Freaky Friday Frenzy

We're trying something new on The Screen Savers: having members of the studio audience introduce the show. I was a little skeptical when Paul proposed the idea at our morning meeting (after all we are trained professionals) but last night Luke and Sabra did such a great job that all my fears were allayed. An interesting side note: after we taped them opening the show Luke said, "do you remember me?" I did a double take. He's 24 now, but when he was 15 he used to be a big fan of my radio show. He'd call in all the time, and even joined me in the studio a few times. He was such a regular caller that he had his own signature sound effect. It was great seeing him again. Despite the auspicious start, the show ended very weirdly last night. We divide the program into seven segments, A through G, each separated by commercials. We ended the F block with Megan's download of the day, went to commercial, then got the word that the show was over. We've run late before, but never that late. There was considerable bafflement and aimless milling about when Steve, the floor director, yelled "clear" right after the F block. "Clear" means you're done - it's ok to take off the microphone, earpiece, hairpiece, whatever. But we weren't done. We hadn't even said good-bye. What happened to the G block? (Or as Kate used to call it, "the G spot.") Apparently the line producer had mistimed things and we ended up a minute or two short. The folks upstairs in Master Control have always done their best to accommodate our oddball timings, but they're supposed to go to Tech Live at 8:00:00 PM no matter what, even if we're in mid-sentence. And, of course, the worst thing would be to run so long that we miss a commercial. We didn't miss any commercials this time, but not getting to end the show is weird. After about 15 minutes of confused babbling, we collected the studio audience, sat them back down, and taped a good-bye which they'll tack onto the re-plays. I guess they'll cut out the Download of the Day to make room. That's one thing I'll miss about the re-plays. We'll just have to get it right the first time!