When the employees saw their new boss asking questions, none of them dared hold back.
One of them respectfully stepped forward and said,
"Because of your interview this morning, searches for the company and public interest in us have increased several times over. We've become one of the hottest topics of the day!"
In truth, Karl's slip of the tongue during the interview—announcing that he intended to produce Gotham City's very own Batman television series—had caused an enormous stir.
Almost everyone in Gotham City was talking about it.
Most people hadn't even seen the interview themselves and assumed Karl's announcement was nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Even so, the controversy had inevitably drawn a tremendous amount of attention toward the broadcasting company Karl had acquired.
"Oh? That's good. There's still plenty of time for the story to spread, and this is only getting started. We'll keep the hype going!"
Karl nodded.
"So, how were our ratings today?"
It was a simple question.
Yet after Karl asked it, nobody answered for quite some time.
Sensing that something was wrong, Karl looked around and saw nothing but blank expressions.
"What? Wouldn't the normal thing be to strike while the iron is hot? We should be taking advantage of all this attention to promote our station and expand our influence."
Karl frowned.
"So what were the ratings? Even if they were only a little higher than usual, just tell me!"
With things having reached this point, an employee named Cece finally spoke.
"Boss… actually, our company… uh, more precisely, the entire television station… has been off the air for five days."
Karl froze.
He stared at his employees in disbelief, only to see all of them nodding.
"Our satellite broadcasting rights expired even earlier, so we lost the right to cover other cities."
"We didn't have enough money to buy new dramas or variety shows, so we had no choice but to pull old movies from the Television Alliance's archive. The ratings collapsed, and the advertisers left with them…"
"The previous owner owed everyone wages. A lot of people quit, and now we barely have enough staff to keep the place running. We ultimately had no choice but to stop broadcasting. At least this way, we could save some money…"
Problem after problem came pouring out.
Karl finally realized that the place he had taken over was in even worse condition than he had imagined.
The previous owner—that damned Lincoln—had barely managed the company at all.
He had simply allowed everything to deteriorate.
Combined with the recent layoffs, the station could no longer maintain even its most basic operations.
"So we might as well stay off the air for now and save some money. At the very least, we won't have to pay the Television Alliance's fees," one employee said.
"We know you have big ambitions, Boss, but producing a new program takes a long time. Buying new programming to fill the schedule right now would be extremely expensive, and with our current staff, it simply isn't feasible. Even hiring new employees requires contacts and arrangements."
Another employee joined the discussion.
"All things considered, staying off the air for a while wouldn't really hurt us."
Karl fell silent.
Their current situation truly was terrible.
They had no flagship programming.
They had no advertisers.
They didn't even have basic viewer loyalty.
Sure, Karl could continue spending money to acquire programs and put the station back on the air, but none of that content would actually belong to him.
Why would advertisers specifically choose his station?
If Gotham viewers could watch the exact same material on other channels, why would they bother sticking with his?
Forget the Batman television series.
Even the talent competition he intended to model after a popular talent show was still only in the planning stages.
It would take a long time before either project could actually be produced.
For a television station that wasn't even broadcasting at the moment, those projects were simply too far away to solve its immediate problems.
"What exactly is this Television Alliance?" Karl asked after thinking for a moment.
"It's an organization that brings together practically all of Gotham City's media companies. It maintains a huge archive containing movies and television programs."
One employee explained,
"Independent production companies can submit their programs there, and television stations can purchase broadcasting rights through the Alliance.
"We used to pull old movies from its archive for practically nothing and broadcast them for a while, but advertisers weren't interested…
"So if we remain off the air, we can at least save a substantial amount on Television Alliance membership fees!"
Hearing this, Karl shook his head.
His fingers rhythmically tapped against the table.
"I'm not short on money, so there's no need to save on something like that. And there's no benefit in offending everyone else in the industry."
"There's a huge amount of attention on us right now. If we stay off the air and do nothing, we'll just be wasting all that publicity."
"How about this…"
Karl stood up and slowly paced across the room with his hands clasped behind his back.
"Since we can get old movies from the archive for almost nothing, and those movies already have an established audience, why don't we cut them into eight-minute segments and broadcast those segments on our channel?"
"Viewers can call in and request whichever segment they want to watch."
"Of course, the calls won't be cheap. We'll negotiate with the telephone company and split the revenue with them!"
That short explanation left everyone in the room stunned.
Batman had been around since roughly the dawn of the 1940s, and every subsequent reboot of his world had left certain aspects of Gotham's technology and culture strangely inconsistent.
For example, advanced robots might already exist, yet in American comics one of Gotham's favorite forms of entertainment could still be traveling outside the city to watch a circus.
People loved those performances enough to risk being attacked by the likes of Scarecrow or Joker along the way.
That strange mixture of old-fashioned entertainment and advanced technology was precisely what gave Karl his idea.
He decided to introduce an interactive video-on-demand model first, using it as a temporary way to keep the station active for the next few days.
Many people had probably encountered something similar when they were younger.
All you had to do was call a telephone number, and you could request the music video, animated feature, or other short program you wanted to watch.
Before the internet became widespread, services like that had enjoyed a period of popularity.
In any case, Karl's immediate goal wasn't to make a fortune.
He simply wanted to put the television station back in front of the public in a proper way and keep it relevant without resorting to anything too questionable.
Once the Batman series or the talent show was ready, the station could begin developing normally.
Whether this temporary arrangement made any money was secondary.
"And don't look at me like that," Karl said confidently.
"It doesn't have to be limited to movie clips.
"Popular music videos, fashion shows—anything like that can be made available on demand.
"A five-minute music video is only a few minutes of content. The Television Alliance can't seriously expect to charge me the same price for that as an entire television series, can it?"
(End of Chapter)
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