Sarah Daniels
Sarah Daniels - CKXY
Vancouver 1980s; CKNW/CFMI-FM eye-in-the-sky traffic 1989-97; traffic BCTV News
Vancouver 1997-2005; real estate White Rock BC 2005-current*****
*****
Sarah Daniels was voted
most likely to host Saturday Night Live by her Grade 12 class. Late at night,
when others were too tired to see, night owl Daniels was still chatting,
spinning clever stories and off-the-cuff jokes. Anyone foolish enough to call
her before 10 the next morning learned that she was, indeed, still verbally
proficient, though a tad less cheery.
Now, as traffic and
weather reporter for BCTV News, Daniels is up and chatting by 3:30 a.m. --
first to her beloved dogs, then to bad drivers as she makes her way to work.
"At that hour, you
are driving with drunks and delivery people. It's a little bit scary through
those intersections."
Then it is seven minutes
talking with the make-up people. "Unfortunately, they do not carry plaster
of Paris."
Daniels has a bit of time to trade news with her amiable fellow
morning crew, Lynn Colliar and Zack Spencer. By
For those who love to
talk, another quiet day in front of an unsmiling computer is too hideous to
contemplate. Some satisfy their yearning to yak by taking extra trips to the water
cooler. The lucky ones, like Daniels, find a way to get paid to speak.
Daniels was not always
talkative. "I was actually pretty shy as a child. I got to reinvent myself
in high school. I got chatty."
Daniels travelled
through Langara College, the
A friend, Barry
Forward, was working for AM 1040 and suggested she apply for a job as a
community events reporter. "I never ever thought about such a thing. Absolutely not."
Nevertheless, she
ad-libbed a demo tape and got hired on the spot. "Through luck,
circumstance and good timing, I bluffed my way into a good job," Daniels
said. Unlike most on-air personalities, she did not go through specific
broadcast journalism training and years of small town work.
On her first day she
was supposed to do the
Her easy banter led her
to eye-in-the-sky traffic work at CKNW. Her first host, Rick Honey, taught her
a lot about talk radio. "He was really generous about sharing air-time and
letting you shine." Daniels still does some fill-in work at CKNW.
With no script, Daniels
is working off a clipboard crammed with traffic notes from ground control,
emergency crews and the listeners line. She has to
squeeze all of this information into 45-second sound-bites.
"You have to think
of the most important things and keep it succinct. I have to watch my tendency
to talk fast so people don't wonder what the heck I'm yammering about."
You also need to have a good memory, a flawless sense of direction and an
ability to keep talking if you make a mistake.
Daniels has enjoyed a
lot of good feedback although, she says, "Occasionally my lack of ability
to edit has caused me to step in it."
When Lisa Green, a BCTV
producer, approached her about auditioning for TV, Daniels was not particularly
optimistic.
"TV people have
bulletproof hair and perfect skin," Daniels says. "I don't."
Once again, though, she got the job. "I was broke, so I was
thrilled."
On TV, Daniels says,
you have to watch the "smartass political comments." Much more is
left to innuendo. "If you are being a little bit naughty in radio it is
way over the line in TV."
Now that she is on TV,
some people think she lives a glamourous life in a gilded mansion.
"It should be
noted that I am wearing a five-year-old, ripped turtleneck and fuzzy track
pants." Getting up before the roosters, means there is not a lot of time
to meet young eligibles.
"Twenty years from
now, I'll be walking up the street, wearing my housecoat, talking to my cats
and living in a house with sprayed-on curtains."
Despite the hours,
Daniels likes her work. "Everybody has been telling me to shut up for
years. Finally I can use it to my advantage."
The Vancouver Sun 2000)
*****
Shelley Fralic 2005
edited
A
She did traffic for
various radio stations for the next eight years, including a stint as CKNW's
Eye in the Sky, all perky and informed while she talked drivers through the
increasingly complex and frustrating slog that has become the Lower Mainland
commute.
Television soon
beckoned, and in 1998 Daniels found herself untying traffic jams on Global TV's
Morning News.
So was it that nasty
alarm clock, a pre-mid-life crisis, or just a strong looky-loo gene that took
her in a new career direction?
All of the above, it
turns out.
"I think it must
be inherited," says Daniels, who affectionately blames her mother for
passing along the real estate bug.
"I would always
wait for the Real Estate Weekly to come out. It's just
tremendously interesting to me -- the trends, what's selling, what's not."
And she had done about
as much as she could with the traffic thing.
"I realized
there's no money to be made in television, and I got into my late 30s and
thought: 'Am I going to be the oldest traffic reporter around?'"
So she took the real
estate course -- it costs about $1,000 and took her a month -- easily passed
the test, and started selling real estate part-time for Hugh & McKinnon
Realty in White Rock, in June 2003, while still working at Global.