Serpent's Kiss Read Online Free PDF

proved to be the best camera person in the station-innovative, creative, fun to work with. The rest of the camera people were dull hacks by comparison. It was conventional wisdom that the most important single asset a reporter could possess was a good camera person-one who made you look good, not bad. Jenny became Chris's own camera person. So, Dave Tuska bore a grudge.
        O'Sullivan finally came back. He sat down behind his desk.
        "Maybe you should close the door, Chris."
        "Will you quit calling me Chris?"
        "Isn't that your name?"
        "Not to you. To you my name's always Holland."
        "Oh."
        "May I have a cigarette?"
        "How many does that make today?"
        "One."
        "Bullshit."
        "Two."
        "Bullshit."
        "Please, Walter, I'm really nervous about this. Something's wrong and I can tell it. Otherwise you wouldn't be calling me Chris."
        She went and closed the door. She came back and sat down across from him. On the desk between them was his pack of Camel filters. She pointed to the pack and he nodded. She took one and lit it and took smoke deeply and luxuriously into her chest. She could hear her lungs screaming mercy. She told them to be still.
        She said, "Just say it."
        "Just say what?"
        He was actually, even despite the excess weight, a nice looking guy, prematurely grey hair, a noble nose, intelligent and wry blue eyes.
        "Whatever's bothering you. God, Walter, you should see yourself. You look like hell."
        "Thank you."
        "You know what I mean. You look hangdog and afraid. You're not going to tell me my little puppy's been run over by a car, are you?"
        "You don't have a little puppy."
        "But that's what you look like, Walter."
        He reached over and helped himself to one of his cigarettes and then he said, "You saw Pendrake?"
        "Why doesn't he go over to Channel 5? They're not an empire anymore, in fact, they're a joke now. All those fat greasy salespeople and that joke of a production department. They need his help. We don't."
        "Ron's been doing a lot of focus groups and-" He shook his head. "Well, you know how things can happen in focus groups sometimes."
        There were maybe half a dozen television consultant groups in the country. They were hired by TV stations to improve the ratings, particularly in the area of local news, which is the single biggest money maker for most local outlets. Consultants are not a beloved group. First of all, management-only too eager to have supposedly wiser heads make the decisions-gives the consultants enormous power. Many times, consultants have the authority to hire and fire both on air talent and key administrative people such as news directors. They are constantly shaping and reshaping the look and substance of news shows in order to attain higher ratings. One of their primary tools in all this is focus group testing-taking a theoretically average group of people-and having them sit around looking at videotape of various on air news teams and making comments. Based on what they hear in these groups, the consultants then make sweeping recommendations to the stations about which air person is popular, and which is not. So not only do reporters have to worry about the regular TV ratings, they also have to worry about what a doctor or garbage truck driver or minister might say about them during the course of a focus group. It was widely suspected by reporters and media observers alike that these focus groups were often dishonest-you carefully select a certain group of people who will say exactly what you want them to say-but if management suspected anything, they kept their suspicions to themselves. They were too busy thanking the consultants for taking all this responsibility off their backs.
        "And?" she said.
        "And-" He looked at her for the first time. "And you're going to be