THE 2028 ELECTION

“Whew!” exclaimed Kent Storm as he finished reading the note.

“What do you think?” asked Fred McFall.

“A wild imagination.”

“I mean, do you think it’s for real or just another joker trying to get a rise out of us?”

“Good choice of words, Fred.” Kent paused to consider, then said, “It’s probably a hoax.”

Fred’s face reddened. “Probably?” he asked.

“A couple things bother me. For one, it’s the phone number. Of course they could have something set up there but if it’s a good number they know we can trace it. More important, it’s the detail. Why go to so much trouble when they know we’re going to check it out? That fiasco with the tennis player was set up with a simple phone call.”

“You call that a fiasco? You got a free meal out of it. Anyhow it seemed reasonable for his agent to set up an interview with the number one player in the world over dinner at a nice restaurant if we’d pick up the tab. Nothing about this deal seems reasonable.”

“Are you telling me to forget it?”

“I’m telling you that as the news director of VRSH-TV, and your boss, I’m ordering you,” Fred paused for effect, “to use your own judgment.”

“Does that mean that I’m the fall guy if I waste the station’s money on a nonstory, or worse, if it really happens and we cover it and we catch hell for it? Have you considered possible objections from the owner, or the public?”

“Why should anyone object? Full nudity and sexual intercourse have been shown by most stations since the afternoon soap operas won their free speech case in ’23.”

“Yeah, I know, they’re ‘doin’ it’ all over the tube, but not much between 3 and 8 p.m. and I’ve never seen more than a brief shot on any news broadcast. Generally that’s just been to show the direction TV is going and we’re usually critical. Is that what you want, a five-second peek? You’re not considering showing the whole thing are you?”

“Like I said, Kent, this is your baby. I’ll support you in whatever you decide, from nothing to the whole shebang. If they’re really going through with it, we’d have a real breakthrough in broadcasting. We’d probably make all the networks.”

“I’m not sure we want that kind of breakthrough, Fred. We don’t even know if the other stations or the newspapers are going to cover it. We could end up looking pretty bad on this if there’s a lot of complaints and the other stations get on the condemnation bandwagon, even if the real reason they didn’t carry it was that they thought it was a hoax.”

“Oh, come on. There’ll always be some who protest even the most innocent story. Others will say it’s about time. In case you hadn’t noticed, times have changed. This isn’t the teens anymore. I thought I was supposed to be the old geezer around here. You young kids are supposed to be for change. How old are you, Kent?”

“Thirty-six, but. . .”

Fred interrupted, “No wonder you’ve grown conservative; middle age is upon you.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll check it out. It sounds to me like you want to cover this one yourself.”

“You’ve got that right, but if you decide to do a live remote I need to be here. Let me know if you need anything, and be careful you don’t get a rise out of it.”

“That’s another reason you should do this one. At your age you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“For your information the real reason I wouldn’t go is that I’m afraid I might get ‘excited’ and I don’t want to show up the groom. By the way, you didn’t comment on the 6:05 sharp time.”

“Obviously,” Kent replied, “they’ve watched our broadcasts and know that’s when we go into repeat stories and special remotes. They figure we could make time for their show if we wanted to.”

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