No Snooze Zone: The Insanely Early Morning Routines of America's Favorite Newscasters

Gayle King takes a 3:00 a.m. bubble bath, Robin Meade has a protein mug cake, and more morning routines of the news anchors who have the early shift.

While the rest of the world only wakes up at 3:07 a.m. to pee, Gayle King is already up and in the bath full of bubbles, taking in the morning news.

Morning news anchors operate in an entirely different world from the horde of nine-to-fivers. Not only are they fully awake at 3:00, 4:00 a.m., but they’re also competent in the brain, reporting, enunciating, and downright upbeat at that pitch-black hour. To fully wrap your brain around it, maybe pour some coffee first, and hear how five newscasters—Gayle King, Mika Brzezinski, Robin Meade, David Greene, and Mike Greenberg—pull it off:

Courtesy of CBS

“I don't think most people adjust to this schedule, but they know that this is the schedule, so there's no point in bitching and moaning about it because it's not gonna change. Courtesy of CBS.

Gayle King, CBS This Morning, on air from 6:00 - 8:00 a.m.

King’s alarm goes off at 3:20 a.m., but “I do two snoozes,” she said, before hitting the bath at 3:45. That’s right, “a nice bath with lots of bubbles.”

There’s no coffee, no food, just water: “I'm not hungry at 4 in the morning. The thought of eating is like, ewww.” She’s in the backseat of a car with CBS radio playing by 4:30 or 4:45 at the latest for a 6-minute commute to the station, which is on the same side of town as her apartment. “I've said to the doorman, ‘Listen, if you haven't seen me by 5:30, come up and knock on my door, call somebody, because something is wrong. Really wrong.’” So far, she’s never slept in.

Once at the station, there's an hour and a half in makeup "to look naturally cute." So she’ll have fresh fruit in the green room—zero points on Weight Watchers, which King is doing for the third time. “It's all about points,” she told me, and she gets 30 points a day (unless there’s cake around because “anything with icing is my heroin”). After taping, she’s off to her office at O magazine, where she works another full-day shift as editor at large, with normal eating hours, lunch between 12:30 and 2:00.

“I don't try to adjust to my schedule, I just want to live in the regular world with regular people. I'm not sitting here thinking, for me, it's actually 2 in the afternoon. No, no no. This shift is not for the majority of the people.”

Her ideal bedtime is around 10 p.m., but it’s often a lot later, as she averages between 4 and 5 hours of sleep a night.

“The schedule is dreadful, but I really love the job.”

Her co-host, Charlie Rose, is an entirely different story: “He probably wakes up after me, because Charlie Rose is naturally handsome.”

David Gilkey/NPR

David Greene, NPR’s Morning Edition, on air from 5:00 - 9:00 a.m.

2:46 a.m. Greene is one of those people who sets their alarm for very specific, yet entirely random, times. 2:46 just felt right. He wakes up, and runs into his wife, who might be just getting home from her shift at her restaurant, Compass Rose, in D.C. “2:46 to 3:00 might be the only time we actually see each other,” he said. If he has any food at home, it’s three or four Trader Joe’s ginger chews that “really wake me up.” He’s out the door in a cab by 3:30 at the latest, and has a 9-10 minute commute depending on whether or not they hit these two traffic lights that Greene knows a little too well: “[If the cab driver] is going at a nice, steady speed we make those lights—small victories when you're exhausted.”

At the studio at around 4:00, he’ll start with a chai tea and a microwaved mug omelet with egg whites and shredded cheese: “This is the sad part, I really look forward to it.” Once Morning Edition goes on air at 5:00, “I start pounding coffee.”

After the show ends, he has a Lara bar, goes to SoulCycle, and tries to get an afternoon nap in—not a 20 minute cat nap, more like two hours. Bed time is at 10 or 10:30.

Greene has been living this schedule for four years now, and like King, his love for the job overrules anything his body’s telling him. “It is hard and I constantly feel like I am wandering around the world in some sort of coma,” he said, “We've done some stories about the long term impact of sleep deprivation and getting consistently less than six hours of sleep and it's like really bad stuff, early onset Alzheimer's and heart disease. It's no joking matter. I try, but I also really struggle. I can't go to bed at 7:00 p.m. Once a month I'll sleep for like 13 hours and it feels amazing.”

“[Morning newscasters] probably sound like we're smokers or something. We know how bad this is, but we're doing it anyway because we're addicted to it and we like it. Did I just hear that coming out of my mouth? It doesn't sound good.”

Courtesy of HLN

Robin Meade has three alarm clocks staggered to make sure she never runs late. Okay, it happened once... Photo: Courtesy of HLN

Robin Meade, HLN’s Morning Express, 6:00 - 10:00 a.m.

“Here's the dirty little secret of female anchor hair code: When my hair is down, I got up at 2:45, because it's clean (because I need 15 extra minutes to wash it.) If my hair is half-up half down or in a chignon or braided, that means it's dirty, and I got up at 3:00,” laughed Meade, who’s on air for a solid six hours (with only two bathroom breaks!), five days a week.

