Local news station KQBX announced it will air ‘live, wall-to-wall’ coverage of the November 1 clock change, broadcasting from a studio ‘lit like a casino at 2 a.m.’ with a countdown clock, a panel of experts, and what the station calls ‘fall-back correspondents’ stationed at area clocks.
‘This is the biggest temporal event of the fall,’ said news director Chip Mallory. ‘Bigger than the spring-forward, which we frankly dropped the ball on. This time we have graphics. We have a countdown. We have a man standing next to a grandfather clock in a windbreaker.’
The broadcast will feature live cutaways to the Municipal Clock-Fall-Back Committee’s command center, the Microwave Clock Reset Hotline (‘for the human drama’), and a VCR collector’s living room, where 14 VCRs will be reset ‘in real time, which will take a while.’
Meteorologist Sunny Delgado will provide ‘darkness updates’ throughout the night, reporting live as the 5 p.m. hour ‘goes dark in real time, which is just the sun setting, but we’ll make it dramatic.’
The station has also commissioned an original theme song, ‘Fall Back (The Encore Hour),’ which Mallory described as ‘a power ballad about time, loss, and the snooze button.’
‘We considered not covering it,’ Mallory admitted. ‘But then we remembered: it’s 2 a.m., everyone’s awake anyway because their circadian rhythms are destroyed. It’s basically prime time.’
Join the conversation
Load Facebook comments to read and reply using your Facebook account.