Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (best time to read books txt) 📕

says something like, “With the latest on the sinking ocean liner, here's Joe Blow in New York.” That's what they call “the toss.” Or “the kick.”

The network feed takes over, and the local boys sit on their hands and wait for the network bump to signal the end of the special-alert feed.

No publicist thinks to explain all this to each newbie they send on the road, selling an investment video, a book, a new-fangled carrot peeler.

So, sitting in the green room, backstage at Wake Up Chattanooga!, a young guy with his hair slicked back, he explains some facts of life to this blonde.

She's super, way-too blond, he tells her. That kind of bleach blond, it drives the floor producer nuts, because you can't light it well without it flaring. Some floor producers, they call it “blowout.” The blond head just looks on fire.

“Whatever you do,” the slick guy tells the blonde, “if you got notes, don't reference them or the camera will be shooting the top of your head.”

Floor producers, he says, they hate guests who bring notes. They hate guests who don't try to bury their agenda. Producers will tell you: “Be your product. Don't push it.”

Ironical, but that same floor producer will call you “Fitness Wheel” because that's the slug written in your block on the schedule. It says “Investment Videos” for the slick guy's block. For the old man, the slug says: “Stain Remover.”

The blonde and the slick guy, them sitting on the reject leather sofa in the green room, cups of old coffee abandoned on the table in front of them, hanging over them a couple video monitors flicker high on the walls, in the corners, mounted up near the ceiling. On one monitor, you see the national talent talking about the ocean liner, then tossing to video support that shows a ship belly-up and the specks of orange life vests floating around it. On the second monitor, the blonde says, there's something even sadder.

Up in that other corner, you see the A Block bozo, the old comb-over guy who got out of his Motel 6 bed at 5 a.m. to be here and pitch his special stain-removing brush he invented. Poor schmuck. He gets miked and put onstage, in the “living-room set” with its rain forest of fake plants. He sits under those hot lights while the on-air talent does their opening “chat.”

The living-room set is different from the “kitchen set” and the “main set” because it has more fake plants and throw pillows.

This bozo thinks he's got a fat ten-minute segment because the station is playing the clock, not cutting to commercial until ten after the start. Most stations cut at eight or nine minutes. That way, we keep the audience from channel-surfing and get top ratings credit for the whole fifteen-minute block.

“Not pretty,” the slick guy tells our blonde girl, and he crosses himself fast as a good Catholic, “but better him than either of us.”

A heartbeat into his stain-removing demo, the A Block's cut off by the doomed ocean liner.

Sitting in this green room, on a ratty leather sofa in some double-digit ADI, the slick guy says he's got maybe seven minutes to teach an entire world to our Miss America.

ADI, that means Area of Direct Influence. Boston, for example, is the number-three ADI in the country because its media reach the third-largest market of consumers. New York is the number-one ADI. Los Angeles is number two. Dallas, number seven.

Where they're sitting is way down the list of ADIs. Day Break Lincoln or New Day Tulsa. Some media outlet that reaches a consumer market demographic totaling nobody.

Some other good advice is: Don't wear white. Never wear a black-and-white patterned anything because it will “shimmer” on camera. And always lose some weight.

“Just staying at this weight,” our blonde tells the slick guy, “is a full-time job.”

The on-air person, the talent here in Chattanooga, the slick guy says, the anchor here is a total straight pipe. Whatever they tell her over the IFD in her ear, those exact words will pop out her lipstick-red mouth. The director could feed her, “. . . Christ, we're going long! Toss to Adopt-a-Dog, and then we'll cut to commercial . . . ,” and that's what she'd say on air.

A total straight pipe.

Our blonde girl, listening, she doesn't laugh. Not even a smile.

So the slick guy tells her, other talent he's seen, one time on a live feed to location, a warehouse fire roaring in the background, the on-air person fumbled with her hair, looking straight into a hot camera and going out live, she said, “Could you repeat the question? My IUD fell out . . .”

The reporter, she meant IFD. Internal Feedback Device, the slick guys says. He points at the anchor who appears on the monitor, and he says how one anchor will always have that kind of lopsided hairdo. The hair swooping down to hide one ear. It's because she's got a tiny radio stuck in her ear to take prompts and cues from the director. If the show is going long or they need to toss to a nuclear-reactor meltdown.

This blonde, she's on the road with some kind of exercise wheel you roll around on top of to lose weight. She wears a pink leotard and purple tights.

Yeah, she's thin and blonde, but the more ins and outs your face has, the slick guy tells her, the better you look on camera.

“That's why I have to keep my before picture,” she says. Bending over in her chair, leaning over and over until her breasts press against her knees, she digs in a gym bag on the floor. She says, “This is the only real proof that I'm not just another skinny blonde girl.” She takes something paper out of the bag, holding an edge between two fingers. It's a photograph, and the blonde tells the slick guy, “Unless people see this, they might think I was just born this way. They'd never