Boss Girl

Thank goodness I was smart enough to hire women as News Directors for those stations.

All between 35 and 40.

All intelligent, attractive and single.

May as well give you a line-up card as I lead the gals who will change the face of the news business into our conference room, for those of you scoring at home. And if you're not, you should be. (If there were a drummer in my office, I would call for a rim shot after that one.)

"Tawk to me, Syd," said Rica, coffee-with-a-little-cream eyes searching my face for more information and somehow getting female-only telemetry that I'd gotten an infusion of Y-chromosomes the night before. "Did'ja have a pahty afta woik?" she asks, in an accent so sharp it makes fingernails on the blackboard sound like classical music. One perfectly plucked eyebrow goes up like an extra question mark. The girl does love details.

If a pastrami sandwich could talk, it would sound like Rica Carbone, who is the youngest at thirty-five and runs the chapter on the left coast. This petite, raven-haired Brooklyn paisan could slice Tony Soprano in two with her death stare, and has enough confidence in her body that she once marched up to a jukebox and played Brickhouse. Every man in the bar thought the lyrics fit perfectly as she strutted back to the table smiling like she not only ate the canary, but the canary thanked her for it on the way down. Everything on this woman's Pilates-whipped body points east and west without any Lycra scaffolding, with no indication of various parts heading south anytime soon. All that and she's a brilliant journalist to boot.

"Yeah, she's got someone new," said Jillian, using one hand to curl the ends of her straight, strawberry blonde, chin-length cut in towards her face. "Her skirt's on backwards." I snapped my neck down to check. "Made you look," said Jillian. "At least that answers the question."

Damned reporter's tricks. You'd think I'd know better.

Trust fund debutante Jillian Charles is the black sheep of her family. Because she actually has a job. With no desire to pitch Krugerrands with her Massachusetts Ivy League neighbors, Jillian actually went to a state school (such a scandal in the gated community!) and likes getting her hands dirty. She's an inch shorter than I am, but all legs and none of it fat. I think her age (thirty-seven) matches her inseam; meanwhile, not a wrinkle on her gently freckled face and no Botox receipts on her tax return. Beneath those soft blue eyes lurks an executioner who enjoys the sight of heads tumbling down the steps of the Mayan temple, which is a handy trait to have in a Chicago News Director.

"So, c'mon Syd. Y'all don't keep us waitin'. Dish." The whiskey two-packs-a-day Southern accent you just heard comes from Neely "Vodka" Collins, the former hard-boiled reporter from New Orleans who doesn't smoke but believes that Russian alcohol is to a liquor cabinet what WD-40 is to a toolbox. If you run out of either, you'll get rusty and won't be able to screw anything. She looks like Demi Moore, sounds like Demi Moore if Demi Moore had been cast in Gone with the Wind, and therefore logic dictates that she hangs out with younger men like Demi Moore while running our station in Dallas. Neely first went against the grain in the eighth grade, shoving a sixth grader into a coat closet and giving him a free tonsillectomy. Her long, dark hair and innocent emerald eyes might lead a guy to think she's the girl next door, but there's nothing but lust embedded in her vocal chords. Like a good Irish Catholic she goes to confession every week, the old-fashioned way, in a booth, and must take a legal pad with her. I can only imagine her saying, "Bless me… Father… for I have… sinned," giving sinned three syllables with that scratchy drawl and having some priest on the other side breaking into a sweat while she enjoys torturing one of the few men in the state of Texas who can't load his gun.

"I've got good news. Take a seat," I said, as I grabbed the burgundy leather chair at the head of the long, mahogany table. Floor to ceiling windows on an entire wall turned the room into a greenhouse, which had the air conditioning blowing full blast. The gals sat down, all away from the sunny side of the room, backs toward the dark green wall that was covered with colorful posters of network shows. I grabbed a remote, swung my chair around, and fired it at the flat-screen monitor that hung on the wall behind me.

"We want details about last night, not more newscast airchecks," said Jillian.

"You're getting both," I said. The picture cleared and the face of Scott Harry filled the fifty-inch plasma screen.

"Hot damn," said Neely, though damn came out "day-umm."

"Damn hot," said Jillian.

"Fuhgeddaboudit," said Rica. (Which, depending on your interpretation of the term, can mean either hot damn or damn hot in Brooklynese.)

The video cut to a two-shot as Scott shared the desk with Caroline Jensen, a veteran brunette anchor in her early forties with laser beam ice-blue eyes.

"This is what's getting you a ratings spike?" asked Jillian.

"Madonne," said Rica.

"I don't think I've ever seen a major market anchor team where the man is that much younger than the woman," said Neely. "How do the demos break out?"

"They're a hit with women 18-34," I said. "And 34-49 is off the charts. Check out our sweeps series on beach safety." I flicked the remote and the video cut to a shot of Scott Harry walking on the Jersey Shore in a bathing suit, talking about the importance of sunscreen.

"You don't need sunscreen if he's providing the shade," said Jillian. The other two still had their jaws hanging open like the mouth-breathing shoppers at Wal-Mart, as the shot tightened up for a high-def look at Scott's pecs.

"Are the guys watchin'?" asked Rica. "Not that it really matters."

"Incredibly, they're holding steady," I said. "They apparently don't miss the pageant fembots. And considering our network's prime-time lineup, it's nice to see people switching over to catch our news product."

