There'll be no more weekends off for Carole MacNeil.

In fact, the Toronto news anchor will be getting up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow morning to co-host (with Evan Solomon) CBC News: Sunday.

The live, two-hour current affairs magazine debuts at 10 a.m.

"You don't have to tell me," MacNeil says about her nasty new schedule. "I've been relishing the last few weekends because it's not going to happen anymore."

MacNeil sounds quite pumped about her new news assignment. She and Solomon have spent the past three weeks doing dry runs of the show, which will be shot in a corner of cavernous Studio 50 at CBC in Toronto.

"We call it LaGuardia," MacNeil says. "There are six, seven, eight other shows in there. Trying to find our own lighting grid has been hard."

Trying to find guests might be harder. Canadian politicians and other newsmakers have had the day off until now. Unlike the U.S., where Meet The Press has been running for more than 50 years, Sunday morning magazine shows never have really caught on in Canada. What's going to lure Chretien, Harris or Lastman away from that sacred family time?

"In politics there's always somebody who wants to get a message out, depending on the message," MacNeil says. "Hopefully, we'll be able to use that to our advantage."

The show will be split into media panels, documentaries and newsmaker-of-the-week interviews. "There's a lot of real estate to cover," MacNeil says.

The show basically has three themes: media, ethics and spirituality.

"In politics, you're not only going after the horse-race story, but you're trying to get as intimate as possible with the players," she says. She'd love to put Paul Martin or Alan Rock under that kind of scrutiny. "Who are these people? Why do they want power? I don't think we ask that question often enough -- what is your dream for this country?"

The direct approach seems to come naturally to MacNeil, a native of Antigonish, N.S. She also has learned from watching the way veteran Sunday commentators such as Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts handle the power players on ABC's This Week.

"They're not afraid to put out a point of view and see what it draws back," MacNeil says. "It works when people forget about the cameras and start sweating over the issues."

With Mondays and Tuesdays off, she'll continue to work three nights a week anchoring the Toronto half of Canada Now, the little news-hour rescued from the ash heap of CBC cutbacks. The show was a forgotten fifth-place in the highly-competitive Toronto supper news landscape when it launched a year-and-a-half ago. Now it's neck-and-neck with Global some weeks for second spot (still well behind insurmountable CFTO News).

Turning the weeknight show out on a dime has taught McNeil some valuable lessons she hopes to bring to the Sunday show. But for all the lessons and focus groups, sometimes things just work out by accident. Canada Now's signature look, the outdoor set behind MacNeil (and now Ben Chin on Mondays and Tuesdays), "came from the fact that we looked around and couldn't find a decent place inside to do the show," MacNeil says.

Not that the smoking room on the 10th floor didn't look tempting. "Sometimes it's been close at night," MacNeil says. "That wasn't always fog coming out of my mouth."