Barry Sayles loved television. As Executive Vice President of Programming for NBC, that was the baseline expectation. Most if not all television executives breathed, ate, drank, and slept television but Sayles took his dedication to the extreme. More than once, while boffing any his first three wives or some bimbo starlet from one obscure sitcom or another, Sayles was known to mutter not the names of other women as he approached orgasm but the titles of his Saturday night lineup, his brainchild. Sayles actually fucked television. His counterparts at the other three major networks, including, ironically, FOX, would even say that he fucked television figuratively, as well.
Taking a cue from the young fourth network, Sayles provided the American public with programming that they hated to be obsessed with. No fake alien autopsies or greatest police chase crashes for him, though. Sayles was known for giving the nation what it hated to face yet couldn't turn away from when presented with it in their livingrooms. The difference was, Sayles did it with such panache that his Saturday night lineup seemed virtually… legitimate.
Sayles was rapidly acquiring a reputation as the Howard Stern of television, of giving the American viewing public programs that provoked outrage as well as silent speculation. Many of the programs were required to provide advisories that the content was not suitable for children or the faint of heart. Celebrity autopsies, videotaped live when not involving an ongoing homicide investigation, were not uncommon on Saturday nights. And, when camera crews were not allowed in a brothel catering to high profile politicians, live spycams were called for. The American public, especially the part that leaned to the right, loudly protested that such programming was not appropriate for public television. Yet, the ratings continued to skyrocket.
Sayles' secret lay, he claimed, on his ingenious synthesis of exposé news, entertainment, and tapping the civic interest. As he told a gathering of network executives just the year before, "You give me an execution, a tragedy, and a miscarriage of justice, and I'll give America something that even Ed Sullivan never dreamed of in his worst nightmares."
But timing was everything and many of Sayles' programs seemed to depend heavily on immediately mobilizing camera and sound crews to remote spots as stories developed. So NBC's senior VP of Programming leveraged the very unpredictability to his advantage. The crown jewel of his Saturday night empire, Behind The Scenes, seemed to depend on this flexibility, as he called it, and there wasn't time, naturally, to tell TV Guide what was in store for that week. America tuned in faithfully just to see what atrocity or outrage Sayles' people had dug up for this coming Saturday.
But the spontaneous nature of his bread-and-butter show always made him a bit uneasy. His greatest fear was that his investigative journalists would be unable to come up with anything with more sizzle than the crap that FOX routinely ran. It was a television high wire act without a net. But that was how Barry Sayles liked it.
An execution, a tragedy, and a miscarriage of justice.
That's why Charlie Overland was a gift from the television gods.
It wasn't as if the concept of televising an execution was a new one. Ambivalent studio execs had been toying with the idea for many years but were either stopped by a stubborn sense of good taste or the penal authorities in states that carried capital punishment. Some prisoners, even, had volunteered to let their executions be televised but not one network executive could ever bring themselves to acquire the rights to one. The closest thing that television ever got to it was when Jack Kevorkian had submitted his ill-fated euthanasia video to CBS's 60 Minutes.
Sayles was determined to break ground.
The problem wasn't in finding a state penal system that would allow such a thing- his Saturday night lineup was getting to be so popular that Hollywood's biggest film stars didn't consider their careers complete unless they'd appeared on at least one of Sayles' Saturday night shows. Budget-worried wardens saw Behind The Scenes as a great source of publicity for the benefit of lawmakers who were charged with setting the state allocations for their penal system. To no one's surprise, the greatest number of offers came from the great state of Texas, which had executed more men and women than almost every state combined since the Supreme Court brought back capital punishment in 1976.
But, in spite of the deluge of offers to come to film one execution or another, Sayles wanted to make the first televised one to be special, involving a criminal and their crimes so heinous that even the far right and the Moral Majority couldn't complain about it. The GOP, after all, was famous for its broad endorsement of capital punishment.
Charlie Overland was the perfect choice.
Child molester, child murderer, serial killer, and, best of all, he was featured on another of Barry's Saturday night shows- Top Ten, the show that took on FOX's America's Most Wanted head-to-head. It was not only a perfect vehicle for his flagship show, it was even a followup. During the ratings sweep, at that. Sayles practically owned the story of Charlie Overland. Now, he even owned his death. Sheer, simple genius. That was the Barry Sayles way. He was on the road to the office of President of Programming in no time, industry insiders said, paved with the graves of children, war casualties, and executed convicts. Hey, whatever works.