"Yeah. Trailer Park True Confessions isn't exactly a great lead-in," said Jillian, cocking her head toward a poster that featured a rusted Camaro and a cheap blonde woman whose roots had been dyed brown.

"Enough with the ratings," said Neely, who was staring holes in the monitor. "Just how did you manage to hire this young buck for our fledgling network?"

I muted the sound and turned back to them. "His agent told me he couldn't get arrested by the big networks and he'd do anything to get to New York. So I appealed to his sense of ambition. Then I checked his… references."

Jillian cocked her head to the side. "Syd, are you saying—"

"That's part of my new hiring manual," I said.

"What made you pair him with Caroline Jensen?" asked Neely.

"Do you want to watch women who are younger and prettier?" I asked.

"If you could find women who are younger and prettier than us, no," said Neely, sticking her nose in the air.

"And what do women our age want?" I asked.

Slowly, all three began to nod.

"So, this is our new playbook?" asked Jillian. "Find our own versions of Scott Harry and partner them with a competent middle-aged woman?"

"Exactly. Your guys don't ever have to report, just read. I don't care if you find them at a modeling agency. Hey, the men have been hiring that way for years. If I had a nickel for every beauty queen anchoring on local television I'd be rich. And there are plenty of talented women out there who have been put out to pasture by the old boys club."

"Do we get the same… benefits package… as you?" asked Neely, playfully batting her eyes. "I mean, do we get to check… references… during our job search?"

"Of course," I said. "You don't want your audience buying a product you haven't tried yourself, do you?"

* * *

Nine months later our network, Consolidated Broadcasting, had raised several eyebrows in the industry.

The four top affiliates of a network best known by its programming for the sophistication challenged (a politically correct television term for rednecks) were showing remarkable ratings growth in local news.

Jillian had turned the Windy City on its ear with her hire (after what she calls an exhaustive search) of twenty-eight-year-old J. T. Farrell, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed anchor from East Deliverance, Arkansas who had put himself through college as a male stripper. When pictures of Farrell wearing nothing but a collar and cuffs were leaked to a local tabloid (amazing how that happens, huh?), photos of his perfect six-foot physique (with a discreetly added black bar) were splashed under the headline Chicago Bare. Overnight ratings jumped twenty percent that day, while "Farrell nude" became the top Google search in the metro area.

Jillian paired Farrell with forty-one-year-old Jennifer Lorton, a spunky brunette with devilish green eyes framed by a few character lines. Lorton had been out of the business for three years but got with the program real quick, knocking out a three-part series titled "Sex in a Flash" that featured three local forty-something women and their trophy bucks while discussing the effects of hot flashes on the libido. As a reward, Jillian threw Lorton a bone (sorry, bad choice of words, but accurate) by delegating the reference checking duties of the current search for a weekend anchor.

I'd really thought Rica would have the hardest problem, Southern California being obsessed with youth and all. But the real Silicon Valley surprised me.

Since Angelinos are used to such hard-hitting journalistic fare as "Smiling Naturally White Using Botox" and "Regaining Your Balance After Large Implants", one would think they'd have little use for a female anchor who actually qualified for a ten-year high school reunion. But apparently Hollywood's aging actresses (those over twenty-nine who found roles hard to come by) saw the debut of Rica's new anchor team as a watershed moment. Rica found a Meg Ryan lookalike named Carolyn Baynard, who is in her mid-forties but remarkably well preserved. She's also the master of the double entendre ad-lib, which, when directed toward her co-anchor, sends a clear message to the viewer that the man sitting next to Carolyn is her catch of the day. (The other part of the subliminal message is, "Honey, this could be you.")

Carolyn's co-anchor arrived with a built-in promotional campaign. Rica bypassed the viewing of resume tapes and those pesky journalism requirements, Los Angeles being what it is, went directly to an advertising agency and tabbed well-known underwear pitchman Dirk Anderson. Southern Californians couldn't go a mile without seeing a billboard that featured his ripped abs being caressed by tighty-whiteys that left nothing to the imagination. Thirty-year-old Dirk had amazing chemistry with his co-anchor, and the two were an immediate hit. On one occasion Carolyn said, "Dirk Anderson is on assignment tonight," paused, raised one eyebrow, and had every woman in LA wondering if the guy was under the anchor desk.

His five-part series, "Boxers or Briefs" was simply a no-brainer. But teaching Carolyn how to shop for men's underwear using a tape measure and a balloon was a stroke of genius.

Rica, of course, said his references were perfect, and that he made the gum fall out of her mouth when she had an orgasm. (I'm still not too clear on Brooklyn sex metaphors, but she smiles when she says it.)

Neely took a page out of Rica's book, but reversed things a bit, since Texas is, after all, the beauty pageant capital of the world, as well as the setting for weird cheerleader crimes. For her female anchor she chose former NFL cheerleader Dawn Mullaney, a sultry brunette Texan in her early forties who had retained a body that still cried out for hot pants, boots and a halter top. So Neely got them for her, then sent her to try out for a cheerleading squad with women half her age. Her dance moves had every cowboy wondering if the hitching post outside the barn would be better served standing vertically in the bedroom.

Since Texans like things bigger, Neely reached down into a tiny market and came up with Iowa sportscaster Nick Hallinger, a twenty-nine-year-old former linebacker who had blown out his knee during his rookie year with the New York Giants. At six-foot-five and 240 pounds, Hallinger looked as though he could bench-press Toyotas, but his kind blue eyes and wavy dark hair led you to believe he'd save a stray kitten.