"That's not how it works anymore, Mr. Burner. People don't watch TV like they used to. They don't just sit and watch a show. They skip around, graze a little here and there. Channel surfing, they call it. We're perfect for that. As soon as five thousand people turn us off, there's another six tuning us in."
"What's that mean?"
"It means," said Sinnott, his chest puffing up in justifiable pride, "that on any given week, anyone with a satellite dish or a cable box is watching us. Everyone. "
Jed Burner seized his cigar as the thought sunk in. He made faces. The thought appeared to be sinking more slowly than it should.
"Don't you realize that this means?" Sinnott blurted. "You can sell this station for a bundle."
"Sell! Are you loco? Ah ain't sellin' mah pride and joy. And what's more, you're fired for suggestin' such a dastardly thing."
"Fired? I made KNNN what it is today."
Jed Burner poked his station manager in the chest with his cigar. "With mah money. And Ah'll pay you six figures a yeah to go live out your lucky-dog life in obscurity. From now on, KNNN was mah idea, mah vision, mah-"
"But that's not fair!"
"Son, life ain't fair, but it was mah money that done it. That's all that counts in life. Who's signin' the damn checks. Now be a smart fella and take mah generous offer."
Dave Sinnott did. It was either that or continue working for a lunatic.
Jed Burner called a press conference that very day. He looked tanned and fit in immaculate white ducks, and he was holding two very photogenic blondes rented for the occasion.
"It was mah idea," he said through cigar-clenching teeth. "From the start."
"What about Dave Sinnott?" he was asked.
"I didn't catch that name, boy."
"He was your station manager."
"Front man. Just in case Ah piled up on a reef somewhere. All the time Ah was away Ah was guidin' things by telephone."
"Isn't that an unusual management style for a TV network?"
"If Ah'm gonna cover the entire globe, Ah had to see it with mah own eyes, didn't Ah?" Burner countered.
"Globe?"
"That's right. KNNN is nationwide after only a yeah. We're puttin' news bureaus all over the dang world now. We're gonna be global inside of two yeahs."
The assembled press gasped.
And Jed Burner took his cigar out of his big mouth and beamed broadly.
"They don't call me Captain Audacious for nothin', boy."
True to his word, KNNN went global. When wars broke out, KNNN was there first, booking the best hotels. If there was a coup, KNNN was first on the scene. In the global village, KNNN was the town crier of many faces-fast, rough, sloppy, but instant.
Jed Burner explained it like this in a Playboy interview:
"Not everybody's got the time to brew a good pot of coffee. We're the instant brand. Folks want brewed, they wait for the networks to serve some up. You want it now, you got it-on KNNN."
For one roller-coaster decade, KNNN could do nothing wrong. If their coverage of the Gulf War infuriated some viewers, it didn't matter. There were always more. Presidents swore by KNNN. The Pentagon watched it constantly. If the farting and the belching died down as more anchors were added and coffee and lunch breaks inaugurated, people still tuned in hope of catching KNNN at an awkward moment.
And as KNNN's fortunes climbed, the networks declined. Strapped for operating funds, they closed bureaus all over the globe. KNNN snapped up the leases the next day. Before long, the networks were carrying KNNN footage on a regular basis, trading off economy for the humiliation of advertising their chief rival.
The night broadcast TV went black for seven minutes. Accompanied by his latest trophy wife, his hair now as gray as an old salt's, Jed Burner was on his 129-foot yacht equipped with helipad and Superpuma helicopter.
The deck phone rang. It was his private secretary.
"Mr. Burner," she said tightly, "the networks are blacked out."
"Screw 'em. They're dinosaurs." He clapped and hand over the telephone mouthpiece and hollered in the direction of the bow. "Honey, you're gonna pull a pretty hamstring if you keep bendin' yoahself into petzel-like shapes."
A shrill female voice called back. "I'm practicing for my next video." "Ain't you done enough of them things? Ah don't want nobody sayin' a wife of mine's gotta work her butt off for a living."
"My last workout video grossed two hundred million."
"For Gosh sake's, woman, don't stand so close to the dang rail! You might tumble over and drown that sweet two hundred million dollah butt of yours."
The telephone continued squawking. "Mr. Burner? Mr. Burner? Are you still there."
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Ah'm heah. What was you sayin' about the TV?"
"They just came back on. It looks like all broadcast stations across the country were knocked off the air. It's never happened before."
"Fucking fantastic!"
"Sir?"
"That means all those frustrated couch 'taters grabbed up their clickers and tuned in to lil ol' us. Are our anchors on top of this?"
"Yes, sir. We were the first to air the story."
"Honey, KNNN is always the first to air a story. So don't you go all redundant on me."
"Yes, Mr. Burner."
Hours later, the phone rang again.
"Mr. Burner, Cheeta Ching is here in your office. She's demanding an interview with you. What do we tell her?"
Jed Burner wrinkled his sun-beaten forehead, crinkling his sea blue eyes and asked the last question the man who transformed the way America gets its news would be expected to ask.
"Who the hell is Cheeta Chang?"