I have a simple workflow and am trying to figure out a way to get workflow scheduler to make node state changes in real time, at their scheduled time.

1. I set the state change on a node to occur at 09:00 from draft to live.
2. If cron runs before 09:00, the state does not change until the next time cron runs.
3. If the next time cron runs is not until 11:00AM, the state change doesn't occur until 11:00.

This is a problem since editors expect their content to go live *when they tell it to go live*. This does not seem like difficult functionality, but maybe I missing something basic. I understand that I can run cron more frequently, but it seems crazy that my cron schedule has to match the editor's publishing workflow, as in, "you should always have articles go live at 9am because that's when cron runs". What happens when editors want a node to go live outside of the normal cron schedule? It seems I missing a way for Drupal to "wake up" at this time and run cron to make the node live. Does anyone have a way to do this that I am overlooking? I find it hard to believe that news sites running in Drupal like economist.com or examiner.com don't have this type of real-time scheduling functionality. Thanks in advance.