ANCHESTER, N.H. - A construction crew is scrambling to build a makeshift television studio in the parking lot of the Bedford Village Inn to broadcast the ''Today'' show.
C-Span has painted a room at the Center of New Hampshire Holiday Inn here the perfect backdrop blue and will later repaint it the original color.
Richard's Bistro has already run out of one of its popular Pinot Noirs. And Rick Brickman, the chef and owner of Down 'N Dirty Bar-BQ, which has five tables for customers, is ordering nearly a half-ton of extra meat for next week.
While Brickman acknowledged that part of that mound of beef will go for Super Bowl orders, he and the others are preparing for the siege on New Hampshire that happens every four years.
Tomorrow kicks off the final week before the Granite State's first-in-the-nation primary. It will be a seven-day crunch of candidates, campaigns, and cameras stalking voters in town halls and school gymnasiums, from Salem to Berlin. All the action adds an estimated $175 million to the state's economy during the year leading up to the vote, according to the Chamber of Commerce in Manchester.
Those involved in the chase will work up an appetite and a thirst. And what little sleep they get will be precious.
Yet even with four years' notice that the primary is coming, there aren't enough beds. Restaurants are furiously ordering extra food. And Bell Atlantic is working overtime installing 1,800 extra phone lines for the big event.
''All the folks who didn't know Feb. 1 was the day will think, `Oh my God, I need a telephone line,''' said Erle Pierce, public affairs director for Bell Atlantic in New Hampshire, with a laugh. ''We wonder, how does a media company forget to order phones? That's what makes us a little crazy, is people forgetting to order things.''
On a recent snowy night, one waitress was on duty in the restaurant at the Margate on Winnipesaukee, a hotel whose tourism pamphlet shows verdant hills and a gleaming lake at midsummer, when a busload of hungry campaign workers and attendant media descended on the place at 10 p.m.
Warned about the staff shortage in the dining room, some of the red-eyed Republicans and the trailing reporters headed for the lounge, where the barkeep's mussed hair was a testament to her efforts to keep up with the unexpected late orders of food and drink.
And it was still days away from the real onslaught.
While ladies lunched in the four-star dining room of the yellow-clapboard inn in Bedford, work was proceeding on the television studio in the parking lot. During the final days of the New Hampshire campaign, it will be used for broadcasts of the ''Today'' show, ''Meet the Press,'' and MSNBC.
And all 14 rooms in the inn's restored barn are booked, thanks to NBC.
''They came to us four years ago and they booked it right after the last'' primary, said Karen Carlisle, the inn sales director who was arranging to remove windows so cables could be run into the barn. As for the inn's restaurant, it will be reservations only, ''like a Saturday night all week.''
A few miles up the road in Manchester, the state's largest city, the situation was more intense.
At the Center of New Hampshire Holiday Inn, miles of TV cables were being installed and about $30,000 was being spent on additional power lines. Managers were moving out of their offices to turn them over to network executives. And workers were busy taking off doors and replacing them with ones that have holes cut wide enough to feed through layers of TV cable.
One Japanese television reporter pleaded for a room at the convention facility, where CNN, ABC, WCVB-Channel 5, WBZ radio, WBZ-Channel 4, and some spillover from NBC will also be camped out.
Not one of the 250 rooms will be vacant, but ABC was willing to give up spare accommodations for the lucky Japanese reporter. Now the hotel is really booked. And its prices have nearly doubled, to $239 a night, for the final week of January.
''We've been sold out for the primary for over two years with the national press. Two years,'' said Center of New Hampshire general manager Sean O'Kane.
Farther up the road, in Nashua, Crowne Plaza general manager Jerry Neal was trying to figure out how many extra phone lines the hotel needed to install and how all the people will fit into the ballrooms.
Senator John McCain of Arizona has been using the hotel as his headquarters. And if he wins the Republican primary, as polls are suggesting he could, his election-night reception could resemble a zoo, complete with plenty of wiring so dozens of reporters can file stories on the air or off their laptops.
In addition to the phone-line conundrum, Neal was looking for temporary help to staff banquet functions, and he has already instructed the kitchen to extend room service hours to 1 a.m. The 226-room hotel is fully booked and is also bumping up its rates next week, mostly to pay for increased staffing needs, Neal said.
In fact, no one gets a day off between now and Feb. 1.
As for Brickman and his barbecue, ''We'll just keep a bed of coals at the right temperature in the pit for as long as we need to, because we know it's going to just keep coming in.''
