My dad spent his entire career working for NBC. He started somewhere in the nineteen-fifties and then retired somewhere late in the nineties. All told, he gave forty-five years to the company and in the end got a pension and a lovely plaque with a vintage microphone spray-glued to it.
You should friend him on Facebook. He could use it. Search for Peter Robert Flynn, Senior and tell him Kelsey Ann sent you and then never reference the Ann part of my name again.
My memories of his work are mostly from the nineteen-eighties when he was in affiliate relations. They include lots of business trips, Rockefeller Center and men named Ray, Jim or Roy. I think his responsibilities included escorting the likes of Claude Akins around network parties and wooing potential affiliates with the hot NBC programming of that decade.
The following is one of my favorite memories of his as told by his voice in my head:
“We’re sitting there in the meeting, all of us, Ray, Jim, and the rest of ‘em and Roy from Abilene gives this great presentation about some new programming idea of his. I mean it was elegant. It wasn’t Powerpoint or nothin’ but he did a great job! And he finishes and Ray says, ‘Gee, Roy, that was great. Good stuff. So…who do you see as the demographic?’ And Roy says - without blinking an eye, I tell ya, I still can’t believe it - he says, ‘Cunts! 18 to 45, cunts!’”
And…scene.
