"Money. Millions."
"Okay, you got the millions. Ah got a few shekels jinglin' in mah jeans. Mah daddy made himself a fair pile afore he passed on, even if he did kinda let this station thing go to pot. Anythin' else you'll be needin'?"
"Yes," Sinnott said, crossing his fingers, "a bigger anchor."
"Son, you got not one, but two anchors. Moolah's no object. Just make sure it's nailed down real good this time."
"That's not the kind of anchor I meant."
"What other kind is there?"
"The news reader. They call them anchors, too."
"Then we already got two anchors. Am Ah right?"
"We need a bigger one."
"Which should be bigger?"
Sinnott thought fast. "Both. Especially the talking one."
"Guy looks pretty hefty to me."
"Ah meant a bigger name. One more recognizable. One of the network anchors."
"Who's good, but cheap?"
"Don Cooder."
Then Jed Burner blurted out the question that was subsequently reported in Time, Newsweek, TV Guide, the New York Times-the question that would haunt him in the months and years to come.
"Who the hell is Don Coodah?"
At first, it was seen as a colossal joke. The brash entrepreneur who ran a station no one wanted, trying to launch a national newscast based on a spoof of the news.
It would never have gotten off the ground had the station manager not understood that he had hit the bottom of his television career. It was make WETT News work or manage a Burger Triumph. If Dave Sinnott could find one that would take him on.
It was 1980, and the booming cable TV industry, barely a decade old, was facing its first challenge: Satellite TV.
Dishes were already beginning to appear in backyards and hotel lawns and bar roofs in anticipation of the next boom in broadcasting.
Meanwhile, broadcast TV, reeling from the challenge of cable, fought back on every front. The first casualty was their own anchor system. Virtually overnight, the old guard of anchors, seasoned professionals, many of whom learned their craft on radio, were unceremoniously canned.
And a crop of young manicured and tonsured celebrity anchors were brought in to replace them. Thus, the cult of the anchor was born.
Overnight, the cream of television broadcast journalism was on the street.
WETT News had its pick. So Dave Sinnott hired two of the best of the dispossessed anchors.
They weren't flashy. They weren't backed up by computer graphics or identifying Chyrons, But they could read copy off a teleprompter and switch to script without skipping a syllable.
Virtually overnight, WETT News was respectable.
"We have to change our name," Dave Sinnott, now doubling as uncredited news director, said one day. "Folks are still laughing."
"Is that bad?" Jed Burner asked via transatlantic telephone.
"Very bad. We have to be serious now. An image change would help."
"Okay-but we gotta keep the word News in there. How about Kable News-KN?"
"Cable is spelled with a C."
"No, Kable was spelled with a damn C. And you gotta add somethin' dignified."
"Like what?"
"Do Ah gotta come up with all the brilliant stuff in this operation? A dignified word. Try to get the word 'news' into it some more."
"Twice?"
"Why not? We're the news that is news. The newsy news."
"How does Newsworthy News sound?"
"Sounds dang dignified. Everything people say Ah ain't. Haw. Listen, gotta go. Dixie here's gettin' that dewy look about her. Ah want us up and runnin' in a yeah. Got that?"
"A year? You want a national news network in a year?"
"Yeah. Normally Ah'd of given you only six months. But I can't on account of Ah'm embarkin' on a round the world cruise, just me and mah forty footer-and Trixie and Dixie and Hortense."
"Hortense?"
"Somebody's gotta do the scullery stuff. Ah told mah attorney to write you all the checks you want. If Ah come back in a yeah and find Ah'm dead broke and there's nothin' to show for it, Ah'm gonna take that expensive anchor of yours, tie you and him both to the real anchor, and drop you-all in white water. Catch mah drift?"
"If it can be done, you'll have it, Mr. Burner."
And so the race to launch the first national news network had begun, run by a man who had almost unlimited capital and nothing to lose.
When the first commercial Satcom satellite went up, Dave Sinnott purchased a transponder.
Then he had an office building behind WETT headquarters razed to the ground and a satellite dish farm laid out in neat white rows, like ridiculous but very attentive sunflowers.
KNNN quadrupled its anchor staff, broadcasting twenty-four hours a day, just reading news. It was rough, it was hectic-and it carried over its original local audience just from the sheer ineptitude of it all.
"The locals love it," he was informed in a staff meeting. "They're laughing twice as much."