Twenty minutes at 6:00 AM EST in Denver–cool. Half an hour at 7:00 AM taped in NY–host is caught in traffic (all this wonderful rain). 4 minutes at 7:30 AM taped in Philadelphia–cool. 10 minutes live at 7:50 AM in Hartford–they screwed up the schedule, can’t do. Fifteen minutes live at 8:15 AM in Seattle–cool. Twenty minutes live in Seattle at 8:30 AM–they thought it was for 8:30 AM Pacific time. So far I’m batting .500, which is better than Sammy Sosa, even with his cork bat.

Of course little of this occurred in the eighteenth century because the temptations to schedule precisely were so much less. When it took three days to ride from New York to Albany, and three days to two weeks to sail the same distance (depending on winds in the Hudson), and twenty to eighty days to cross the North Atlantic–well, the producers just had to stand by for a long time.