It had seemed like forever since Ian had been in his office. The three weeks might as well have been years. He was grateful and relishing what few moments he was to be allowed at work. In many ways, it seemed like he had never left.
Other than applause and Willa’s special breakfast casserole, the morning power meeting was delightfully normal. David Turner had become a staple in Ian’s absence, with Wella all but running the show. Today, Ian slipped right back into the team. Things were clicking right along.
“We have an idea.” Turner turned to Ian. “We’ve been waiting to run it by you and get your take.”
“Epic.” He typically paced the floor and bounced energetically around the room during power meetings but today Ian grinned from his chair. “That’s Ronnie’s new word.”
The old man nodded to Lee who stood up. “It seems that the Fall Campaign has kicked into high gear and we have more people checking out our line up than we have had for years.”
“That’s great news.” Ian nodded. “But also bad.”
David grinned. “You are worried that the new demographic checking us out will tune in, not find anything they like and tune right back out.”
“And never come back.” Ian had to affirm. “It’s the blessing and the curse.”
Lee grinned. “We’ve been thinking that maybe we should go ahead and dump most of the line up that will disappear in the fall anyway.”
“The ones that aren’t getting a bump from the new demographics.” Wella assured him.
“That’s probably the best way to go.” Ian said. “The problem being what do we have to replace them with? We can run second showings of a few of the stable returning shows, but quite frankly most of those don’t fit the demographic either.”
“Our thought is by July to have made all the moves planned for the fall save the new shows that won’t be ready until September, give the new schedule a head start.” Turner said.
“That would certainly give us a heads up as to what will work in the new time slots, and maybe get it fixed before November Sweeps.” Lee checked his notes.
“Once again, great idea.” Ian reassured them. “But that leaves us with ten hours a week to fill and nothing to fill it with.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Daryn stood up. “We did a little digging and discovered a Simon Kent maneuver that may work in our favor.”
“That sounds like the impossible dream.” Ian smirked. “Oh that it were true.”
“It seems that Kent made a few contractual concessions for the International market.” Turner reminded him.
“Yes, you and I discussed that earlier.” Ian remembered. “He lowered the financial aspect of running several HRT programs in return for broadcast rights to their programs, none of which we’ve ever bother to…” The bell rang in Ian’s head.
Lee handed him a stapled list. “Here’s a number of programs, all made in English that are actually available to us for broadcast. We thought to pull a number of those, most of which have only six to ten episodes per season, some of which have won International Emmys and have never been broadcast in the U.S. or dropped to DVD in the states.”
Ian began to look through the list. “We can run some of these in the holes, and what takes off we can use as backup and or continuous summer programming.”
“Exactly.” Lee reached for another file. “And Blake and I have unearthed some treasures in our own vaults; films and specials that haven’t been seen in years and some of those only once.”
“Are they in good enough shape to broadcast?” Ian looked at Turner.
He nodded his head. “A good amount are, the rest we are in the process of restoring for our Signature Rerun series.”
Ian looked up. “You found “Breathe”?” He was excited. “I’ve never seen it.”
“No one has since it finished it’s run in theatres.” Turner said proudly. “A perfect copy has been sitting in the vault at my Penthouse. We thought about running it on the Fourth of July, since the first scene takes place in the final battle of the Civil War.”
“First of all, I don’t know what you guys waited for.” Ian pointed to David Turner. “You’ve got the man who makes all the decisions right here, and he seems to be 100% behind this.”
“True.” Wella said, “But we also knew that once you heard the idea, you’d figure out a way to run with it and make it even better.”
He smiled. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. Let me look over all this information and on Monday we’ll shore up some final decisions. Initially, it’s a great idea. It falls into our “Legend Continues” theme.”
Ian was still perusing the lists. “You know it’s too bad some of these people aren’t still around to introduce these, maybe even make the promos.” He looked up. “Daryn is the website for “Is That On Tonight” up and running?”
She nodded her head. “Overwhelmingly. We’ve already got more uploaded videos than we can use this year.”
It was Ian’s turn to tap his cane of the floor. David Turner smiled. “Good, this can work. Let’s use the website to announce the classic programs we are going to run and ask the public to upload their memories of them. We can edit them together as bumpers and teasers.”
Wella looked at Turner. “And what if we used some of those sketches and videos edited together in half hour format to fill in a few more holes?”
Lee’s eyes brightened. “What about using them as a reality program?”
“Reality program?” Turner turned to look at Lee and then back to Ian, who was suddenly fighting the urge to get up and pace excitedly.
“You’re right.” Ian almost shouted. “Run them all summer long, and let the audience pick the best. Let them choose a best video, actor, blah blah blah. Anyone who wins gets a development deal with the network. That was the initial idea for the website, to cultivate new and untapped talent.”
The grin on David Turner’s face was lethal. “You have been missed Young Justyn.”
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