Killer Ratings by Warren Murphy

Author:Warren Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

14

Uriah Maddox skulked through the darkened executive corridors of BCN Evening News headquarters and lamented his miserable lot in life. Eight months ago he was a rising star in BCN Sports and now, like poor Robert Eaglemeyer up in Alaska, whose fiery death BCN was playing wall-to-wall, Maddox was master and commander of a doomed vessel.

As with the mine collapse and the Flight 980 near-tragedy, BCN was experiencing another ratings spike. But that was only due to Kitty Coughlin’s eyewitness footage. The novelty would wear out quickly, and viewers would once more begin switching away in droves.

The Broadcast Corporation of North America had once been known as the Diamond Network thanks to its high standards of quality. But the news division was sinking and taking the entire staff along with it. Including Uriah Maddox.

It had not been this way at sports, where Maddox had started out and where BCN killed everybody in the ratings. For the seven years Maddox had been there, his sports division job had been a dream come true. Fights, adrenaline, thrills. All those lithe young athletes in their tight uniforms.

Maddox never played sports himself. His bad knees, weak ankles, glass jaw and asthma kept him from track and field, basketball, contact sports of any kind; even figure skating, for which he had a particular affinity. Chronic earaches and a fear of diving boards kept him out of swimming pools. Once in college he had tried to catch a Frisbee but broke his glasses and had to get his eye stitched.

But although he could not play the games himself, the sports division had been a sheer delight. It was his own fault that he had been bounced from sports to news.

How was he to know that the handsome young quarterback he fancied was the nephew of the network president? The boy had never told Maddox, that was certain. It was all his bosses could do to keep that blind item out of Page Six. Maddox was forced by the higher-ups to part ways with his lovely young friend. To ensure they remained apart he had been sent over to news.

It was only out of fear of a civil rights sexual preference lawsuit that BCN had kept him on at all. Little did they know Maddox was more than eager to keep his mouth shut. Maddox was terrified of the notoriety such a scandal would bring, for if word got out that he was diddling athletes he would never get a job in the sports division of a competing network.

How on earth that dreadful man with the lemon voice from the Department of Homeland Security had found out about the hushed-up scandal was beyond Maddox.

Thinking evil thoughts about the government, Kitty Coughlin and network news in general, Maddox entered his large office suite and passed his secretary’s empty desk.

He heard the television blaring in his inner sanctum. Funny, he did not remember leaving one on. Maddox pushed open the door to his private office and was shocked to find two men waiting for him inside.

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