Sexy Tsunami

Once again expanding AOL's mood list, I'm in a combination rankerous-smug-self-indulgent mood.

 

Okay, why aren't you all calling me and offering money and gifts to act out my predictive skills? On one day I predict that within the next 60 years there will be a 7.2 richter scale earthquake somewhere between San Diego and Portland, Oregon.  The very next day there is a 7.0 earthquake in Crescent City, California? For the geographically challenged Cresent City, while closer to Portland than San Diego, is in fact situated between those two cities.  Now you can argue over the .2 difference, but it's been my experience that the exact reading takes a few days, sometimes a week to surface. Anyway, what am I supposed to do now for the next 59.9345 years?

So while I'm sitting here patting myself on the back I decide to read up a little bit on the quake. It turns out that Crescent City is a unique spot on the globe where three tectonic plates come together, and that a 7.0 takes place there about once a decade.  I'd hate to think that I made that prediction because of some knowledge lying dormant in my subconscious. That's where most of it (knowledge) remains these days.

Oddly my ego remains fully intact and it has nothing to do with my extra natural skills. I've had ample feedback from many of you for using the word "scrotum" in my last entry.  And I've had a delayed request for a copy of the entry concerning the gross rest stop that Gary Barkley and I "shut down." Is this a reflection on you, me or society as a whole? Will we remain adolescent until we depart the planet? I'm actually comfortable with that notion as long as we can still get rid of acne.

So anyway something always reminds me of something. So I'm working the assignment desk back in '80 something. The News Director is Roger Bell, who'd spent a good bit of his professional life getting jaded at KABC in Los Angeles. Well we are nearing the end of the BOOK ( the rating period). We are sitting at number three in the market and with just one little nudge we can be number two. For those of you not connected in anyway to broadcast media, that little jump translates into millions of dollars even in 80's something.   So Roger comes to the desk and in an almost subdued tone, says, " send somebody out to do a story on Playboy."

"Is somebody local on the cover?"

"No."

"Is Hefner building a house in town?"

"No."

"Is Safeway taking it off the stands?"

"No."

"Well what's our hook? Why are we doing a story on Playboy? We can't really put the pictures on T.V.?"

"Just have someone go do a story on Playboy."

Sometimes you just have to do what your told. I know the reporter was a woman, and I think I remember who it was. But since I'm not sure I'll bow to journalistic tactics and call her "an unamed reporter."

Well the minute she is assigned the story, the promotions people show up with a copy of the latest playboy.  They start putting tease copy together with minute portions of Playboy anatomy on tape. Within 20 minutes the teases are on the air and stay there for 8 hours until "SHOWTIME" The story is put in the "C" block, or about half way into the newscast. But the story is teased in the pre-show, in the intro, at the end of the "A" block, at the beginning of the "B" block, and then a live tease with the reporter at the end of the "B" block.  So when the story finally and mercifully makes air, it's about 45 seconds long, shows no skin, and I think has some produced statistics on how well it sells in this market. If that wasn't it, it was something equally innocuous.

So I'm shaking my cynical head back and forth, full of dismay that we would stoop to such chicanery, knowing full well it wasn't going to work in this market.

Well not only did we become number two in the market for that newscast, we became number two with a bullet. A couple of months later new police scanners, new phone equipment, a new assignment board showed up. I think, but I'm not sure, I even got a raise.  Still it would have been nice if the story could have been about something.

How about this?

" Local Playmate survives 7.2 earthquake and tsunami by living a thousand miles away! Don't miss this earthshaking expose tonight at 10."

Scrotum, scrotum, scrotum, scrotum!