Star Time (36 page)

The rule of thumb was that a TV executive had two seasons to prove himself. This was Mickey's second. Unless he got at least one strong Monumental show on TV, he was through. To increase his chances of owning a hit, Mickey convinced his bosses to make long-term
deals with proven creators of successful series. Susan had been one of those. He had been waiting months for her to create a new show. Whenever he passed her in the commissary or the parking lot, he would anxiously ask if she could show him anything yet. She would shake her head and, smiling, say, “When it’s ready,” and keep walking. He was sure that each headshake lowered his life span by a year.

Now, to hear that she wanted to meet with him about a project, he told her, was like hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing "Happy Birthday" just for him.

Mickey's career had been built on being liked. Realizing that he did not know Susan's religion but thought her name sounded Mormon, he rushed to assure her that he "deeply respected the Mormon religion—all religions, in fact, regardless of color or creed." He himself was not a Mormon, he added. He had been careful to divorce each of his wives before marrying the next.

Mickey's office was the largest Stew had ever seen. He could picture jetliners being serviced at the other end. Behind the desk was a middle-aged, chunky, balding, energetic, very tan man, who looked to Stew like every other entertainment-industry executive of indeterminate middle age. He was dressed in tennis shorts and a warm-up jacket. A case containing several tennis rackets leaned against a wall. He had a doubles match scheduled later that day with several other TV executives, among them an ABC guy with whom he was hoping to make a deal for a show about a loudmouthed working-class wife who was really a robot built to give great sex.

The air conditioner was on high, but Mickey kept wiping sweat from his forehead and neck. He seemed to
Stew
a very worried man. Particularly after Susan "pitched" him, as she called it, their new series,
Scum.

Mickey's eyes rolled wildly. "You really mean to tell me that you expect a network to buy a show about how bad those syndicated news shows are that they put on TV and even tell viewers that it’s scum?"

"Mary Tyler Moore worked in a third-rate TV newsroom," Susan reminded him.

"Mary Tyler Moore was a saint," Mickey reverentially reminded her. "Those ratings, those reruns . . ."

"The important thing is that
Scum’s
newsroom is a funny place full of funny people, like
The Office
."

"
Weirdos
."

Mickey had no idea whether the public would like the show or even whether the idea was a good one. He knew only that the show was too
unusual for him to be able to sell to network programmers, who thought exactly as he did. They wanted the security of concepts and characters that had proven successful in the past. His eyes were pleading.

"Give me a family.
Like in
Modern Family.
I can sell that. Make the mother a smartass. Great, I can sell that. Hey,
Luba
is a smartass Russian.
A snap.
But
these degenerates
. . ."

Susan could not shake Mickey's negativism. His only hope to make a deal for a pilot script, he said, was FBS. "Marian Marcus is just crazy enough to go for it, but she'll never convince Raoul
Clampton
."

"Try," Susan urged him. "Let's you and I take a meeting with Marian as soon as we can. I love this show."

Slogging back from
Monumental's
office building to where the producers were housed, Stew tried not to look at the cars parked in the lots. Even a rusted Vespa would break his heart.

Diane invited Barnett for dinner on Saturday night after Ray
Strock's
tumultuous sign-off. Barnett was now well enough to leave the house for
short outings and would walk the few blocks there. When Greg arrived, his wife and father-in-law were chatting in the living room. Greg commented that Barnett looked a lot stronger.

Barnett's eyes were cold. "I saw the news broadcast last night. Ray
Strock's
humiliation was disastrous. Utter clumsiness. FBS News has been left looking like a cheap traveling circus."

"You're
sounding
a lot stronger, too. Ray
Strock
had agreed to do regular editorials on the broadcast instead of anchoring. There was no reason to suspect he would knife us in the back. Our feeling is he was afraid he might not have the depth or imagination to give a significant opinion every night." Greg matched Barnett's stare with his own. "Or perhaps his ego couldn't relinquish the spotlight. A lot of older men get like that."

"I hired Ray
Strock
because he was the finest newscaster of his generation."

The statement contained its own answer, and Greg held his tongue. He perceived that feeling better now. Barnett was trying to make this a fight over turf. Barnett would avoid taking his stand over the corporate reorganization—cost cutting was necessary and he was glad to have someone take the heat for firing people

but he cared passionately about everything that was broadcast. That was what he had built the network on. That was what his friends would comment about to him at parties.

No program had ever gone on the air without his personal approval. Like the old lion whose wounds were starting to heal, he had circled back to test the young interloper once more. Greg realized he had chosen the Ray
Strock
demotion as the battlefield because the media uproar made Greg weakest there.

Greg chose to reply with logic and not emotion. "Ray
Strock's
low rating was costing us at least a hundred million dollars a year in lost revenue. I think Christine
Paskins
can help us make that up. That's what I was hired to do."

"When Diane told me you intended to replace him," Barnett continued, not ready to break off the fight. "I held my tongue. I was sure you'd convinced an established anchor to come over from another network to replace him. But when she told me it was one of those . . . those interchangeable women reporters you can't tell from one another, I was sure she had to be mistaken."

Greg's gaze pierced Diane's as he asked Barnett, "Exactly when did Diane tell you who it was?"

