It took a week, and it took every member of the staff that could be
pulled off other programs, as well as the ones assigned to Witch.
The "slum" had been located--three buildings in a short block just up
from the Battery, surrounded by new buildings. It was a
one-privy-to-a-floor, cold-water only setup, with a family living in
every room. It existed on high-value land only because the land and
buildings were tied up in an estate and couldn't be sold. But they
could be remodeled and thrown into one, and contracts were signed,
permissions granted, the paperwork alone filled nearly a complete file
cabinet.
It would take double the fifty thousand dollars, of course--maybe
more. But Randolph had authorized it, hadn't he? He always named half
the figure--or less--than he meant to be used. Anyhow, international
ratings and sales would more than make up the purse, because this
thing would hit socko. Worry about the cash was the last thing that
was bothering Oswald. He had a bear by the tail, and his contract
price was tied to the gross....
The show was ballyhooed the whole week while the work went on.
"Clean, clean, Witch clean--what's the witches next big cleanup?
Witches of the world, unite--let's cleanup this old world and make it
livable...."
The night the new cleanup job was to show, Randolph tuned in his TV as
ignorant of the details as the next viewer. It worried him a little
that Oswald insisted on keeping him in the dark on everything except
the fact that it would be a slum cleanup, but he had the best p.r. men
and the best lawyers in the country working on it, he told himself;
and certainly the sales charts for the past two weeks had been
spectacular.
"We can count on the biggest TV audience of the year tonight," Oswald
had told him gleefully at noon. "The buildup's been a natural, and
those 'Salem with a new twist and a singing commercial' plugs have
been continued on this network--the cost of that was comparatively
small--and I've even gotten them onto a few of the really big shows to
boot."
Bill Howard came on the screen, his big homely face leaning across the
desk toward the TV audience.
"The biggest news in the country right now," Bill said in a solemn
tone, "is the biggest single cleanup job in the country today.
"There's a slum," Bill said, "right here in New York that the Witches
of the world will unite to cleanup--tonight."
Then he put on the full power of the personality that made him the
most listened-to newscaster on the air, TV and radio. The manner that
made the news sound human, like it really happened to real people. He
put it on full power, and went to work.
First he showed a big map of New York, and talked about how people
thought of it as a big, impersonal place, but it wasn't. He made it
everybody's home town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account