments later when the production crew bursts in from outside like a dam had burst and everyone takes their customary stations like seasoned combat veterans heading for their combat posts. They’re followed by our shift supervisor, Eddie, a former firefighter, the strands of his glorious dirty blond mullet streaming behind him like a cape as he runs in screaming:
“We’re going to war! We’re going to war!”
I’m wide awake now, and I’m struggling to process exactly what the Hell is going on in New York as an airplane flies into view and slams into the side of the South Tower. My brain flips through my internal Rolodex of emotional responses, but in the end, all I can do is laugh and laugh because I literally don’t know how else to respond. It’s all too surreal, like a scene from the movie Independence Day, and I’m just waiting for the aliens to blow up the White House next.
Thirty minutes later as we’re still scrambling for more information, another plane hits the Pentagon, and I’m not laughing anymore.
- Most American television stations keep track of time by using Military Time. I first picked up the habit while working at CBS7, and it’s never left me.[↩]