At her home in Atlanta, she wakes up, showers, has a Keurig coffee with two Splendas, and maybe a little almond milk. During the show she’ll have a Quest protein bar. She also uses Quest’s flavored protein powders to make breakfast mug cakes (who knew there’d be so much mug cooking?!). “I'll do an egg, flavored protein powder, say it's peanut butter, and I'll put powdered peanut butter in there, coconut oil, Splenda or Stevia. Microwave, spray butter, voila! I'm eating cake in the morning, no carbs.”

Then a car picks her up at takes her to the studio, where “a Nascar pit crew” does her makeup. “I call it color by numbers. I joke that I care more about my brain than my face,” she said, because she spends a lot of the time in the makeup chair calling the producers with notes for the show, and the next thing she knows the crew has five minutes to do her face. “So then it's all hands on deck, just like that scene in Miss Congeniality."

Hopefully she’s home by around 1:00, and her day is done. She’ll have sleepytime tea at around 6:00 p.m., aiming to be in bed by 7:00, “7:00 would be a victory, 8:00 would be a victory. After's ugly. Melatonin is my friend. I do about 9 milligrams a night.” There’s a white noise maker, a sleep machine. And some serious blackout shades. Meanwhile, her husband is just getting home from his job, so “he's a bachelor every night,” said Meade. “I think it might be the key to why I have a great marriage.”

Courtesy of MSNBC

Note: The huge coffee.Courtesy of MSNBC

Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, 6:00 - 9:00 a.m.

Brzezinski’s alarm goes off anywhere between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m. She puts her contacts in, washes her face, brushes teeth, and gets into a car at 4:25 at the latest, with a pillow so she can sleep an extra 30 minutes.

The second the car rolls into 30 Rock, it’s coffee time. “It’s probably the fundamental task that is executed every morning before I do the show,” she said, “When the show started, I was extremely clear. I’m like, ‘Listen, I’ll do anything. I’ll go anywhere. I’ll sleep in the satellite truck, work under terrible circumstances, but I need my coffee, and I need it to be really strong.’”

The interns are told: “Don’t mess it up.” There’s a Starbucks in 30 Rock, who the team convinced to open earlier just so they could get Brzezinski’s coffee. They aim to have it ready for her by 4:45, 4:50, and they’ll delay it if they think it’s not going to be fresh enough. The interns do not want to get that wrong. “Everyone is so scared of me,” laughs Brzezinski, “I feel so bad. It’s extra hot, extra foam, red eye misto.” It almost goes without saying that it’s a Venti.

“Normal people eat breakfast at 8, so I try and keep my schedule like a normal person.” It’s a big bowl of Cheerios (“like a really big bowl”) and vanilla Chobani yogurt, mixed together. “I’ve been doing that for nine years.” That huge coffee is the only one she has all day. After the show is over, she goes for a run, has dinner between 6 and 7, and goes to bed around 10, ideally.

“[My life is] extremely regimented, in terms of diet, exercise. I’ve been criticized for that, but when you’re dealing with certain basic human functions being limited, like sleep, everything is impacted, and you have to overcompensate. You have to eat really well, and you have to take really good care of yourself. You have to drink a lot of water, and you have to exercise. If you don’t, then you let one thing fall apart, and then another does, and another does, and I feel like for me, what’s worked is to stay on a program.

I just push through. I really love what I do, so I just kind of focus on that, and try and keep going.”

Joe Faraoni / ESPN Images

Photo: Joe Faraoni / ESPN Images

Mike Greenberg, ESPN’s Mike and Mike, 6:00 -10:00 a.m.

“When you wake up as early in the morning as I do, you value every extra second that you have, says Greenberg. "I don't get up at 3:49, I get up at 3:50 because that's one more minute of sleep that I can get.”

Then he does a quick exercise of a few push-ups (“I wouldn’t call it a workout”) to get his blood flowing, showers, and reads emails. He gets into a car at 4:20 and has at least an hour on the road from his home to ESPN’s offices in Bristol, Connecticut, so they stop for coffee at a Dunkin' Donuts and he has some cereal he packed from home. Like Brzezinski, that’s his only coffee for the day. Once at the studios, he’s in the makeup chair by 5:30 and on air at 5:59:54.

At around 8:00, they have a break in the show, so he’ll have his second of the day’s four meals, maybe an egg white omelet with a side of avocado, or oatmeal. Then lunch and dinner at a normal time after the show ends, and on a good day, in bed by 9:00. If there’s an important game on after that, he DVRs it and gets up earlier the next morning to catch up.

“It's just an unusual way to live. It certainly does require some sacrifice and some discipline, but it comes with enormous advantages, too. I have spent more time in my kids' school [where he wrote a novel in the library during the afternoon before he picked them up] and with my kids than just about any working parent I know. That's been really, really rewarding, and I wouldn't trade that for anything.”

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