Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

It was show business.

It was war.

After two weeks of preemptions for specials (“The Miss Tap Dancing America Pageant,” and “The First Annual Husbands and Wives Weight-Lifting Competition Live from Las Vegas”), the second of the soft versions of “First Year” was sent like a poor sacrificial lamb against the all-devouring mastodon that was “Dallas.”

Oh God. This “First Year” episode was the one about Jack and Laurie buying their first home computer.

Astonishingly, “First Year” got a fifteen share, improving by almost half! After another week of being preempted (a network news investigation of sexual abuse in the social-work profession), the final soft show (Laurie takes karate lessons) crept up to a sixteen, only two points behind the second-place show in the time slot.

Maybe Perry’s show was actually “building.” Maybe it was slowly, magically, against all odds, attracting an audience that would grow, perhaps even after a full season make some significant inroad against the most popular show in the known world. Maybe the phenomenon of “The First Year’s the Hardest” would signal a shift in mass taste, a ground swell of yearning for subtlety and quality!

There was never a chance to find out.

The next episode of “First Year” was scheduled at a new time. The network announced, with considerable pride—not only in the show, but in its own courage and conviction on behalf of innovation and quality—that it was sticking to this new show despite its poor ratings, and was putting it into a new time slot, where it was more likely to “find its audience.”

The new time slot was eight o’clock Sunday night.

That was the soft-time of family viewing and family-type competition that the show was originally promised for.

But the first episode scheduled was the first of the hard shows, the controversial epic of AIDS.

The network cautioned families that the material might not be deemed by some parents as appropriate for young children.

The National Committee for Clean Television, a powerful volunteer organization based in Wyandotte, Tennessee, protested the subject matter of the AIDS show and warned its members as well as its friends in Congress that this episode was not suitable for family viewing.

Still, it was a better shot than going against Dallas.

The AIDS episode scored a twenty-six share, the first time out of the teens since the pilot! That at least was respectable.

Maybe Max Bloorman had been right after all in demanding the hard subject matter, and then in seeming contradiction putting the show in the family time slot just to stir controversy. Maybe the seemingly arbitrary and contradictory network moves were not really blunders but signs of strategic genius. On the other hand, maybe the quality writing and production of the show were at last finding an audience that appreciated good, adult entertainment.

None of that really mattered. The bottom line was that the show had a chance. If the “First Year” company could not enjoy the luxury of confidence yet, at least the many workers whose livelihoods depended on it now had legitimate rights to harbor that most basic ingredient of show business survival: hope.

The word would come down today.

Either the show would continue to be, or not to be.

Perry could only pick at his spinach salad. He didn’t even have the appetite of a rabbit. How nice it would be, how comforting, to be walking the beach in Venice right now with Jane, listening to the surf, thinking of the moment’s problems in some kind of perspective, and knowing no matter what happened he had his mate beside him. Instead, he was having lunch in the commissary with Ned. They were like a couple of old Kremlinologists, trying to assess the signs and portents that might be found in the behavior of the network brass.

Up to now, they had continued to hedge their bets. After the AIDS episode got a twenty-six share, the network gave the show two more script commitments, but hadn’t ordered the actual production yet, or hinted at whether there would be a real renewal, a significant block of something like seven more episodes that would mean a fighting chance for the show to establish itself as a series. Now, with the second hard hour scheduled for next week and the third now finishing shooting, the powerful “they” of the network had to reach a decision. It could go either way.

Only last week, a series that Perry and Ned, no doubt in their elite/effete Eastern snobbery, considered a real turkey was renewed for a whopping thirteen hours, even though it had never got above a twenty-three share—less than the last episode of “First Year.” So why was the network sticking with this lackluster sitcom tale of two divorced women who start their own limousine service? Because, as Archer explained to Ned and Perry with a shrug, “Somebody up there likes it.”

Somebody up there in Valhalla, the brass heaven of power and decision, had taken a fancy to the concept. Or maybe someone’s wife liked it, or teenage daughter, or girlfriend. God only knew. Whichever God it was. Maybe Max Bloorman himself. Maybe the head man above him.

“Don’t worry,” Archer said suddenly, winking at Perry, “I think you’ll get renewed.”

Then he was gone.

Perry and Ned looked at each other, trying to ascertain what that meant. Was the young executive simply trying to perk up their flagging spirits? Did he know something he wasn’t telling? Did the fact he looked at Perry directly and not at Ned when he said it have any significance?

“Let’s go back to work,” Ned said finally, “before we go crazy.”

Perry tried to work on one of the newly commissioned scripts in which Jack has a recurrence of an old herpes infection and Laurie suspects him of having picked it up from some recent extramarital sexual encounter, but he couldn’t concentrate. As well as worrying about the fate of the show, he was distracted by thoughts of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

Even out here in Southern California some traditional ambience, a hint of roasting turkey and cranberries, seemed to leave a trace in the air, maybe only a vestigial memory, but still it was there, causing a twinge, a restlessness, a distraction. Perry got up and dropped down to Ned’s for a break after an hour or so, but he was not in his office.

His secretary said he’d been summoned by Archer.

Maybe this was it.

Perry decided to wait and find out. He sat down in the little waiting room outside Ned’s office and leafed through the day’s copy of Variety , not really seeing the words, just for something to do. The moment Ned walked in he could read the disaster in his face.

Perry stood up, feeling dizzy.

“They dumped us, huh?” he asked, wanting to know the worst at once.

“No,” Ned told him. “You got renewed. I’m the only one who was dumped.”

Perry followed Ned into his office as the former executive producer began to empty his drawers, stacking papers on top of his desk, sorting and throwing some things in the waste-basket.

“This is crazy,” Perry said. “There can’t be any show without you.”

“The network thinks otherwise. They think I’m not cut out to produce hard stuff.”

“Bullshit! You’re the only one who can do it and keep some quality, too. If you go, I go.”

“Don’t do anything rash. After all, it’s your show.”

“Not anymore, it’s not. It belongs to Archer Mellis and the network as far as I’m concerned. And I’m going to tell him so right now!”

He told him so.

Archer told Perry to sit down.

“You can’t leave the show,” Archer said calmly. “You’re the new producer.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Who else knows the show as well as you? Who else could step in and take over?”