One would have had to get up pretty early in the morning to get ahead of the TIME staff members who worked on this week's cover story about the three network morning shows. Reporter-Researcher Elaine Dutka, for instance, rose in inky blackness to interview CBS' Charles Kuralt on the set of his program Sunday Morning, and again after he had become the daily host of Morning a few weeks later. Says Dutka: "Those hours were pretty disorienting. I'd be finished with my reporting at 9 a.m., when much of the rest of the world was just beginning its day."

Over at ABC, the day was equally nascent when Correspondent Janice Simpson interviewed Good Morning America's David Hartman. For a box that accompanies the story, Correspondent Mary Cronin tracked Hartman through a day in the life of a morning-show host, an ordeal that begins at 3:45 a.m. Cronin also interviewed Host Tom Brokaw and the rest of the dawn patrol at NBC'S Today show. One frustrating morning she awoke especially early to catch a ride into the studio in Jane Pauley's limousine. It was sent to the wrong address. Pauley got to work on time that day, but Cronin was forced to hail a cab. Says she: "Getting up at that hour must be very difficult to get used to. I kept waking up all night worrying what time it was."

Associate Editor Gerald Clarke, who suggested and wrote the story, claims it takes him "about three hours and a quart of coffee" to become fully functional in the morning. So to prepare for his story he used the new video-recorder technology to catch all three morning programs, and all 40 winks. Says Clarke: "I've been blinking through the shows for years, but this time I set the timer on my video recorder and watched them later."

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