"The morning after you hired the woman."

"You mean before it was announced."

"Of course.
What good would it have done to tell me when it was too late for me to stop you from making a
mistake.
"

"But you didn't
try
to stop me. Why?"

"I figured all the eggs had already been broken," Barnett replied, but with noticeably less firmness than before.

Greg suspected no call had been made because the old man feared that his own decision in the matter might not be correct, that his instincts had become fallible. The company's decline and then his heart attack had undermined his self-confidence with a reminder that he was mortal and perhaps could be wrong. He had raised the matter now solely to demonstrate that at least within the family he was still supreme.

Greg felt a cold, lonely wind curl about him. Right after the dinner with Chris and Carl Green, he had excitedly shared with Diane the information about the new news anchor. He impressed upon her that the information was absolutely confidential. Worried that the maneuver might be a mistake, at the first opportunity she had confided it to her father—and he wanted Greg to know that.

After Barnett left their apartment, she tried to defend her action by arguing that she could not know Greg meant her to keep the information from her father. Barnett was, after all, still FBS's chairman. Greg said only that the decision as to who should be informed was his to make, not hers. As he always suspected she might, when she had to choose between him and her father, Diane had deserted him.

Although he felt obligated to Diane for the advantages she had brought him and the duties he had pledged to her, he recognized that the invisible line separating them that he had hoped to eradicate had turned into an insurmountable wall. He could never trust her.

The following day, Mickey and the creators of
Scum
met with Marian Marcus at FBS's Programming Department. She was enthusiastic about the series, so enthusiastic, in fact, that despite her habitual caution about sticking out her neck, she marched Mickey, Susan, and Stew out of her own office and into an impromptu meeting with Raoul
Clampton
.

Beneath the pleasant, boyish face and casual, open shirts displayed by many in the entertainment industry, Raoul
Clampton
was a frightened man. His new prime-time lineup, as the ones before it, had failed to rise above last year's calamitous numbers. He could no longer fool himself that he understood what the public would go for and what it would not. He had seen too many can't-miss new ideas fall from the sky like shot birds—and too many promising executives

so he cautiously retreated to the tried and true.
Scum
just felt too original, too, “well, as perverted as those characters.”

Marian argued that Susan
Glendon
was a proven quantity, that this show was just different and wacky enough to attract an audience. Raoul
said he would read the proposal, but did not really like the concept and was pretty sure he would not change his mind.

As Susan was leaving, he asked her whether she had any ideas for a family show. How about something with an alien?

Raoul asked Mickey stayed behind when the others left. Raoul wanted to discuss
Loving
Luba
.

Its ratings had been weakening, he said, but he would consider renewing the show for another year. Mickey comprehended immediately that the problem was not the show's rating, which was the best of
any show on FBS, but that Raoul was angling for something. Mickey suspected the programming executive might want to use the leverage of renewal to make a personal arrangement with Monumental that would come into effect if the ax fell on him, as it had on hundreds at FBS. He would need an insurance policy, a little side deal that could never be revealed.

With Mickey as desperate to get keep the show on TV to save his hide as Raoul was for a parachute to save his, the two men quickly made a deal to renew
Loving
Luba
for a year and commit to another series with Annette Valletta after that. Raoul received a pledge of a producer’s deal with Monumental if Raoul was fired at FBS.

Annette Valletta's five-year contract would expire at the end of this TV season. Mickey would have to convince her to sign for another year of
Luba
with a salary increase and to commit to the new series after that, maybe by also dangling a couple of TV movies in front of her.  FBS was presently paying Monumental a licensing fee of nine-hundred-thousand dollars to broadcast each half-hour episode twice. With Raoul now in his pocket, Mickey decided, he might as well ask for an increase. Some of it would pay Annette's additional salary, but most would reduce the deficit Monumental was racking up because each episode cost well over a million dollars to produce.

Eager to win points with Mickey and Monumental, Raoul approved another two hundred thousand dollars an episode, even for shows already shot this year. Finding no resistance, Mickey pushed further.

"One more thing, Raoul," Mickey said, "
if
I
can
convince Annette to come back for another year, I think Monumental deserves a guaranteed thirteen-week commitment next year for a new series."

"Hey, come on, Mickey, that would guarantee you two new shows: one next year and the new series for Annette the year after. You’ve got me bleeding here. We’re not the Red Cross."

"If you're no longer here by then," Mickey offered, "you’re the producer of Annette’s new show. It’s yours."

"We've got a deal."

Both men understood that the new series could not be something so loony and sure to fail as
Scum
. Mickey pulled a new proposal from his briefcase.

Marian sat glumly in her office. She had phone calls to return, material to read, but she was too upset by the meeting just ended in
Clampton
office to rouse
herself
.
Scum
was the sort of new and innovative program that viewers might take to, and Susan
Glendon
had a real feel for that sort of material. The first series she produced had put her on the map. Her last, on a competing network, had been funny, but short-lived. Marian was convinced it had been badly placed in the schedule and its proper audience not given enough time to find it.

Raoul entered her office. He carried two proposals. He dropped the first on her desk, for
Scum
.