America 1982-Chapter 364 - 35: For the Common Ideal
Although it takes at least a week for BT Television to receive viewership data from the third-party ratings research company it had commissioned, by the second day after the broadcast, all staff at BT Television were certain that their station had become notorious—or to put it another way, infamous.
Since last night until now, the middle of the second day, the four external phone lines of the television station had hardly ever been idle. The two customer service representatives on duty last night looked more exhausted at the shift handover this morning than those women who earned men’s money with their oral skills at ordinary clubs all night long.
As for why they had to spend extra money to get viewership data, it was because the few large rating companies in the United State America showed no interest in wasting their energy on cable TV channels with fewer than ten million subscribers or on free TV networks with less than one hundred and fifty partner stations.
So for BT Television, which was still one-third short of the mandatory threshold of one hundred and fifty partner stations, if they wanted to understand their own ratings data, they had to pay extra for the research.
The busy phones were due to the popularity of the programs.
All the calls that came in last night were from enthusiastic viewers inquiring about how to sign up for various reality shows. A large number of single mothers were particularly interested in how they could appear on "Finding Daddy in America," while many young Black individuals were calling to ask how to purchase videotapes of the "All-Around Gun Modding King" program, which they wished to collect.
Starting this morning, apart from six or seven calls from several advertisers interested in discussing advertisement collaboration and asking for quotations, all the rest were calls from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, which would contact BT Television in California about every ten minutes or so.
The reason? Quite simply, as the regulatory body, the FCC was obliged to inform BT Television that viewers had filed complaints against the station with the FCC.
According to the relevant regulations of the television industry in the America, upon receiving a complaint, the FCC is required to contact BT Television without disclosing any viewer information, to clearly notify them which program is being complained about, the reasons, and other basic information.
In the words of the secretary responsible for making calls at the FCC, they had received a hundred and sixty-seven complaint calls by noon, which was already something BT, as a completely unknown new television network, should feel ashamed of.
Even the secretary couldn’t help but curiously ask BT’s phone customer service what exactly they had shown to viewers that had escalated a minor issue—where viewers would typically just press the remote to change to another channel—into a scenario where they took the trouble to look up the FCC’s complaint number in the phonebook to leave a complaint message.
However, the FCC wouldn’t trouble BT Television just for receiving complaint calls. As long as BT Television didn’t break the law, even if viewers made enough complaint calls to be charged, it wouldn’t make any difference.
Although they didn’t have to worry about legal responsibility, Rick Russo and his program scheduling team were still startled by the number of one hundred and sixty-seven complaint calls. Rick was already preparing to wrangle his team members for a department meeting to reflect on whether their in-house programs were really too over the top, which might have led to this situation.
At the same time, he wondered whether they should consider toning down a bit.
But before the department meeting could be convened, Rick received a call from Sophia in his office. Sophia told him that Tommy wanted Rick to take his crew and roll into the meeting room.
"The boss seems very unhappy, because Sophia emphasized that Tommy told her to tell us to roll into the meeting room. I think our programs really might have gone too far," Rick said, picking up his notebook and calling his subordinates to hurry to the meeting room. He added a reminder, "So, be mentally prepared."
When they entered the meeting room, Tommy’s face was full of mockery as he sat in the main seat and deliberately gave them a vigorous round of applause, "Welcome, welcome..."
"Sorry, Tommy, it’s my fault," Rick said as he took his seat, taking all the responsibility upon himself: "I should have realized it would bring you a lot of social pressure. It doesn’t have much to do with them—they just followed my orders, so if you’re looking for someone to blame, I’m the most suitable candidate."
Tommy looked around at the crew Rick had assembled himself, listening to Rick’s words with an emotionless face: "Who else should I look for then? Of course, it’s your responsibility, Rick. You and your people have really disappointed me. None of my work partners in the computer industry have ever let me down like this."
"Those programs were produced only after your approval, Mr. Hawk," a woman from Rick’s subordinates said, stepping up to defend Rick when she heard Tommy’s dissatisfaction and saw her boss remaining silent with his head down.
Tommy looked displeased at the brave woman, "I’m not denying it, of course, they were produced with my approval and not only that, it also took my money to start the production. But this is not an excuse for your screw-up, lady," he said and tapped his fingers lightly on the table, gesturing for Rick to look up at him. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶
Rick lifted his head to look at Tommy who was staring at him and spoke seriously, articulating the suspicion in his heart, "Are you sure you really worked at Vivid Miniature Films Company? Is your resume fabricated?"
