outside this category pointed him toward specific future show subjects: "Waste and Corruption," "The Japanization of America," and others instantly gave him slants he'd not looked at before. He'd tapped into the talk-show gold vein.
Violence was the broad background theme for thirty shows—at least. Trask had a month of material he would do in advance, and blow the minds of Flynn, Metzger, and everybody at the station. He would ask for a parking space in the lot, and—in lieu of a raise—Barb Rose's head on a silver platter. No, too violent. He'd ask for a pay-to-play contract clause but settle for the parking space.
Suddenly every story in his stack in front of him, from "Mistrial in Rape Case" to "Infant's Body Believed Placed in Trash by Parents," all went back up on his apartment wall. Subdivided into appropriate categories—a few of which were arguable—it appeared at first glance that Trask had the makings for nearly six weeks of fascinating late-night shows—all on the same universally encompassing theme.
The day that started semi-shitty for the senior researcher at KCM Radio had ended solid gold.
The next day Trask called in sick and stayed in his apartment "on aspirin and vitamin C, to shake this cold" that was coming on. The fact is he probably didn't have much more than that, in the form of a glass of orange juice, and four cups of coffee which he took time out to fix from a jar of instant, as he worked on his files, from before sunrise to one o'clock the following morning.
When he finally stopped to take a deep breath and examine the results of his work, he wanted to call Sean Flynn, who'd probably just be returning to the studio from his nightly post-show donut and coffee, to tell him to "clear the decks for the next two sweep periods!" He was bursting to tell somebody about what he'd stumbled across, but he knew it would be professional suicide to do so. Metzger and his pal Ms. Rose would get cut in on it and he'd be left right where he was.
What he did instead was set his alarm for eight A.M., and he went into the bedroom and crashed for a deep seven-hour sleep. He was up the next morning and writing, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, stoked as he hadn't been since his early years in the business. Victor Trask had come alive!
The focus began with an international overview of violence, cribbed mostly from TV news and talk shows, and an interesting study he'd wangled from the local sheriff's Homicide unit.
From there, it focused on Kansas City, and the statistics on property crimes of burglary, larceny, auto theft, arson, robberies, assaults on persons, rape cases, attempted murders, homicides, and suicides. His source on this was an FBI press kit, and the K.C. cops were using it to help bolster a political fight to stem budget cuts.
Violent crime was up over ten percent overall, with murder having jumped nearly fifteen percent in the past year. In a period of twelve months, Kansas City, a town of—according to a recent census—slightly less than 450,000 citizens, had recorded nearly sixty thousand violent crimes. That was just within the city limits. The K.C. metro area, a vast sprawl of densely populated suburbs, wasn't included in the survey. The city alone showed that approximately one out of every seven persons had recently committed or would commit a violent crime. And those were just the crimes reported. Rapes and assaults went notoriously unreported. Violence—it appeared—was genuinely epidemic in proportions.
What Trask's discovery had been, however, was not in the sheer numbers, but in the nature of the crimes. His file headed Violent Deaths was the key to the "exposé" aspect of this series of interlinked shows he was outlining. It would be what other media would tag as the core of the programs which would deal with escalating violence in America. If his conjecture could be proved it would bring both Sean Flynn's program, and by projection himself , to the attention of the entire
Violence was the broad background theme for thirty shows—at least. Trask had a month of material he would do in advance, and blow the minds of Flynn, Metzger, and everybody at the station. He would ask for a parking space in the lot, and—in lieu of a raise—Barb Rose's head on a silver platter. No, too violent. He'd ask for a pay-to-play contract clause but settle for the parking space.
Suddenly every story in his stack in front of him, from "Mistrial in Rape Case" to "Infant's Body Believed Placed in Trash by Parents," all went back up on his apartment wall. Subdivided into appropriate categories—a few of which were arguable—it appeared at first glance that Trask had the makings for nearly six weeks of fascinating late-night shows—all on the same universally encompassing theme.
The day that started semi-shitty for the senior researcher at KCM Radio had ended solid gold.
The next day Trask called in sick and stayed in his apartment "on aspirin and vitamin C, to shake this cold" that was coming on. The fact is he probably didn't have much more than that, in the form of a glass of orange juice, and four cups of coffee which he took time out to fix from a jar of instant, as he worked on his files, from before sunrise to one o'clock the following morning.
When he finally stopped to take a deep breath and examine the results of his work, he wanted to call Sean Flynn, who'd probably just be returning to the studio from his nightly post-show donut and coffee, to tell him to "clear the decks for the next two sweep periods!" He was bursting to tell somebody about what he'd stumbled across, but he knew it would be professional suicide to do so. Metzger and his pal Ms. Rose would get cut in on it and he'd be left right where he was.
What he did instead was set his alarm for eight A.M., and he went into the bedroom and crashed for a deep seven-hour sleep. He was up the next morning and writing, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, stoked as he hadn't been since his early years in the business. Victor Trask had come alive!
The focus began with an international overview of violence, cribbed mostly from TV news and talk shows, and an interesting study he'd wangled from the local sheriff's Homicide unit.
From there, it focused on Kansas City, and the statistics on property crimes of burglary, larceny, auto theft, arson, robberies, assaults on persons, rape cases, attempted murders, homicides, and suicides. His source on this was an FBI press kit, and the K.C. cops were using it to help bolster a political fight to stem budget cuts.
Violent crime was up over ten percent overall, with murder having jumped nearly fifteen percent in the past year. In a period of twelve months, Kansas City, a town of—according to a recent census—slightly less than 450,000 citizens, had recorded nearly sixty thousand violent crimes. That was just within the city limits. The K.C. metro area, a vast sprawl of densely populated suburbs, wasn't included in the survey. The city alone showed that approximately one out of every seven persons had recently committed or would commit a violent crime. And those were just the crimes reported. Rapes and assaults went notoriously unreported. Violence—it appeared—was genuinely epidemic in proportions.
What Trask's discovery had been, however, was not in the sheer numbers, but in the nature of the crimes. His file headed Violent Deaths was the key to the "exposé" aspect of this series of interlinked shows he was outlining. It would be what other media would tag as the core of the programs which would deal with escalating violence in America. If his conjecture could be proved it would bring both Sean Flynn's program, and by projection himself , to the attention of the entire
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