“UNTITLED MASTERPIECE”

PART ONE: “BODIES’

CHAPTER 10 A: “PIECES”

Ian shouldn’t have been surprised he was sore, but he was. He was even more surprised by the amount of energy he had despite his lack of sleep. At some point during intermissions, Ian had explained to Billy that he had meetings most of the day and was just going to be unable to rearrange his schedule. Billy said he’d find a way to keep busy and not to worry, but he did.

He thought it kind of rude to screw someone all night and then just runaway as soon as the alarm clock went off. Ian managed to shower despite Billy hopping in with him. He managed to get a decent shave, despite the fact the Billy was sucking him off while he did it. He even managed to get dressed and get in the car and come to work, despite the fact that Billy seemed insatiable.

The morning meeting had been a dynamic ball of excitement. They were settling into the new offices, and the new team members seemed to take to Ian’s style of doing things. They had decided to concentrate on fixing what they deemed to be the problems with the daytime lineup, first, while attempting to quickly develop something to fix the gaping problem that called itself “Sebastian Manor”.

They first discussed the 1 PM drama “Have I None”, a staple since 1968, and one of the last successful daytime dramas to be launched. Only CBS’s “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” had managed to survive of the many, many that had been launched since.

“Have I None” was a good piece, but still trying to regain it’s footing after having been practically decimated when HRT decided to hire Baxter Reilly as it’s head writer. In the four years he headed up the writing team, the story and the history went ory, and the audience left in droves.

Things got worse when some idiot decided it was a good move to allow Reilly to remain as head writer, while creating, producing and writing “Sebastian Manor”. Manor debuted at the bottom of the heap and “Have I None” slid from a solid number three to just above “Sedation” at the bottom.

Two years ago, Reilly was removed from the “None” staff to concentrate on “Manor”. “Manor” refused to improve, but a new head writer managed to help “Have I None” to get back up to at least middle ground.

Ian’s problem was to figure out a way to get that show back into the top third, minimum, although he felt with a few tweaks, it could zoom right back to the top. His staff agreed, it was a strong old-fashioned soap, with a solid core audience that stuck with it during some really horrible storytelling years.

The thought was that the time slot was the biggest problem. Ian really wanted to move the two soaps he had on the schedule two hours later, removing the block from competition with most of the other daytime dramas and making them unique in a time zone of syndicated talk shows and local news programs. It was a tougher time slot, but Wella seemed to be convinced that the genre distinction would gain audience from viewers who were sick and tired of having nothing but talk and