Craig Melvin Calls Out Tom Costello on ‘Today’ After Rare Oversleeping Mishap

For more than two decades, Tom Costello has apparently managed to avoid one of the most dreaded mistakes for a live television journalist: oversleeping. That streak came to an end Thursday morning — and Craig Melvin was more than happy to call him out on air.

The longtime NBC News correspondent arrived late for his appearance on Today while reporting from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport during a segment focused on Labor Day travel. Melvin quickly turned the unusual situation into a lighthearted moment between colleagues.

A first in nearly 23 years

Melvin introduced Costello with a joke about the morning’s travel coverage, telling viewers that if Costello himself had been trying to catch a flight, he probably would have missed it.

Costello then explained what had gone wrong.

He has been appearing on Today for nearly 23 years and said he had never overslept for the program before. But that changed that morning when his producer called him at 6:30 a.m. to find out where he was.

Costello was still in bed.

According to the correspondent, he initially couldn’t understand why his producer was concerned. His alarm clock had convinced him that it was only 1:30 a.m.

The problem was not Costello ignoring his alarm. His old analog clock was simply showing the wrong time.

The clock that caused the confusion

Costello later showed viewers photographic evidence of the malfunction.

A picture taken shortly after the phone call showed the clock displaying 1:48 a.m. — nearly five hours behind the actual time.

The veteran journalist laughed about the mistake and admitted that it was probably time to replace the clock.

Costello also joked that everyone on the Today team gets one mistake, suggesting that after years of showing up for the program, he had finally used his.

Melvin, however, wasn’t ready to let him off quite that easily.

‘1987 called’

After seeing the outdated alarm clock, Melvin delivered one of the segment’s biggest laughs.

He joked that “1987 called” and wanted its Timex back.

The remark drew attention to just how old-school Costello’s wake-up routine had become. Rather than defend the clock, Costello conceded that he would probably have to follow the rest of the Today team and start relying on his smartphone.

“I guess I gotta go to my iPhone,” Costello said, acknowledging that he didn’t have many other options if his current clock couldn’t be trusted.

Melvin continued the teasing by telling him he would finally be “just like us.”

A rare mistake for a veteran correspondent

The exchange was particularly amusing because Costello is hardly a newcomer to live television.

The NBC News senior correspondent has spent years covering aviation and transportation, along with space exploration, cybersecurity and economics. He regularly reports across NBC News platforms, including Today, NBC Nightly News and MSNBC.

Costello joined NBC News in 2004 and later moved to the network’s Washington bureau, where transportation became a primary focus of his reporting.

His experience was also on display during major breaking-news coverage. In 2025, NBCU Academy followed Costello and his team as they worked around the clock reporting on the deadly plane crash involving an American Eagle passenger jet and an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C.

Against that background, one missed morning alarm was clearly an unusual occurrence.

And Melvin made sure viewers got to see the lighter side of it.

By the end of the exchange, Costello had accepted that his trusty analog clock had finally reached retirement age — and that, after more than two decades of early-morning television, it might be time to let his iPhone take over.