“Sponsor audition?” Archie Munn’s voice was bitter. “You don’t know the strain, Joe. The uncertainty. Munson won’t come in with a few of his store executives and the Everts-Hall people. He’ll bring in his uncles, and his cousins, and his aunts. He’s likely to drag in a couple of his office stenographers and a taxi driver. What do they know about whether a show’s good or bad? Somebody says: ‘I just don’t like it,’ and Munson gets cold feet. Isn’t this show for the public, and isn’t this somebody who doesn’t like it one of the public? Perhaps the show really isn’t good. You can’t blame a sponsor for being careful. A coast-to-coast hookup may cost $250,000. Even a single-station, local show is expensive. The sponsor has to pay for script, production, cast, radio time, perhaps music. It runs into money. But if a sponsor wants advice, why doesn’t he rely upon people who know? You see what Vic’s up against? He spends weeks and weeks whipping a show into shape, and then any little nit-wit can throw in a monkey wrench. Or the sponsor may throw the wrench.”
Joe was sorry Archie had told him. His left knee began to tremble.
“Radio has a name for it,” Stella said. “Sponsor trouble.”
Jovial Tony Vaux appeared suddenly. “All right, folks; we’re ready for you.”
The cast filed into the glass-walled corridor between the glass-walled studios. Blue lettering outside Studio D announced the rehearsal. The tremble in Joe’s nerves became a hard, uncontrollable jerking. The microphone was an unreal upright looming through an unreal light across miles of unreal studio floor. The control-room was crowded. He saw Munson, Wylie, Tony Vaux, Curt Lake, the script-writer, a woman.... The studio itself sheltered another audience. Perhaps the uncles and aunts, the cousins, the stenographers, and the taxi driver. They sat in a long row along one wall. They looked, to Joe, like a row of stuffed, sardonic owls—blank, expressionless, motionless, lifeless, staring. Couldn’t one of them so much as cough?
Somebody passed out script. Stella’s hand was on his arm.
“Nervous?” the girl whispered.
The front failed. Joe was pinched and wan.
But Stella’s hand was warm, human. “Forget them, Joe. When you’re on the air you’re talking to thousands. They’re only a handful of stooges.”
She heartened him; he hoped she’d keep her hand on his arm. Wylie was speaking from the control-room over the two-way mike. They’d give the first three scripts; then they’d give the tenth script to show the program after it had run for a while.