Almost off
Posted: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 5:06 PM by Barbara Raab
Filed Under:
Brian Williams
By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor
I spent the day recovering from something of a train wreck of an outing last night -- I made a ton of mistakes during the broadcast (calling the Tropical Storm Eduardo and not Eduard, putting Basra 3 miles from Baghdad and not 300 -- and of course I KNEW BETTER than to make such sloppy errors) which I can only chalk up to a lack of concentration -- and way too much going on during the 23.5 hours when we're not actually on the air each day.
As a practical matter, while most of our broadcasts go smoothly, I hate the rocky ones. While we fixed all flubs for subsequent feeds, the first one always feels awful once it's out there beyond retrieval.
We're in the final hours before our departure for China, which means tonight I empty the suitcase I had packed for Iran, and Berlin before that.
Earlier today, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric and I taped an appearance on Larry King Live for this evening. We had a great time and I recommend it -- it's all for a good cause: our combined efforts in fighting cancer -- the live 3-network special from Los Angeles on September 5th. It seems so far away now -- it will arrive, given our travel schedule in the interim, with a gallop.
Off to concentrate (for a change) on tonight's broadcast. Thank you for joining us.