Each of the major network nightly news broadcasts – on ABC, CBS and NBC – airs at 6:30 pm. But some might recall a time when they all aired at 7:00 pm. I think there’s something more glamorous, or at least more prime-time-ish, about airing the news at 7:00 instead of at 6:30. Not necessarily better, just different.

I dug into the New York Times archives to find the date that each of the three networks moved its broadcast from 7:00 to 6:30:

ABC – December 15, 1986
CBS – September 5, 1988
NBC – September 9, 1991

In ABC’s case, the above date is just when the flagship station, WABC in New York, moved its broadcast to 6:30 – it wasn’t a network decision. But as a major affiliate, it probably had a big influence. And because the news was already taped at 6:30 for a 7:00 airing, that meant that the ABC station in New York began airing it live.

Two things I hadn’t realized in learning this information. One, I hadn’t realized the schedule shifts had occurred so long ago. I’d thought they had all happened in the early-to-mid 90s. Two, I hadn’t realized that the shifts occurred so far apart. So there was actually a long time when you could, for instance, watch Peter Jennings and then shift over to Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. Weird.

Matt and I are going to London in June! We’ll be there for six days.

This is a really big deal for us for a few reasons.

I’ve been to London twice before, but it’s been more than 13 years since I last visited. I haven’t been overseas since.

As for Matt, he’s never been to Europe. Except for two trips to Montreal in the past couple of years, he’s never even been out of the United States. A big, big part of the excitement for me will be accompanying Matt on his first trip overseas.

Matt left all the planning to me because I have more travel experience. I was worried, but I am so proud of myself for planning this trip. I know, it really doesn’t take much skill to click on a mouse and type on a keyboard. But I had to get over some psychological barriers – committing to spending the money and choosing where to go.

I’ve written about my travel hang-ups before. Traveling is expensive (and Europe is particularly expensive for Americans these days), and a trip is only for a finite amount of time. But I love London. There are other places in Europe I’d like to see – places I’ve never been to before – but for some reason I feel a need to go back to London first. And I feel like London would be a great first overseas trip for Matt, especially since he’s an Anglophile. I think once we do this trip, we’ll be ready to visit other places.

So we’ll spend almost a week in London. We’ll probably take one or two day trips while we’re there, maybe to Stonehenge and/or someplace else. I’m so excited.

I’m also feeling anxious. I felt anxious as soon as I clicked on the final button and committed us to the trip. What if it’s not money well spent? What if we don’t have enough time? What if the hotel sucks? Should I have booked a trip somewhere else instead, somewhere completely new to both of us? But according to various online reviews, the hotel should be fine, and we’ll have plenty of time to do plenty of things, and I have money for a trip, and there are plenty of things I haven’t seen in London, I mean it’s LONDON, after all, and we can take a trip somewhere else next time.

Part of my anxiety, to be totally pessimistic and bizarre, arises from knowing that I’ll feel sad once we return. Rather than going on a great trip and feeling a big letdown upon returning home and having to go back to work, part of me wants to avoid that emotional rollercoaster in the first place. Why go away when, in the end, you’ll just have to come back? Better not to go at all than experience the sadness of a trip ending.

Weird, no? I think that’s really the key to my travel anxiety. But I’ve nipped it, and we’ve planned a trip, and it will be great.

I can’t wait.

I’ve been reading a new book about Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger; it’s called (appropriately enough) Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek.

There seem to be a bunch of new Nixon books out lately. In addition to Nixon and Kissinger, there’s Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World, by Margaret MacMillan, and Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon & Spiro Agnew, by Jules Witcover. And in a week and a half, a brand new full-length Nixon biography comes out, puzzlingly titled The Invincible Quest: The Life of Richard Milhous Nixon (how can a quest be invincible?) by Conrad Black, the financier and former newspaper magnate who is currently on trial for criminal fraud. I’m really looking forward to that last one, because Black, despite the criminal charges, is apparently a terrific author – his biography of FDR is highly praised. But his Nixon bio isn’t being published in the U.S. until the fall. I might have to order it from Canada.

I have a fascination with Richard Nixon and I’m not totally sure why. Part of it is Watergate – it just seems like a great story, filled with suspense, as things get worse and worse for Nixon, finally snowballing and ending in his resignation under threat of impeachment. There’s also the dramatic arc of his life story – rise (Congress, Senate and the vice presidency), fall (two electoral defeats in a row – for president in 1960, and for California governor in 1962), rise (twice elected president), fall (Watergate), and then his attempted vindication as an elder statesman until his death.

And Nixon himself is such an engrossing, flawed character – the paranoia; the paradox of a man raised as a Quaker who, in private, curses like a sailor and gets sloshed, and who rose to the presidency even though he was temperamentally unsuited to being a politician – shy and awkward in public.

I don’t know exactly what it is about him. But he fascinates me.