“I’d like to formally welcome everyone to this magnificent evening. We have all gathered here to celebrate our collective success as the cable news leader for the eleventh straight year. None of us alone are responsible for such a splendid accomplishment, and none of us alone can take credit. It was, and will continue to be, a group effort.”
He raised his glass. “To past accomplishments and future success.”
Everyone joined him.
“Cheers!”
Avery reached for the champagne flute in front of her, raised it quickly, and then took a long swallow, breaking her one-drink rule. Her strategy had already gone to hell. What was the point of staying sober?
CHAPTER 5
Coronado, CA Tuesday, June 15, 2021
“SEVEN-FIFTY A YEAR, FOR FOUR YEARS. THAT’S THE NEW OFFER. IT includes a fifth-year option based on ratings during the final year of the contract. Incentives for reaching benchmarks in certain demos will be included as year-end bonuses.”
“Seven-fifty?” Avery asked. “That’s what they came back with? It’s still low, Dwight.”
“They came up from six-fifty, Avery. Three million over four years is a solid offer,” Dwight Corey said. “As your agent, I strongly advise that you take the money and run.”
It was a comfortable seventy-two degrees in Coronado, California, where the infamous Navy SEAL obstacle course was located. The track stood in all its glory in front of them. Avery had kept in touch with the SEAL who consulted on the minivan episode and, after hearing about the rigors of the SEAL program, Avery hatched the idea of giving her audience a front row look at the life of a Navy SEAL, from recruitment to Hell Week to the six-month BUDs training program. Others had produced similar exposés, but Avery had ideas about how she could put a different spin on hers. She would attempt to complete some of the benchmarks the highly trained warriors were required to overcome before they were christened as members of the elite Special Forces group. She would jump into a pool with her arms bound behind her back and try to survive for sixty minutes, as every SEAL had done. She would brave the icy ocean waters and take the notorious night swim with the sharks. The Navy SEAL obstacle course was considered one of the hardest in the world, and Avery thought it was a good place to start.
Avery had worked her contact and arranged this morning’s abbreviated test run through the course. Waivers were signed and confidentiality papers drawn up. If she managed to get the concept green-lighted, sometime during the next season of American Events, Avery would attempt to run the entire course, or as much of it as was physically possible, while cameras rolled. She would wear combat boots and fatigues if she ever reached that point, but for today’s practice run Avery wore sport shorts and a spandex athletic tank top, short ankle socks and Nike running shoes. Her agent, on the other hand, was impeccably dressed in a beige Armani suit with the coat open but his vest buttoned and his tie tight at his neck. The morning sun glistened the beads of perspiration on his forehead and reflected off his aviator sunglasses.
“What are you, Dwight? Six-five, two-twenty?”
“Six-six, two-forty.”
“I’m five-ten and . . . well, considerably less than that. Take that snazzy suit off and run this track with me.”
“Not a chance. We need to figure out your contract before they pull the offer.”
“Run this track with me and then I’ll consider this terrible offer you’ve negotiated.”
Ten days had passed since Avery went face to face with Mosley Germaine and David Hillary on the beach. Since then, hard negotiating had taken place.
“It’s a good deal, Avery. They offered, we countered, and now they’ve come back somewhere in the middle. It shows their commitment to you.”
“They did not come back in the middle. They barely budged.” Avery bent at the waist to stretch her hamstrings. “Mack Carter was making eight million dollars a year hosting American Events, and my ratings are better than his.”
“Mack hosted the show for years. Hell, he practically created it. There was no American Events before Mack Carter. At least not the American Events that we all know today. And he certainly didn’t make eight million during his second year as host.”
“Ratings and revenue trump years of service, and you know it, Dwight. This is a lowball offer that would lock me in during what should be the most productive years of my career.”
“You’re young. You have decades of prime years in front of you. Avery, listen to me carefully. We can’t demand Mack Carter money. He was an anomaly. Networks don’t base offers on outliers, they base them on averages. This is in line with other newsmagazine show hosts.”
“My average ratings are higher than any of my competitors.”
Avery straightened and then bent sideways, reaching her arm across the side of her face to stretch her obliques.
“The show supported Mack’s salary for many years,” she said. “Today, ad revenue is higher with me hosting. Twelve percent higher, in fact, but they want to pay me a fraction of what they paid Mack. Do they think I’m naive, or just really bad at math? Or is it because I’m a woman?”
Avery stood up and looked at her agent.
“My last episode killed. The ratings were off the charts in every demo. We ended the season on a high note, and we should strike while the iron’s hot. We have everything in our corner, all the bargaining chips.”
“Oh, you mean the episode when you allowed your insane producer to drop you to the bottom of a swimming pool in a minivan? That’s called a sweeps week stunt, and I forbid you from ever doing anything like it again. Keep pulling stunts like that and you won’t have any years in front of you—prime or otherwise.”
“It’s good to know you care so much, Dwight. I like this softer side of you, but I prefer the ruthless, deal-making agent who’s always had my back. Especially when you’re negotiating the most important contract of my career.”
“The network is not going to base your contract on sweeps week.”
“I’m not asking them to base it on sweeps. I’m asking them to base it on the entire last season. The numbers speak for themselves, from ratings to revenue.”
Over the past year, Avery had done a redesign of the classic newsmagazine show. The biggest difference between Avery and her competition? She never touched politics. The talking heads had that angle covered, and Avery didn’t have the stomach for it. She lightly covered current events and performed the obligatory interview with dignitaries when the present environment demanded it. But she allowed her co-anchors to cover the hard news of the day while Avery took on society’s nonpolitical topics. She had parlayed a journalism major into a law degree, and they each served her well in her role on American Events. Avery had a knack for sniffing out the truth when looking into a true-crime story, and the legal smarts to know when to hand her findings over to the authorities. One of her most-watched exposés covered the details of a missing toddler from Florida. Avery’s investigation—which included interviews with the parents, a deep forensic analysis of the case report, and the discovery of new information provided by the father—uncovered disturbing evidence that suggested the child had drowned while under the supervision of her grandmother, who then hid the child’s body in a shed behind her home. So startling were Avery’s discoveries and so vetted were her sources that the authorities took notice and reopened the case. American Events cameras rolled when police showed up at the grandmother’s house with search warrants and confirmed the tragic findings.