SUZANNE HAD BEEN WORKING for us and doing the weather show ten, twelve months, when we got the notice about the Northeast Regional Cable Television Operator’s Conference, over in Mansfield. Stuff like this usually went straight in my circular file. I mean, who needs to pay a couple hundred bucks to eat rubber chicken and sit through a day and a half of workshops on how to increase advertising revenues or liven up your test pattern?
But Suzanne got all excited when she saw the brochure. “So,” she says. “We’re going to have to pretape ‘Senior Chat’ and the Sunday morning show, if we plan on being gone over a Saturday night. I’d better get onto that.”
“Whoa there,” I tell her. “Who says we’re going anyplace? I never go to this conference myself, and I sure as hell don’t send my employees.”
“Well you never had me working for you before either,” she tells me.
“Look, Suzanne,” I say. “I know you’re young and you’re full of ambition and energy. That’s great. You may even have some talent in the field. But you’re not going to turn this dog of a station into anything more than what we’re running here. The potential’s just not there.”
It was like she didn’t hear me. “So,” she says. “We’ll need to book a couple of hotel rooms. Lucky I just bought a new suit.”
“You think an event like this is free?” I ask her. “Think again.”
“I’ll pay half of my registration fee,” she says. “It’ll be tax deductible. Career development.” Then she starts reading off the names of the different optional workshops you could attend. The keynote speaker is a news anchor from Troy, New York. Suzanne says she wants to be sure she gets to meet this woman. That would be a perfect type of market for her.
I could’ve said no, of course. But past a point I didn’t have the heart. “OK,” I tell her. “I don’t have the stomach for these conferences, but you go for it if you’re so goddam eager. God forbid I’d try and get in the way of the next Connie Chung.”
“I knew you’d say yes in the end,” she says. Come to think of it, this was one of the only times I ever saw her smile, that she wasn’t on the air.
“I pity the poor guy that ever tries to say no to you,” I say.
“Nobody ever does,” she says.