Ever craved a daily routine that starts at 3 AM?
It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that the morning routine for a TV news anchor is jam-packed. From alarms going off well before the crack of dawn, to marathon makeup and hair sessions (all of which need to be finished well before the average American has even had their first sip of coffee), the prep work required brings the concept of being a “morning person” to a whole other level. TODAY show anchor Hoda Kotb recently communicated just how busy these pre-show hours can be — and the reality of a morning news anchor’s life might just make your head spin.
In an Instagram video shared with her followers (which you can watch below), Kotb offered a detailed glimpse into her early AM routine. Below, we’ve got more on how Kotb pulls off such grueling hours. We’re also taking a quick walk down memory lane, and learning some behind-the-scenes secrets on what it means to be a news anchor, thanks to another iconic woman in journalism: none other than Katie herself.
Hoda Kotb shares her daily morning routine
For an interview in New York Magazine’s “How I Get it Done” column, Kotb spilled some details about her surprisingly-not-so-mad-dash morning routine.
“I have two alarms set on my phone,” she revealed. “One goes off at 3 a.m. and one goes off at 3:15 a.m. I’m one of those people who pops up. I don’t usually linger too much. I just hop in the shower.”
After such an early morning wakeup, you’d think a person would be bleary-eyed for the next few hours, but not Kotb. After her 3 a.m. shower, Kotb has a little ritual she performs on the daily, meant to ground her in a positive headspace. “I light a candle, I put on some cool music, I drink one bottle of water straight down, and I sit down at our kitchen table with a journal,” she said. “I don’t care if I happen to be running late or if I have all the time in the world, I try to do this one thing no matter what. In the journal, I’ll write the three things I’m grateful for just right there in that moment… It’s almost like a level set. I grab a cup of coffee and the car comes around 4:15 a.m.”
The next part of Kotb’s routine is shown in the Instagram video above. She hops into a car, arrives at the studio, and gets straight to hair and makeup. By 7 in the morning, she’s glitzed, glammed, grounded, and ready to deliver the news for the next several hours. By 11, she’s usually finished with on-screen work, and off to perform other errands and parental tasks for the day.
In a 2021 interview with Oprah Daily, Kotb said she tries to settle down for the evening by around 7 p.m. “I try not to scroll Twitter at the end of the day to see what’s trending, in case there’s a news item for tomorrow,” she explained, noting her aversion to doom scrolling: “I try to stay away from anything negative. There’s only so much a human can ingest before you feel that despair, so I always keep a quote book next to my bed.”
What was Katie’s morning routine like when she worked on the TODAY show?
It might not surprise you to know that most daily news anchors have similar morning routines to Kotb (unless, of course, they’re covering the evening shift). While she was working on-air, Katie’s schedule was no exception. But you might be wondering when anchors have time to actually prepare for the next day’s on-air sequences, if their mornings are so jam-packed.
The answer to that question was revealed in Katie’s bestselling memoir, Going There. “My work started the day before,” she explained. “At around 5:30 p.m., a nice man named Henry would deliver what was known as ‘the packet’ — a giant white envelope with the NBC peacock and your name in magic marker. The doorman would call and drop it outside the door.”
Yes, that means that after a long day of on-air work, an anchor comes home to a pile of homework. To carry the schoolyard metaphor a bit farther: It’s the equivalent of starting a class the day before you’re expected to complete the midterm, and then doing it again for a different class the next day. Rinse, lather, repeat, nearly every day of the year, for a decade or longer.
“The first thing I’d read would be the rundown for the next day — basically, who would be doing what,” Katie wrote. “The big enchilada was the 7:09 segment called ‘Close Up’ and was usually the big, heavy hitter interview of the morning, often an interview with a political figure. Those interviews in particular required a ton of preparation. A producer would print out articles, notes synthesizing the topic, and suggested questions all tucked into a Manila folder with 7:09 and the name(s) of the guest on them. Sometimes a producer would include a pre-interview so you would have an idea of how the guest would answer a question.
“If there was a late addition to the show,” she went on, “another packet would get delivered later that night. If there were overnight developments, a producer and I would update them in the morning. If there was breaking news overnight, the 7:09 would slide down later in the half-hour to accommodate the arrest/death/natural disaster/fill-in-the-blank. My producers would send over folders with every segment I was scheduled to do. If there was an author I was interviewing, I would try to read a few chapters, but would often rely on the producer’s copious, meticulous notes. If I was interviewing an actor, I would go to a screening of the film the day before.”
Are you exhausted from simply reading about the schedule of a morning news anchor? Yeah, us too. It’s enough to make you need a second (or third) cup of coffee…
