Star Time (28 page)

Barnett’s doubts were further balanced by a principle he had allowed few people to glimpse in himself over the many years he was building FBS and sensed in Greg as well. It had been the legendary “magic” divining rod that guided him when making difficult decisions like choosing among apparently equally appealing pilot shows or how much to bid on a sports package or whether to preempt the schedule for an upcoming news event or even which people could be relied on: Only Greg among the three understood that FBS had been the leader in broadcasting because viewers believed it cared about presenting to them what was truly worthwhile. 

The final factor that swayed Barnett in Greg’s favor, however, was tactical. He believed that even while recuperating, he could trust Greg to defer to his guidance in critical matters and not to try to oust him; Barnett had every confidence that when he truly required it, his son-in-law could be controlled.

Even so, he wanted experienced people under Greg and a fall
back position. Although reporting to Greg,
Ev
Carver would remain in place as president of his group and Jorgenson would stay in his slot as well. In case Greg failed, Carver could then replace him, but if such a circumstance came to pass, he was sure, sooner or later
Ev
Carver would try to seize the crown.

During Greg’s visit to the hospital two days later, Barnett announced his decision. Taking a deep breath through the oxygen feed and summoning his strength, he said, “What I’m about to tell you
is
absolutely confidential: As soon as I’m up and about, I intend to call an emergency directors meeting. I will resign as FBS’s chief executive officer and name you in my place.”

Greg was stunned. He had expected Barnett to keep his condition secret during his recuperation, but to distribute some of his authority. Kept away from real responsibility for so long, he had not presumed that any of that authority would shift to him. He could envision the effect his elevation would have on the other executives. He had no enemies at FBS, but no zealous supporters either. Everyone liked him, but many
questioned if substance supported his polished facade, whether all that show of energy could actually produce significant results; he thought they viewed him as a man who slid between the raindrops, never getting wet, who left no footprints. He would have to demonstrate his worth quickly; their unqualified cooperation would be needed to heave the company out of its hole and back up to the heights.

When Greg finally replied, it was to say, “I appreciate your belief in me. And I’ll justify it.”

“You’d better

and fast. You have one year to prove you can turn the company around."

A year! A year was an instant in broadcasting, a distant galaxy's twinkle, hardly any time at all to find and develop shows that could shift ingrained viewing habits. He did not want the Chairman under any illusions about the difficult road ahead.

“The first thing is to stop the hemorrhaging and restructure,” Greg said. “But moving the company into profits in a year will be hard."

The Chairman nodded; no need to waste his limited energy on rehashing the obvious obstacles. "A year is all you have. I've had outside counsel draw up your employment contract."

He pointed at a document on his side table. Greg skimmed the terms. The salary was the same as he was making now, small for a company's chief executive. Barnett was not leaving himself open to criticism that the new arrangement was a boondoggle for his son-in-law. Greg read on, and then summarized the upside aloud.

"Turn a profit and I get four more years at a generous salary and an equally generous stock-option package.
Fair enough."

Greg understood Barnett's cynical, but logical reasoning: Greg was inexperienced in a leadership role. If the coming months demonstrated that he was in over his head, Carver and Jorgenson would be standing in the wings

“One thing, though,” Greg declared. “I need a free hand to make changes in their operations and the final say over anything that goes out over the air.”

Barnett nodded. “You wouldn’t be much of a CEO if you didn't get that.  It will be your ball game to win or lose.”

Barnett realized that he had just redeemed a promise made to a much younger Greg
Lyall
that his future advancement was unlimited, a vow he would have unhesitatingly ignored if events had not required this change. What dominated his thoughts, though, was that he had just relinquished command over one of the two things in the world he truly loved, but that the happiness of the other was still in question.

“I want your word, Greg,” he said, “your solemn word that you will commit yourself as fully and faithfully to rebuilding your marriage as you will to rebuilding FBS.”

Greg displayed no hesitancy. “You have it.”

Barnett finally allowed his eyelids to close. He now felt content. Greg
Lyall’s
fidelity had been purchased on every front.

Ev
Carver already knew of Barnett's heart attack. That same confiding director also confidentially informed him that in two days the directors would secretly convene to choose a new CEO.
Ev
was the logical choice to replace Barnett. Arguably, his only gray mark was the discouraging prime-time ratings.

Ev’s
political instincts told him that he had to take action right away to appear decisive in meeting the programming crisis. He phoned Raoul
Clampton
, the head of the Programming Department. Because of the man’s experience and allegiance,
Ev
would retain him, but would insist on changes in the department he could immediately announce.
Clampton
was on the West Coast at that moment.
Ev
reached him on Skype; he wanted the meeting face to face.

He dispensed with the preliminary small talk. “Raoul, we’re shuffling the deck in your department. Some heads have to roll. Ax whoever was in charge of new comedies and dramas. Give me two new names. I want this press release out b
y eleven our time.”

Relieved that he was being spared in the bloodbath,
Clampton
, thought quickly about whom to promote.
“Hank Newton for dramas.
Marian Marcus for comedies.”

“A woman.
That’s good. We need to show one or two.”

Ev
paused to appraise the two names he had written down. “This doesn’t look decisive enough. Give me more names. Ax miniseries, too.” He listened for a moment. “I don’t give a fuck if he’s only been there a month. Fire the
putz
.”

