ANNAPOLIS - By the dock outside Phillips restaurant, ABC News producers Yael Lavie and Robert Wheelock are standing back to back, separated by a dozen yards and the bleating of cell phones.

To the right, Police Sgt. Paul Gibbs is showing Wheelock where it might be possible to stage an enormous tug-of-war game that would span the harbor. To the left, a gaggle of local publicists and tourism representatives are flooding Lavie with suggestions about who should appear on TV - a woman from a Renaissance fair, a man who raises terrapins, an underground band.

Lavie and Wheelock care about all these things - really they do - but what they're worried about right now is the weather. For the past two weeks, the producers and a team of reporters from New York City and Washington have canvassed the state searching for ways to capture the essence of Maryland for today's broadcast of Good Morning America. Their job is to make sure there are more than enough segments to fill the two-hour time slot.

The Annapolis broadcast is part of a series called "50 States - One Nation - One Year," that since April has been aired on ABC's Good Morning America and World News Tonight. Put on hold so network reporters could cover the rampage of the sniper, the program was hastily rescheduled after the arrest of two suspects. In the highly scripted world of network television, the two weeks allotted to put together the show is as brief as a hiccup.

And a little bad weather can create havoc. Yesterday morning's show from Lexington, Va., "was a disaster," says anchor Charles Gibson. "It poured rain all night long, and it got inside the cables. We couldn't hear each other. Technically, it became very hard to do."

Indeed late yesterday, weather forecaster Tony Perkins was sent abruptly to Tennessee to cover the effects of tornadoes there. In the meantime, Wheelock and Lavie are trying to ensure that joggers from an Annapolis runners' club will dart toward anchors Gibson and Diane Sawyer at precisely 7:30, but if a big news story breaks, that, too, could change.

Throughout the day, TV crews unspool 17,000 feet of cable lines along the red-bricked streets of historic Annapolis. Technical teams duck lightning bolts from the peak of the State House where they are fastening a camera atop the cupola. And city officials smooth the way so that beer trucks don't deliver and recycling and trash crews don't pick up refuse during the early morning show.

The program's producers and anchors say they hope to paint a picture of Maryland with a variety of stories over the two hours of Good Morning America but acknowledge the challenge involved.

"Of course, the answer is, you can't," Gibson says. "You're obviously looking for things that are good television. With some of it, we're trying to encapsulate the flavor of a state."

So sure, there will be crabs - boiled outside, weather permitting, accompanied by a demonstration by Phillips chef Mark Laubner of how to crack open a hard-shelled crab, and a story about the ebbing yield of crabs from the Chesapeake Bay. To make the segment flow quickly, one crab will be put in the pot, while another, already boiled, will be pulled out shortly after.

"It's like CSI," Wheelock explains. "They solve murders in 48 minutes. These cases go unsolved for years in real life."

There's also the possibility of an interview with a prominent former professional athlete whose name producers don't want published. (Hint: This man's chemical element would be "Fe".) But what else?

"You hate to use the word, but it's really infotainment," Wheelock says. "You look for the most entertaining and most visual stories."

Lavie, meanwhile, is trying to orchestrate a show-stopping satellite feed of "Good Morning Baltimore" sung by the cast of Broadway musical Hairspray. ABC reporter Robin Roberts has taped a feature on Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who himself underwent prostate surgery this year.

Still another story will look at the adoption of plebes from the Naval Academy by area families, and the show intends to do a live shot from Chick & Ruth's Delly, as patrons take part in the daily Pledge of Allegiance. That's not to mention the interview with a man who carves duck decoys - who will be brought aboard a ship docked at "Ego Alley" downtown as a group of Prince George's County schoolchildren watch.

Lavie and Wheelock stroll down Pinkney Street tracing the path they expect Sawyer and Gibson to take. They pass a model of colonial-era Annapolis, where city workers promised to remove the Plexiglas cover for better footage.

"It's nice," Lavie says, shrugging. "A little flavor."

At Middleton Tavern, where Benjamin Franklin is said to have congressed regularly with fellow founders, workers busily repaint doors and walls. (The owner wants the anchors to consume "oyster shooters" - a mix of raw oysters and tartar sauce, followed by a chaser of beer.) A bit later, Wheelock muses aloud about whether to build wooden gutters to protect the cables from the tires of encroaching cars.

So many logistics. So little time. Over lunch, Sergeant Gibbs promises that traffic would be routed away from the city's downtown arteries. Two squad cars will be in place to whisk the anchors from the grounds of the Naval Academy back to the docks in six minutes between stories. An aide to Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer announces that her boss wants to be on the show, too.

"I only mention this because the request came from on high," says Jan Hardesty, the city's public information officer.

"She can be shown in the crowd," Lavie responds patiently, "but I can't promise we'll talk to her."

The program's arrival in Maryland comes amid a week of visits along the southern Atlantic coast: yesterday was Lexington, Va., tomorrow is to be Charleston, followed by Atlanta and Miami. After last year's terrorist attacks, says executive producer Shelley Ross, "where once upon a time, we could plan exotic foreign trips, we thought we had a new responsibility to be closer to home."

All the big morning shows - CBS' Early Show, NBC's Today and GMA - have ground-floor studios in New York City, with crowds that gather outside. The dynamic is even more pronounced on the road, as business and local government employees are encouraged to cheer the show on. The shows draw big ratings and big revenues; Good Morning America, second only to Today, attracts an average audience of 4.6 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. Locally, the program airs on WMAR-TV.

In response to viewer comments and focus group research, a well-worn formula drives much of the network morning news shows. The first half-hour, starting at 7 a.m., is like a newspaper's front page, as it devotes 20 minutes or more to the top stories of the day. The rest of the time, Good Morning America depends on feature pieces, weather reports, how-to tips and diversions.

For lighter fare, the show hits some obvious regional stories: In Memphis, cameras focused on barbecue and Elvis. In Nebraska, it was the decline of the family farm. But less conventional stories have been presented, too: In Alaska, Good Morning America explored how medical care is delivered in remote regions. In South Dakota, the show highlighted three generations of a family that has sculpted a monument to the Lakota chief Crazy Horse.

Many stories tumble easily into two well-defined categories: medical tales and amazing families. (Dr. Carson straddles both. He escaped a tough part of Detroit with the aid of a single-minded mother and a scholarship to Yale, and he has since become one of the world's most eminent brain surgeons.) "Best bets" - where and what to eat, where to stay, what sights to take in - are popular, too. Viewers also are invited to tell the two anchors what to do: last night, Sawyer helped one Virginia family paint their house, while Gibson spent time with some cadets at Virginia Military Institute considering the possibility of seeing combat soon.

"Some people call [the traveling show] a gimmick, and to some extent I suppose it is," says Gibson. "But it's something of a chance to turn it into a two-way medium. It lets your core audience know that you're not going to be always in the same place at the same time."