Star Time (53 page)

She read aloud synopses of several additional plots she had asked
Glendon
and
Graushner
to create, foreseeing just such a pivotal moment. Getting her laughs, she leveraged the moment. "Let’s put it after
Luba
and
Miss Grimsby.
"

Greg turned to Jimmy. "Do they attract the same audiences?
Luba
doesn't seem as sophisticated."

Jimmy shook his head.
"Different demographics.
How about
Luba
on Tuesday at nine-thirty.
Viewers might switch channels."

Greg vetoed the idea. "Keep
Luba
where it is. Why counterprogram with our best shows just to get second place? How else can we shelter
Miss
Grimsby and give it a chance to grow?"

"Monday?"
Ev
Carver suggested.

"An all-white night?"
Marian pointed out, referring to the color of the rectangles for new shows. Wouldn’t
Ev
Carver just love to see us gamble on a night that had all new shows with nothing to shelter them?
she
thought. "I've been thinking of making Monday our movie night and maybe moving
A Funny Marriage
to an early slot on Wednesday. I don't think
What's
the World Coming To?
should
stay where it is on Wednesday. Its numbers are rising."

Greg grunted agreement and his mouse moved the rectangle labeled
Scum
into the Wednesday nine-thirty slot, right below
What's the World Coming To
?
.

He stared at both shows. "We might as well put all our notorious shows on together. If they don’t go down in flames, we might just steal viewers from cable and the Web and surprise people."

With no one willing to refute his reasoning, the group began to construct the rest Wednesday night around those two shows.

Late that night, after the fall schedule was finally set, Greg made the obligatory phone calls to the program suppliers: first to those whose shows had been canceled for next year and only last to the lucky ones whose pilots had won them a place in the lineup or were at least put on hold for possible introduction at midseason. The worst rudeness would be to let those losing out get the bad news late and secondhand. These were talented people. A little graciousness now would be remembered when they had a new project.

Sally had programmed her telephone to switch any phone calls over to Annette's house. John Rosenthal had promised to call her as soon as he knew the fate of
Adam and Eve
. Sally sat all afternoon with Annette and Johnny around their pool, and then they had dinner. None of the telephone calls were for her.

"You're going crazy staring at the phone and you're making me crazy," Annette finally declared. She pulled Sally to her feet. "We are going for a walk.
To the end of the block and back."

Sally resisted, but Annette insisted a ten-minute walk would clear her head.

When they returned, the maid handed Sally a message. John Rosenthal had phoned from New York. He was leaving for the airport, but she should call Marti, who would explain.

"I knew we shouldn't have left," Sally wailed. "We didn't make it. I know we didn't. He would have said yes or something like that if we'd made it."

Annette, always practical, refused to conjecture.
She picked up the receiver and punched in Marti's number, written on the phone message. She handed Sally the receiver as soon as she heard a ring.

"Marti? It's Sally. What happened?"

Annette watched for jubilation or grief. Sally's expression did not change. She hung up.

"We're on hold as a possible midseason replacement. They like the show, but say it's too low-concept to go against strong action dramas on the other networks—it'll get lost. They say it needs to build and will have a better shot after the dust settles. They didn't order any episodes, though."

"Ladies and gentlemen," a deep announcer voice cut through the chatter.
"The chief executive officer of the Federal Broadcasting System, Mr. Gregory
Lyall
."

The Hilton meeting room was filled with several constituencies: station executives on FBS’s affiliate board flown in to screen the new shows and be briefed; key ad-agency people and some of their big-TV-budget clients; and the television press. The purpose of the breakfast was to announce FBS's fall schedule. The next step would be for the rest of the affiliates and then the advertising people to view the new shows in preparation for the upfront commercial-time sales. Greg was here to begin the process of marketing the network’s wares.

Mickey Blinder sat forlornly in the back of the room.
The Neighborhood
had bitten the dust—not even put on standby. He stared at the clip from
Scum
being shown on the giant screen
.
Who would have
thought this weird show would be the only
Monumental
pilot to make it onto a fall schedule. What the hell was this business turning into?

Two nights ago, he had phoned
Monumental's
CEO in California. With all the false enthusiasm he could muster, he tried to make the single commitment from FBS sound like a victory. "They're crazy over this show. They say this could be another
30 Rock,
another
Two and a Half Men.
"

But the truth, he was sure, was all too evident: Two years of pilots plus millions in producer advances had all gone to get one lousy new half-hour show on the air. One!
A show that had as much chance of lasting out the season as a World War Two training film about the proper cleaning of a latrine.

"So that's it, ladies and gentlemen," Greg concluded, "that's the first stage of the rocket that will carry FBS to the top of the ratings in coming years. We want you and your clients along with us on that ride to the top. Thank you."

The applause was loud and sounded sincere. But Greg knew he was only the last in a succession of network heads from
whom
these advertising people had heard a version of that speech. And the one they were all sure was most likely to fail.

