Any job, held long enough, turns into a series of habits—personal stylistic tics that eventually calcify into reassuring traditions. If you’re lucky, people will come to know and even like you for those habits, and so you might dig into them, turning them into a fundamental bedrock of your continued employability.
This appears to be the case with CBC broadcaster Glenn Payette’s nightly sign-off from St. Johns, Newfoundland. As the years wear on, etching lines in Payette’s face, his hair graying and his choice in attire evolving from an early-’90s suit to a series of forward-thinking windbreakers, he carves into the break between “Glenn Payette, CBC News” and “St. Johns” with increasing relish, eventually laying into the final consonant for almost comical lengths. Later instances show him gripping the mic a little differently as he hits the final “n,” as if bracing it for the weight of his delivery. The montage has recently gained some traction on Reddit, but was originally assembled by the CBC as a tribute to the veteran reporter. It is proof of the immutable power of video and the internet, which preserves and provides order to the ceaseless ravages of time.
If hungry for more newscasters clocking in and clocking out of work each day with a reassuring exactitude that, in its way, comments upon the bittersweet passage of time and the gentle way we humans attenuate its sorrow, please enjoy this video of famous internet person Gustavo Almadovar, who doesn’t even do the damn news anymore.