There were just three of them in the boardroom downtown, the headquarters of the American Broadcast Network. Neil Nesmith was standing by an old-fashioned white board, on which he’d just written a half-dozen names in red marker. Nesmith in his wrinkled dress pants and short-sleeved shirt, his lank brown hair worn long and looking somewhat greasy, as if he washed it once a week. Jack McGuire was at the table, leaning back in his chair, one hand on the cup of coffee resting on his stomach. He’d finally given up on the comb-over a couple of years ago and now his hair, what was left of it, was cropped close. Bobby Holmes stood by the windows, looking down onto West Fifth forty floors below. Traffic was stopped dead, not an unusual occurrence. Bobby was waiting for Jack to take the lead. In fact, Bobby had been waiting on Jack, in a more general sense, for a few years now. But Jack was hanging in; he’d be eighty in December.
“What’s the consensus, Neil?” Jack said. His voice was hoarse; as he spoke he reached into his pocket for a lozenge.
“Well,” Neil said in his reticent manner. “That depends on whether we’re talking about a big shake-up or a small shake-up.”
“Give it to us both ways.”
Neil stepped to the board and began rewriting the names there, moving each to a time slot. “If we want to make a small move, we shift Reynolds and Ramirez from the morning show to eight o’clock. Keep Michaels at nine and bump Jackson to ten. Or—we could leave the morning show where they are and try Ron Rivera at eight, see how he does there. Nobody’s watching him at noon. People like him a lot, especially women, but it’s noon, right? The question is—is he ready for prime time?”
Jack glanced at Bobby, who walked over to look at the white board for a moment, like a punter examining the totes at the racetrack. He turned to Jack but he spoke to Neil.
“We’re getting killed at eight o’clock. Why is that?”
“A number of reasons,” Neil said. “Trump’s approval ratings are worse than ever and when that happens, it seems that more people watch CNN and MSNBC and the like. Which in turn helps keep his numbers down. Plus, it’s summer. People don’t watch TV as much in the summer months, that’s a hard fact. At eight o’clock, they’re still outside, doing sports or whatever.”
Doing sports, Bobby said to himself. Who talked like that? Neil did, but then Bobby was pretty sure Neil couldn’t throw a baseball across the room, or even ride a bicycle. It seemed as if he never went outside; his skin was the color of putty.
“Anything else?” Bobby asked. “Because I see that everybody—left and right—has better numbers than us at eight.”
“Sam Jackson is treading water,” Neil replied. “He still fawns over Trump but not quite as much as he used to. Lot of that going around. He’s floundering, especially with young viewers. Twenty-one to thirty-five, he does poorly.” Neil paused. “I’m not sure why.”
“It’s because he doesn’t shock anybody anymore,” Bobby said. “He just aggravates them. And he won’t let anybody talk. Would you go on a show where the host keeps yelling that you’re a traitor to your country and then doesn’t let you respond? I’m amazed somebody hasn’t punched his fucking lights out.”
Neil nodded. “Rumor is, he wanted a job in Trump’s cabinet. Never happened and he’s been pissed about it ever since. Takes it out on everybody around him.”
Bobby snorted. “Delusions of grandeur.”
Jack nodded. “But we loved him when he was doing three-point-eight every night, didn’t we?” He looked at the board a moment. “What’s the big shake-up?”
“The big shake-up.” Neil started erasing and rewriting the names. “We take a leap and slide Amy Reynolds and Chuck Ramsey into eight o’clock. Michaels stays at nine and we try Rivera at ten. A good spot to get him some recognition. Jackson would be gone.”
Jack nodded, sucking on the lozenge, the wattle at his neck rising and falling with the effort. “What would that cost us—dumping Jackson?”
“Terms of his contract, around twelve million.”
“Cheaper than keeping him on at eight,” Jack said. He glanced again at Bobby. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Bobby said slowly, “that we need to make some noise. This isn’t the time to build something slow. Big election coming up, we need a bounce now. Give Amy Reynolds eight o’clock by herself.”
“By herself,” Jack repeated.
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “She’s ready. The woman is whip smart and let’s face it, she looks like a fucking swimsuit model. So you get the people who want hard news and you get the mouth breathers, even if they watch with the sound off. And she’s hungry. Put her there with Ramirez and she’s going to be on the sidelines half the time. Give Ramsey ten o’clock and slide Rivera into the morning show. He’ll need a co-host. Bring whatersname back from London. She’s been doing some good work. And she fills the babe quotient we lose with Reynolds moving.”
“Who?” Jack said.
“Sally Brown,” Neil said. “She covered the subway bombing. She got the interview with the cop who shot the bomber?”
“Right,” Jack said.
Bobby could tell that Jack had no clue who Sally Brown was. It didn’t matter. Neil erased the board again and set it up the way Bobby had suggested. He stood back to look at it, a young Rembrandt admiring his own work. Bobby half expected him to sign the thing.
“All right?” Bobby asked.
Jack nodded. “How quick can we do this?”
“Like tearing off a Band-Aid,” Bobby said. “Quicker the better. We need to talk contract with Amy. Hers runs until spring and we need to tie her up. We don’t want her making a splash and then bolting to Fox. The others are signed so that’s not a worry.”
“When do we tell Sam?”
“The night before,” Bobby said. “We don’t need him venting for a week on air about what a bunch of chickenshits we are.”
“Um…who will be telling him?” Neil asked.
“You,” Bobby said. He knew that Neil would rather wrestle a live alligator than tell Sam Jackson he was history.
Neil swallowed, presumably anticipating the meeting. “I don’t know that that is my job,” he said after a moment.
Bobby laughed. “Just fucking with you, Neil old boy. I’ll tell him.”
“Too bad Trump didn’t toss him a bone,” Jack said.
Bobby laughed. “Trump’s running out of bones to toss. But can you imagine the two of them in a room together? There wouldn’t be enough oxygen left to keep a mouse alive.”
“You would have to assume he’s seen this coming,” Jack said. “The man gets the numbers.”
“Guys like that never see shit like this coming,” Bobby said. “But he’ll be all right. He can go back to teaching college, or just retire. God knows he’s made lots of money.”
“He doesn’t care about the money,” Jack said. “He cares about the pulpit. He started believing his own press a long time ago.”
“Too bad for him,” Bobby said.