CBS DFW MORNING NEWSCAST

AM3:08

It’s almost too quiet for a newsroom. Only the clacking of keyboards can be heard as anchors, producers and news writers prepare the lineup for the morning broadcast.

“Was she the passenger in the car? The woman who died?” asks one news writer who is reporting on a fatal traffic accident.

“Last we heard, she was the driver,” responds senior producer Brenda Lawson, barely looking up from her screen. The mood is subdued, like almost any office toward the end of the workday. By this time, much of the team has already been at work for five hours chasing stories and writing copy for the 4:30 a.m. newscast.

A small news team works out of the CBS headquarter in our neighborhood on Northwest Highway; this particular broadcast is filmed in a studio in Fort Worth.

“As long as stupid people keep doing stupid things, we’ve always got work,” laughs field photographer James Pultz, keeping one ear on the police scanner. “You know the codes that make you stand up because they’ve found a dead body or something.”

It’s one of many tricks of the trade he’s learned from more than a decade spent pursuing news stories. He reads between the lines of chatter on the scanner like some people read tealeaves. “You can always tell when the cops shoot someone because it gets really intense, and then it’s quiet,” he says, adding that there is usually no mention of the shooting, just an officer saying, “confirm.”

“It took me years to figure that out,” he says.

AM3:20

All those stories are filtered to Karen Borta, who at this moment is wrapped up in a parka with wooly Ugg boots looking more like a sorority sister than the lead anchor of a major network news market. When the cameras roll, she’ll shed her winter-wear in favor of a sharp white dress and sleek stiletto heels, which matched with her authoritative voice makes this hometown girl one of the more popular anchors in the metroplex. But at this early hour, it’s all about comfort and staying awake, which explains the station’s extensive coffee offerings.

The morning shift doesn’t bother Borta –in fact, she prefers it. After 18 years on the nightly news, she was sick of missing family dinners and her teenagers’ sporting events. When CBS offered her the morning slot, she jumped on the opportunity, paying little mind to the 2 a.m. wake up call.

“For me, I have a husband and three teenage kids. I was never with them,” she says. “This is ideal for me.”

She is one of the few who seems to have no complaints about the schedule this news team is forced to keep. She gets home in the late morning after her broadcast, takes a nap, then enjoys the evening with her family, catches a couple more hours of sleep before heading to the studio from her Arlington home. Compared to the other producers and news writers huddled at their desks, Borta oozes peppiness, making it clear why she’s an on-air personality. AM3:47

With a flurry of fresh verve, meteorologist Scott Padgett enters the studio, already dressed in a crisp suit and a deep red tie. His energy is almost startling at this early hour as he beelines for his weather forecasting station in the corner of the television studio, a series of monitors displaying real time conditions that he studies to determine the forecast.

One has to ask, in an era where every smartphone tells you the weather by the hour, are television weathermen becoming passé? Not at all, Padgett says.

“Those [weather] apps work off an algorithm,” he says, which explains why it sometimes predicts rain when you go to bed, but you wake to sunny skies. “My challenge is to interpret those algorithms so you can understand the variables.”

It’s a challenge he doesn’t take lightly. He has a pet peeve when it comes to “shock value” news that makes mountains out of meteorological molehills.

“I’m not here to scare anyone,” he says. “I just want to make sure you and your family are safe.”

His own interest in weather was born from fear. As a child growing up in Illinois, he was petrified of the robust storms that sweep across the Midwest. To help him overcome that anxiety, Padgett’s father painstakingly explained weather phenomena to him, from the classic counting the number of beats between lightning and thunder, to watching the same daily forecasts Padgett now conducts. He was hooked. That, paired with his natural stage charisma, made his career choice easy.

S Hif T

“You never get used to the hours,” he laughs. “At this point, my friends all know not to call me after 8 p.m.”

AM4:05

You hear Chelsey Davis before you see her. The clack of her heels reverberates brightly on the long hallways toward the studio. Her wide smile and clear charisma gives her the