In his office on the 10th floor of NBC headquarters, Sayles looked out his window overlooking Hollywood Hills. It was just getting dark in California and the city lights below him timidly began to come on one by one. Sayles wondered how many of the homes below him would be watching Overland's execution and actually got a hardon when he fantasized about earning the unheard of 100 share, or 100% of all homes tuned in to a single program.
He knew he wouldn't get it. Live coverage of The Second Coming couldn't get a 100 share. Too many Jews, cynics and atheists. But tonight would bring him closer to a 100 share than any other telecast in history. Lord knew the ten million dollars in PR and advertising revenue publicizing the event didn't hurt. As a show of support, NBC, MSNBC, and most of it affiliates had even allowed a countdown clock to be placed at the bottom of the screen during all their programming. MSNBC's website, which would carry the lethal injection live on the Internet, had even set up chat rooms, an online poll and a furiously busy message board.
In short, Sayles' entire reputation, and his career, rested on the successful coverage of this, the most expensive single broadcast in the history of the industry.
Quickly tiring of the sight of Hollywood Hills, Sayles turned back to his desk and pushed a button on a thin, imitation wood-paneled remote. The paneling on the walls slid back silently, revealing a bank of six monitors. He tapped the sensor on the remote and all half dozen screens fizzed to life. On each screen was a live, closed circuit hookup of all six cameras that were at Varrick Federal Prison in Eastbridge, Massachusetts. One camera was trained on the front gate and the obligatory anti-capital punishment protestors. Another camera was assigned to the east wing of the facility, right below where Overland's cell window would be if he had a window. There, the equally loony "Death To Overland", pro-capital punishment faction was having their tailgating party. Yet another cameraman was stationed right outside the death row chamber.
The other three cameras were posted in other parts of the prison with one in a chopper flying over the prison. The harried technical director, Sayles knew, was doing light balance checks on all six angles while pre-recording cutaway footage that would be used throughout the program. The various NBC correspondents would be filming interviews with the warden, some of the guards, Overland himself, perhaps, and, when he arrived, the man who'd made it all possible, Senator James Forrest.
When Overland was at last captured in one of the widest and most intense manhunts in Massachusetts history, thanks in part to Sayle's Top Ten program, Forrest had seized on the opportunity. He'd finally persuaded the lawmakers on Capitol Hill, as well as a good many potential voters, that mandatory capital punishment was made for offenders like Charlie Overland. Sickened by the reports that seemed to break every day during the trial, the legislators didn't hem and haw so much as before and they passed the Senator's capital punishment bill by a two third's majority. It was a personal as well as a political victory for the Senator- He had been trying to pass this piece of legislation ever since he was the state's AG years before, even though drafting, introducing, and pushing bills through the state congress wasn't in the job description.
Executing Overland and actually witnessing it was the acid test that would finally shut up the naysayers who charged that the Senator wouldn't have the balls to witness the consequences of his actions. James Forrest even said privately that he would push the damned button himself if they'd let him. "I have two daughters, myself," he'd said, "and I'd only be doing what any other loving father would do to keep his girls safe."
It wasn't a mystery to anyone how Sayles got the exclusive rights to the Overland execution. It was common knowledge throughout Massachusetts that the Senator was a huge television and movie buff and the chance to show off his new capital punishment program and one of his facilities was too good to resist, especially during his re-election campaign. When Sylvester Stallone appeared in Boston the previous year to dedicate the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Planet Hollywood, many people observed how much Forrest had fawned in the superstar's brief presence. Secretly, he fancied himself a Robert DeNiro lookalike, and had been caught by his wife and kids looking into a mirror, saying to his reflection, "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?"
Sayles' segment on Overland generated, out of hundreds of dead leads, the one call that led to the killer's arrest and conviction. Being aware of this, Senator Forrest was only too glad to allow the NBC crews to enter the ancient walls of Varrick to film the execution. One hand washes the other.
Sayles guessed that the Senator and the rest of the witness team were leaving the hotel right about now, ready to be escorted by the Massachusetts State Police and the FBI to the bus that would transport them to the correctional facility.
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