The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 159

There's immediate trouble. The headline teases don't match the video, and no one seems sure of the lead story. The producer yells into Aycrigg's ear piece that the live shot from the Palm Bay fire Isn't ready. He freezes for a millisecond, like a deer caught in headlights, before his co-anchor swoops in for the save. The lineup shuffles.

It's that kind of day the kind where you try to do too much with what you have and end up with less. It happens every so often, and on the busy noon show, more often than not. Unruffled by the chaos, Aycrigg leaves the anchor desk and walks 30 feet to the weather set, where he introduces handsome 32-year-old meteorologist Dan Schaffer. The contrast between the two generations of television styles couldn't be more remarkable. Schaffer is surrounded by a half-dozen humming high-powered animation computers, satellite images and Doppler radar.

Princely in his tailored suit and perfect hair, he is young, sharp, witty and online. Aycrigg is gray, tweed, steady and DOS-based. And in my mind, he's "king of TV" always will be. Aycrigg attaches a microphone the size of a pencil eraser to his tie, fishes the cable under his jacket to a wireless transmitter on his belt and performs a mike check for the audio engineer. He slips an audio receiver, which looks like a pack of cigarettes, into his rear pocket and runs a second wire to a flesh-colored ear piece, which will allow him to hear the producer's instructions from the control booth as the show progresses.

The small gray heart-shaped anchor desk, on an 18-inch-high carpeted riser, is barely large enough to accommodate the two black chairs where he and his co-anchor sit elbow-to-elbow, although on camera, the distance seems much greater. Aycrigg ignores the shrill voices and boil- i ing confusion in the open newsroom set and, as the digital clock clicks toward I noon, he pulls within himself and concen- trates on the task at hand. Aycrigg tugs i on the tail of his jacket, sitting on it to i keep it from riding up his collar, a trick he saw in the movie Broadcast News. Floor i director Bob Meyers says with a smirk, "Buckle your seat belts, ladies and gentle- men. It's going to be a bumpy flight." i Aycrigg, outwardly poised, breathes I deeply as the Six News animated opening I sequence fades and Meyers gives him a rives with a line-up, then he moves to a computer terminal and begins writing his assigned stories.

He prides himself, above all else, on his writing, a tight, logical style with dazzling clarity, infrequent flourishes and no wasted effort. For the past few years, on his laptop computer in his spare time, he has labored on a pair of novels for reluctant readers in their teens. New York literary types call the genre "juvenile fiction," and it's a tough market. He writes about horses and the environment, stories based on his experiences in Central Florida. Neither book has been published, but he seems not to care.

The process of writing is what he enjoys most. Writing and horses. By 11:30 a.m., with most of the stories finished, he slips quietly into a nearby ready room to apply a thin coat of pancake makeup. While he's away, there's news of a fire in Palm Bay burning a child. Assignment editor Ross scrambles a crew and frantically tries to set up a live report to lead the newscast The order of the show begins to change.

Stories are shifted, blocks readjusted. This is not unusual for the noon news, a program that occurs in the heart of the workday when events are breaking. Five minutes to air time. Tension is thick. Charna Weise at the anchor desk.

Aycrigg reached retirement age three years ago, but general manager Mike Schweitzer and news director George Tyll persuaded him to stay. Schweitzer and Tyll are gone. Aycrigg remains. We arrive at the station on John Young Parkway at 9 a.m. in his tan Buick.

He drives hunched over the wheel, dressed in buffed brown wingtips, a comfortable brown tweed sport coat, brown slacks and an orange-and-brown striped tie. His thinning silver hair is shot with ginger and memories of brown. He wanders the modern newsroom, quietly exchanging gossip, glancing at computer monitors, purposefully deliberating the conditions of the world at hand and at large. His eyes are impassive, his features sharp, the sort that belong on Mount Rushmore. David Ross, the assignment editor, a highly caffeinated New Yorker with a booming voice that pierces the air like a car alarm, barks into telephones and howls at youthful reporters.

His intensity chases Aycrigg back to his "desk," one of eight jammed into a semi-quiet corner of the room. It's a small desk with a small stack of videotape cassettes and a small Rolodex file. No computer. He sits calmly until the producer of the noon news ar Mike James is an Orlando writer. you can afford this.

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