Do you want to tell Don Lemon he has to work or should I?
News loves to break out on Friday afternoon.
ITEM: Kate Middleton releases video explaining she has cancer,
Check your watch. It’s 6pm on a Friday in London. What better time for Kate Middleton to end three months of silence about KateGate?
This timing was kind of annoying. I had spent Friday morning writing the weekend episodes of Palace Intrigue, and had some great KateGate Conspiracy stuff ready to go.
If you’re wondering about pre-taping a daily…. yeah. We do. (And from listening, it seems like the New York Times “The Daily” does too sometimes, not a dig at all, just is.)
It’s fine. Like we say, “If the Queen dies we will do a bonus episode.” We did a bonus episode.
In this case, it was during the 1pm hour Eastern Daylight Time, and the host of Palace Intrigue Mark Francis called me and asked if I had seen the news. Nope. I had been out for a run since the work for the week was done. I told him I’d be home in 5 minutes, I went straight to the laptop and gathered some material, and the bonus episode was out within 15 minutes of the news. Then I went to work on figuring out what Saturday would be.
ITEM: MLB opens investigation after allegations that Shohei Ohtani's interpreter was involved in gambling scandal.
Check your watch. 6pm Friday. Funny how that happens. During the NCAA Tournament. Odd they didn’t choose to do it two days earlier when the Dodgers were playing in the showcase Seoul Series.
If I’m baseball I’d actually be upset that people aren’t talking more about this. The only arguable superstar that baseball has (it has lots of good players, but nobody who cuts through popular culture the way say Derek Jeter, or Reggie Jackson, or Steve Garvey and Pete Rose did) - the only arguable superstar involved in a possible scandal and here’s what Bill Simmons is going with.
And here’s what Pardon My Take went with
So MLB if you were hoping people were ignoring it, they did! Your sport is in trouble guys, and remember Deflategate didn’t exactly make the NFL less popular, it got them six months of daily coverage. I digress.
This all gets back to taking out the trash, a phrase popularized by the TV show The West Wing back in Season 1. As seen in this clip, Donna arrives with Josh's takeout and inquires about "Take Out the Trash Day." Josh elucidates that it's the designated day for the White House to unleash a barrage of unfavorable stories, aiming for them to get lost amidst the deluge of news. It's strategically chosen as Fridays, as Saturdays witness minimal readership of newspapers.
Which brings us to Don Lemon.
I have a running joke with an industry friend in which when I see news break I will text him “do you want to tell Don Lemon he has to work tonight, or shall I?” (This goes back to the days of Don being the main anchor on CNN, but the joke also worked with Brian Williams or these days you could use Jake Tapper or someone.)
A lot of news comes out on Friday. Often scheduled as trash, but sometimes regular old breaking news. A country gets invaded. Someone dies. A court case involving a NYC Rich Guy turned politician. We gotta cover this…you call Brian Williams and let him know we need him to drive back up from the Jersey Shorehouse to sit at the desk until 2am.
Pay attention to how the networks cover things. Something breaks at 2:35pm on Tuesday when we’re all at work and it’s BREAKING NEWS time. The same story happens on a Saturday morning, not so much. (Look back to the shoe bomber for a notable example of this.) The vibe is usually, “Well, do we really need to cover this?” Look I get it, we’re all human, I also want to spend Saturday at Brian Williams’ shorehouse, but sometimes we have to work.
The next time a big story breaks, check your watch. Then see what the networks do. If it’s between 6pm Friday and Monday morning, especially in the summer, the answer will be not much.