Little gives off-camera look at broadcaster's job

By JEN COWART
Posted 5/17/17

The PVMS students who gathered to hear Patrick Little speak about his job recently leaned in closely to hear the answer to the question he'd initially posed to them at the start of his presentation, What time do you think I get up in the"

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

Little gives off-camera look at broadcaster's job

Posted

The PVMS students who gathered to hear Patrick Little speak about his job recently leaned in closely to hear the answer to the question he'd initially posed to them at the start of his presentation, "What time do you think I get up in the morning to go to work?"

Little is the morning news anchor for Channel 12 news, and is on air from 4:30 in the morning until 9:00 a.m. sharing the most current news and events which have taken place while local residents were asleep.

"I get up at 2:45 a.m.," he said. "I usually go to bed between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. at night every night. The coolest thing about my job is that it's different every day, even hour to hour. It's a current events job and it's always changing."

He shared that he has been doing this job since 1994 and had initially wanted to be a pro athlete.

"I went to college in New Hampshire and once I realized that I was not built for a job as a professional athlete, I went and did an internship at a TV station at my college," he said. "When I graduated I had no clue what I wanted to do so I took an unpaid internship. I stayed through the summer in that internship, still unpaid, and I was hired on as a sportscaster in September 1994. I had a two-minute sports broadcast to do at half time during a live football game, and as soon as I came off camera, I went and threw up in a trash can because I was so nervous."

When Little called his dad to relay his first live broadcast experience, his dad asked him if he was going to be quitting the new job.

"No, I love it," Little told his father at the time, noting that he has not thrown up again after a broadcast since that first day.

"So things worked out," he said. "It's been a long road. I came to Providence to Channel 12 in 1998 and I was the sportscaster from 1998 to 2011 and I worked the evening broadcast. In 2011 I took the morning news slot. Sports was fun, everyone wins. I went to parades, and in that time there were five Super Bowls, three World Series, two NCAA championships and three Daytona 500s. But, I did it because I wanted to be home at night with my family. I was missing out on a lot. Sports was a 2:00 p.m. to midnight job and I was missing all of my kids' events. I have a freshman, a sixth-grader and a kindergartener, so you can imagine that life is never boring. Now, I have a better lifestyle, I can coach their sports teams, be at their activities, and I'm just tired all the time. I always joke that I'll sleep when I'm dead. I think the lack of sleep is the hardest part. I sleep on the weekends, and I think that sometimes I sleep standing up."

The job Little took was a promotion, but a different sort of job from sports, all together.

"Now I cover politics, fires and Trump," he said.

He passed around a script of the morning news to show the students what it looks like, and he also showed them the IFB earpiece he wears, which stood for Interrupted Feedback.

"If the producer or director needs to talk to us during the broadcast, they do it through this and it plugs into the desk and they can give us instructions that way," he said.

At the end of his presentation, Little took several volunteers who were interested in reading the morning news scripts aloud, and let them try their hand at the broadcasts. PHOTOS AND CUTLINES

A little bit about my job: Patrick Little, Channel 12 morning news anchor, talked to the students at Park View Middle School about his career path, which stemmed from a desire to be a professional athlete. (Herald photos by Jen Cowart)

Give it a try: Little brought actual scripts with him from the morning news broadcast, and after passing them around for all to see, he took several sets of volunteers to the front of the room who wished to give the read alouds a try for themselves, and guided them through the script.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here