Barnett Roderick insisted on returning home from the hospital earlier than his doctors would have liked. He wanted to reassure the directors by holding the secret meeting at his apartment. No need for undue alarm or for us to get involved, he wanted them to think; the old man is still strong and in control.

As requested Greg was the first to arrive and found Barnett awaiting him in the living
room.
The Chairman had set the stage carefully: soft lighting to reduce his pallor, the new Matisse behind him, and sitting in a tall chair that commanded the room, but also supported a back that otherwise might slump from fatigue. Barnett was pensive.

“I never thought a day like this would ever come,” he said.

“You’d just go on and on . . . never retire and never die?”

“Seems a bit foolish when you put it that way.
It just never crossed my mind.”

Barnett then reviewed what he would be proposing at the meeting and what was expected of Greg.

The directors ratified Barnett’s choice and voted unanimously to name Greg the company’s chief executive officer and to confirm his one-year contract. Because the law required that the major terms be publicly disclosed, the one-year term was phrased as five years including options.” The major option was that the directors could dismiss him after the first year if the company had not moved from losses to profits. The unspoken question on all the directors’ minds was whether he was up to the job or had been selected by his father-in-law out of nepotism.

Greg stayed behind to thank Barnett after the directors left. In their strange relationship, more than employer and employee, but less than blood relatives, tides of respect and concession warily ebbed and flowed between them in rhythm with the power each possessed in relation to the other at a particular moment, the flow nearly all toward Barnett and ebbing mostly from Greg. Yet, behind the self each presented, they were only vaguely known to each other, opposing forces barely glimpsed across a battlefront for possession of Diane, hidden behind politely disguised barbed wire and rarely exposed artillery.

The Barnett whom Greg encountered after the nurse had helped her patient back into his bed was a tired, diminished relic of the patriarch who had ruled the meeting.

“I wanted to thank you and to make sure you were all right,” Greg told him.

Barnett let his gaze wander up to the ceiling. “On a safari in the Serengeti once, I saw an old, scarred lion
who’d
been beaten out by younger males. He had a fresh wound across his nose that wasn’t healing too well, probably from an animal he’d grown too slow or weak to kill cleanly. I remember thinking that life had to be harder for him than for others because he remembered being young and virile, the king of the Serengeti. Now all he had ahead of him was to shamble on toward death.”

There was a knock on the open door, and Diane entered, her forehead bunched with worry. “Are you all right?” she asked.

He nodded. “
It’s
official: Greg is now CEO.”

Greg thought he descried in her brief glance at him the enmity accorded a usurper. And perhaps confusion, too, not knowing what feelings were now appropriate toward each man, what could be said. The circumstance that prompted Greg’s accession was not a happy one for any of them.

“Are you going to be here the rest of the day?” Greg asked.

She nodded. "My calls at work are being forwarded."

“We’re having dinner at the
Blakes
,” he reminded her.

“If Dad’s all right.”

“He’ll be fine, and he has round-the-clock nurses,” Greg said firmly. “If anything happens, they’ll phone us. Tom Blake’s an FBS director, and his bank is essential to us. I’ll be back here to pick you up at six.”

Within minutes after the directors meeting ended, the Communications Department released the secretly-prepared proclamation that a new CEO had been named. Within minutes it had been sent out as company email both inside and outside the company, posted on the Facebook page, tweeted by the Publicity Department’s social-media specialists, dropped into in-boxes, and faxed along phone wires and wireless frequencies, which instantly began to hum with gossip and guesswork.

Greg’s assistant, only recently Barnett’s, had also placed phone calls, and Carver and Jorgenson were waiting for him in his new corner office when he arrived.

“This company is in a perilous condition,” he began. “One way or another, I’m going to turn it around. I won’t have time to stand on ceremony or attend a lot of committee meetings or always go through the proper channels. If something needs to be changed, I’ll and change it then and there. Costs are going to be cut, deadwood will be chopped away, new ideas and procedures will be introduced, and most important, new shows will be developed.”

Saving money would not be enough, Greg knew. The network desperately needed some hit prime-time shows. A top half-hour sitcom could earn $2.2 million for the network’s four minutes of commercial time—$276,000 for every thirty-second commercial. Over the course of a year that hit could be worth perhaps a hundred million dollars more a year than a flop. The prime-time schedule contained forty-four half hours—or twenty-two hours—of programming a week. FBS was lagging behind in nearly all of them.

“I intend by next fall to have this company back on the road to health,” Greg concluded. “If either of you disagree, I’ll be glad to accept your resignation and offer a generous severance package.”  He was committed to not firing them, but not to their quitting on their own.

He had ruminated on the men since last night and studied them while he was speaking. Bill Jorgenson, heavyset and in his sixties, seemed to have overcome the shock of seeing his former trainee become his boss and knowing that with only a few years left until retirement, he had lost
forever the race he had run all his life. His calculated jocularity would take a while to resurface. Now he was nodding his head vigorously.

“I’m with you all the way, Greg,” he said.

Greg turned to
Ev
. By all rights the man should have been nervous. No love had ever been lost between them. On the contrary, since their days in L.A. both had recognized the other as a potential rival.
Ev
should have been expecting now to be fired, replaced by a man loyal to Greg. Greg hoped
Ev
would construe the severance offer as a graceful means of exit from an untenable position and choose to leave. But
Ev
seemed to exude a kind of smug patience.