By 8 a.m., Jeff Peterson has already been awake for six hours, anchored four live newscasts for WGME and chauffeured his five children to school.

After chores and errands, Peterson will be lucky if he can sneak in a power nap before heading back to the newsroom at 3 p.m. to anchor the 5 and 5:30 p.m. newscasts.

It’s a topsy-turvy split shift that sees Peterson wake up his viewers in the morning, starting at 5 a.m., and return to the air to deliver them the evening news. He tries to go to bed by at least 10 p.m. to assure four hours of sleep.

“It’s not normal human being hours to wake up,” Peterson said. “I mean, waking up at 4 in the morning, I would call that the morning, but doing this shift, I have to wake up right around 2 or 2:15 in the morning and that to me is still the middle of the night.”

The California native has bounced around to a variety of media markets in his career — Denver, New Orleans, New Hampshire — and is now on his second stint at WGME. He was the sports director there in the early ’90s and returned five years ago as the morning reporter. For the past three years, Peterson has anchored on the split shift. He’s the only newscaster at the station with that schedule.

“It sounds kinda crazy to people out on the street, but the thing is, it really works for me because of what it does for my family life,” Peterson said. “I lose out when it comes to a lot of sleep, but I have the opportunity in the middle of the day to do things with my kids.”