On Tuesday, October 11, 1988, the Jason Taverner Show ran thirty seconds short. A technician, watching through the plastic bubble of the control dome, froze the final credit on the video section, then pointed to Jason Taverner, who had started to leave the stage. The technician tapped his wrist, pointed to his mouth.

Into the boom mike Jason said smoothly, “Keep all those cards and V-letters coming in, folks. And stay tuned now for The Adventures of Scotty, Dog Extraordinary.”

The technician smiled; Jason smiled back, and then both the audio and the video clicked off. Their hour-long music and variety program, which held the second highest rating among the year’s best TV shows, had come to an end. And it had all gone well.

“Where’d we lose half a minute?” Jason said to his special guest star of the evening, Heather Hart. It puzzled him. He liked to time his own shows.

Heather Hart said, “Baby bunting, it’s all right.” She put her cool hand across his slightly moist forehead, rubbed the perimeter of his sand-colored hair affectionately.

“Do you realize what power you have?” Al Bliss, their business agent, said to Jason, coming up close—too close as always—to him. “Thirty million people saw you zip up your fly tonight. That’s a record of sorts.”

“I zip up my fly every week,” Jason said. “It’s my trademark. Or don’t you catch the show?”

“But thirty million,” Bliss said, his round, florid face spotted with drops of perspiration. “Think of it. And then there’s the residuals.”