TELESHOP USA

An aimless high school dropout challenges himself with a brand-new career path in Cairo’s novel.

It’s 1987, and Oklahoma City–based TV network TeleShop USA, anchored by a dynamic cast of seasoned presenters, has become a popular destination for shop-at-home customers. Hoping to leave behind his restless, vagabond, “unstructured” lifestyle, Robert MacKenzie, 25, waits in the wings to unknowingly seize the opportunity of a lifetime. MacKenzie desperately needs a job, and, despite having zero qualifications or experience in television production (and using falsified references), he interviews with company brass, shams his way through some practice pitches, and is providentially given the chance to prove himself at TeleShop. From this point, the narrative masterfully marches out a series of cleverly depicted program hosts, management personnel, and TeleShop employees. Chief among them is Dave Leonard, 43, better known as “the Dealmaker,” the network’s top salesman and TV’s unmatched “King of Bargains.” Yet fame has taken its toll, and Leonard has devolved into a snarky, heavy-drinking, unfaithful egomaniac recently dumped by his wife and estranged from his two daughters, living for months in a squalid roadside motel. As New York investors Triboro Media Group begin buying their way toward becoming majority stockholders and decision-makers at the network, management begins to nervously shift their projections and decisions accordingly. The novel works its charms through a series of dubious coincidences, as when MacKenzie takes a room in the same motel as Leonard and makes the most of their spontaneous orientation session, in which the new hire gets the lowdown on the company’s inner workings. As MacKenzie is drawn in deeper into the company’s fold as one of the newest “rare natural hosts,” things begin to fall apart, egos get bruised, rivalries simmer, and alliances form. Along the way, other ambitious and cleverly drawn peripheral characters spark to life within the TeleShop world, including the lonely, impulsive Yasmine Dubai, Director of Talent, who finds herself attracted to MacKenzie; lusty, unhinged assistant corporate counsel Sandiya King, who deceptively vies for Robert’s attentions; cutthroat network president Billy-Ray Newton; and Dixie Carter, aka “the Dragon Lady,” TeleShop’s other intimidating, high-revenue-generating core host, whose specialty is jewelry.

Though much of the plot contrivances are implausible and included for the sake of narrative thrills, the details about the machinations of the home shopping industry feel authentic and impressively well researched. Cairo taps into a niche market rarely explored in fiction and immerses his characters in the high-stress, micromanaged nuances of successful on-air sales and the “steam cooker” atmosphere of televised commerce. (“‘For revenue calculation, we then examine each minute as a series of six, ten-second episodes.’ ‘Doesn’t that ever get the place feeling like an emergency room?’ ‘Exactly.’”) In addition to its sudsy melodramatic office dynamics, Cairo’s book entertainingly taps into the beginnings of a market that would explode in popularity and profitability on multiple media platforms in the ensuing decades. Readers will cheer on MacKenzie as the formerly underachieving underdog tries to right his path and make the best of his life and career.

Frenzied corporate machinations abound in this frothy re-creation of the early days of the home shopping industry.