BRIAN CAULFIELD
Be first, be fast, be right. Those are the goals Pat Carroll sets for herself as co-anchor
of the morning drive-time show on WCBS News Radio 88.
The words, in a different context, could describe the pattern of her life.
On the air at 5 a.m. each weekday, she is among the first New Yorkers to rise in the
morning. She's on the road at 3 a.m., driving from her Rockland County home to the midtown
Manhattan studio at a speed she hopes does not attract the attention "of some
policeman at 3:30 in the morning with nothing better to do."
As a single mother of two young children she must plan things just right, like keeping a
cooler in the car trunk to store perishable goods from the hasty evening shopping she does
between her oldest boy's Little League at bats.
Amid her hectic schedule, faith holds a central place. She belongs to St. Anthony's parish
in Nanuet, where her children--William, 9, and Robert, 7--attend the religious education
program. Divorced for more than a year, she is conscious of having to give her children
more than the average mother.
"It is no picnic being a single mother, even with great, but challenging, kids and a
job I usually love," Ms. Carroll told CNY. "I don't want to underestimate how
hard, sometimes overwhelming, it can be--a mother's guilt versus serious sleep
deprivation, and so little time for yourself.
"I need all the help I can get, so I work on the assumption that trying to keep the
faith as a Catholic is more a necessity than a luxury."
"We go to Mass every Sunday. I don't think of it as an option. I don't want my
children to think of it as an option," she said.
She is active in the parish, helping with Saturday morning religion classes and the Sunday
children's liturgy, in which young people are dismissed from Mass after the Gospel to
receive special instruction and return for the Eucharist. St. Anthony's pastor, Father
William V. Reynolds, gave her a good-humored welcome when her family moved into the area
three years ago.
"He said, 'Pat Carroll, I listen to you every morning while showering and shaving,'
" she recalled.
"She's a delightful person," Father Reynolds told CNY. "She doesn't push
the fact that she's something of a celebrity. People here only found out about her when
she was the emcee for our parish anniversary dinner. I'm the one who pushed her to do
that."
Her faith has been an occasional topic on the air. She took Good Friday off and her
co-anchor, Jeff Caplan, who is Jewish, told listeners the reason for her absence. After
her elder son made his first Communion, she thanked the station's weather man, Craig
Allen, for a sunny day. Caplan piped in, "Wait a minute. Her kid was making his first
Communion and she's thanking you for the nice weather?"
When William was preparing for first confession last month, he urged her to go with him.
"We were scared together," she told CNY. "My son said that he was nervous.
I said, 'You're nervous. I'm a grown-up and I haven't gone in 10 years.' "
The experience was not as painful as she thought it would be, she said with a smile.
One advantage of starting work so early is that she is home to meet her two boys as they
get off the public school bus at 3 p.m. She supervises homework, cooks dinner and sleepily
drives them to evening ball games.
A college student lives with the family and gets the children up and off to school each
morning. They take a nonchalant attitude toward their mom's career and rarely listen to
her on the radio.
In the small WCBS studio fitted with what she calls "ancient equipment," Pat
Carroll, newswoman, is in her element. With experienced ease and split-second timing, she
slips taped reports into the console, punches her microphone button at just the right
moment to announce the time, temperature or latest story, monitors two television news
shows, speed-reads the Associated Press wires, scans The New York Times and Wall Street
Journal, listens to her producer on headphones, all while carrying on a humorous off-mike
banter with Caplan, who sits in the swivel chair beside her.
Her co-anchor said of her simply, "She's a wonderful woman."
She has been on the morning show for three years, after working freelance and weekends for
the station.
She also records a regular "Raising Our Kids" spot, a one-minute promotion
sponsored by Child magazine, which airs nationwide. In 60 seconds she covers topics
important to parents and children and gives a few personal spins to the material
"based on my motherhood."
Frank Raphael, director of news and programming, called Ms. Carroll "delightful,
dedicated, smart, committed." Pausing to think of the most appropriate description,
he added, "Incredibly competent."
He told CNY, "This is the number-one market, the most important day part we have. For
her to be so glib and sharp and personable to millions of New Yorkers at 5 a.m. is the
greatest testimony I could give to her talents. And New Yorkers love her back."
About the occasional mentions of her faith, Raphael said, "I don't think her faith
impacts her job. It definitely impacts her persona. She is delightful to be around. She
has the traits one would hope for in someone with an underlying religiosity."
Success has not come easily, but the road to the New York market has been paved pleasantly
by her love for both news and communications.
"I got into news because I wasn't into music. I was not a deejay," Ms. Carroll
explained. "It suits me well. I get really excited when news happens."
In her press profile, she describes herself as "a New England girl by birth" who
roots for the Boston Red Sox while her children cheer for the New York Yankees. She grew
up the eldest of five children in Providence, R.I., majored in theater at Brown University
and caught the news bug working at the campus radio station. After graduating, she got
radio jobs in Providence and other New England cities before breaking into her first big
market in 1987, an all-news WCBS affiliate in Boston.
"I'd work at a station till they would get rid of their news department and then move
on," she explained. "That's the trend everywhere except in New York."
She constantly hears from people who say, "I listen to you in the car on the way to
work every morning," and she considers herself a friendly wake-up and driving
companion. She pictures her average listener as a suburban working woman or a man over 40,
fairly affluent.
A woman once told her, "When I hear you, I think that if she can do it and get to
work so early, I can get up and get going."
Ms. Carroll said that the whole news team, from the weather reporter, to the chopper
traffic watcher, to the news writers are rooting for the morning commuters.
"We're out there ahead of them, showing them the way, giving them the information
they need, pulling people into work," she said.
She repeated a dictum of radio people. "Be compelling, be interesting. You can't stop
them from switching stations."