Book Four

PRIME TIME

JULY 2009

On a Friday night in July, Chris anchored the news from a U.S. army base in Germany. A major segment had been her interviews with American soldiers wounded in Iraq being treated at the base hospital. She was in a rush to leave as her sign-off ended because she had a flight to Geneva, where she would be driven to a small Swiss town for a long weekend of vacation. Greg, who was in Europe negotiating links with foreign broadcasters, would be arriving there from Paris at about the same time.

A soldier who had been diffidently watching the broadcast stepped up beside her as she walked to her car.

"Ms.
Paskins
, ma'am.
Could I speak to you alone for a second?"

"I'm in a bit of a hurry, soldier," she said.

"I think it's important, ma'am."

"You'll have to ride to the airport with me. The driver can take you back here afterward."

The soldier climbed into the limousine's rear seat beside her. As the car headed out of the base, she raised the barrier isolating their conversation from the driver and waited for what the soldier had to say.

He spoke slowly, halting between sentences as if testing them first to determine whether they contained good sense. "Ma'am, I'm Technical Sergeant Benjamin Craig. My background is missiles. The President and Defense have had us evaluating a new missile-defense system that might be closer to the Middle East—“

“Pointed at Iran, as I
recall.”
“I’m
not at liberty to discuss targets, Ma’am. My brother and I have both been crazy about rockets since we were kids. Our expertise got us assigned to this missile unit to evaluate, plan, and build them. But a month ago, we were told our work here was no longer necessary. He was sent home a few weeks ago to await further orders, and I’m scheduled to leave tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand what’s

”

“As soon as his plane landed in the states, he was handed new orders assigning him and two of his buddies to a brand-new unit. He called to tell me they were sending him to a town in Maine. Well, I've asked a lot of the brass around here about that town, but none of them ever heard of a military base near there. What's even stranger, the letters I get are all postmarked Washington, D.C."

"And you're concerned for some reason?"

"Ms.
Paskins
, why should three nuclear missile experts be sent to the middle of the woods when the military needs all of us now that there’s talk about evaluating our nuclear capability in advance of talks on a New Start Treaty and a new missile-defense system in Europe?"

Chris turned that question over in her mind all the way to the little Swiss inn overlooking a snow-fed lake in the Alps. A message awaited her there from Greg to alert her that Diane had surprised him in Paris; he could not get away.

Chris drove back to the Geneva airport in the same taxicab. If Greg had met her, she might have forgotten the soldier's questions, but she had nothing ahead of her for the weekend. When her plane arrived at JFK, she took the helicopter to LaGuardia and the shuttle to Washington. She would spend the weekend hunting down her Defense Department contacts.

"Whatever your plans were for the weekend," Diane told Greg when she surprised him in Paris, "we can do together."

"I night have to go to Switzerland," he ventured.

"I love Switzerland."

"Probably not, though," he said with resignation.

"Well, what I'd like to do then is make quick stops in the morning at a few designers, maybe pick up some winter outfits, and then we can spend the rest of the weekend together."

They lunched at
Taillevent
on Saturday before a helicopter flew them to the Loire Valley. A car drove them from one great château to another: massive Chambord, topped by turrets, spires, and chimneys and surrounded by endless woods where Francis I loved to hunt;
Azay
-le-Rideau, a jewel of a Renaissance edifice set amid trees at the edge of a river; and
Chenonceaux
, where Henry II's mistress planned an extension bridging the river, but was evicted by his widow, who completed the bridge as a great gallery over the water.

"What are you thinking?" Diane asked as they walked back to their car through
Chenonceaux’s
gardens.

"That all the big shots who swaggered around these cold, drafty places are as dead as their servants and peasants." Greg grinned at the irony. "The lowliest family with a television set today has access to more news in half an hour, more entertainment in a night, than kings had in a year. Technology has democratized the world. It's made kings of commoners."

"Or kept them from revolting against the kings."
Diane pondered a moment. "The thought appeals to you because you weren’t going to let anything stop you in going from commoner to king."

"Sometimes I wonder if striving to be king is worth all the huffing and puffing.
For what?
A castle in an age when the average guy can have a decent house

or did before the housing market crashed? A limo when the average guy can drive himself wherever he's going in a perfectly fine car?"

Diane thrust her arm through his as they walked. "You talk a good game, Greg, but you can't bear to be ordinary. You want to be special, on top."

"In other words it's still better to be king."

"Although I can't see that I'd ever have to fight another woman for possession of the château," she said laughingly. "You're definitely not the type to have a mistress."

"I'm not?"

She shook her head. "You aren't self-indulgent enough. You always try to do the right thing. I'm more likely to have a lover than you."

"Do you?"

"You're jealous,” she noted with a laugh.

She threw her arms around his neck, halting their progress along the gravel. "I love you too much to take a lover. We argue at times, but I've never wanted another man. You make me happy."

Diane kissed him quickly, innately uncomfortable with a public display of affection as she spotted a family approaching: the husband holding a tot's hand, the pregnant wife carrying an infant. She took Greg's arm, and they continued the walk to their car.

"You know what made me feel odd in the château?" she rhetorically asked. "That Henry the Second's mistress was named Diane. I kept thinking she should have been the wife."