Elimination Night (35 page)

ANNOUNCEMENT

FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD

OF
SHOWBIZ
MAGAZINE

With great regret,
ShowBiz
announces today that Executive News Editor Chaz Chipford is leaving the magazine. The mutually agreed upon decision follows an internal investigation into Mr. Chipford’s “exclusive” story regarding the cancellation of top-rated reality TV franchise
Project Icon,
which appeared on the front page of this magazine three months ago under the headline, “Death of an Icon.” Once again,
ShowBiz
apologizes without reservation for this article, and any distress it may have caused, especially to the cast and crew of that show.

An internal report produced by the editorial board of
ShowBiz has
established that Mr. Chipford filed the story in question with a personal guarantee of its veracity. Given this publication’s trust in Mr. Chipford, not to mention his storied fifteen-year career as an awardwinning entertainment correspondent, it was sent to press only minutes after
Project Icon
’s season thirteen finale aired, while simultaneously breaking on our website and Twitter feed. Alas, barely an hour later, an extraordinary turn of events proved Mr. Chipford’s report both premature and wildly inaccurate: News emerged from Germany that Sir Harold Killoch, proprietor of the Rabbit network—home of
Project Icon
since its debut—had been arrested and imprisoned in Berlin, without bail, on charges related to the manipulation of televised bingo games in that country.

As our readers will be aware, the arrest triggered a succession plan at Rabbit’s parent company, Big Corp, and at an emergency board meeting in Los Angeles, Sir Harold’s estranged brother, George Killoch, was appointed new Chairman and CEO of the family-controlled media conglomerate. It came as little surprise in Hollywood when Mr. Killoch chose immediately to renew
Project Icon
for another season, with an option over five more. After all, Mr. Killoch was the first to discover the show’s format on Belgian television, and had worked tirelessly to overcome his elder brother’s resistance to commissioning a pilot.

Mr. Chipford’s departure comes several weeks after he was placed on administrative leave. Meanwhile,
ShowBiz
has appointed Kevin
Smiles, a British-born editor and former agency owner, in a new role as Supervising News Editor. Mr. Smiles will take responsibility for covering
Project Icon’s
fourteenth season, and the circumstances surrounding the cancellation of
The Talent Machine
after just one episode and a reported hundred million dollar loss by Rabbit. The muchvaunted show, created by former
Project Icon
judge Nigel Crowther, attracted only five million viewers—a quarter of what Crowther himself had once claimed was necessary to avoid a franchise being “put out of its misery”.

His theory was proved correct.

**UPDATE**

A trial date of early January is now likely for Sir Harold Killoch, in the sensational bingo scandal that has gripped Germany and sent Big Corp’s stock price reeling on Wall Street. Meanwhile, prosecutors in Berlin are soon expected to outline their case against the Big Corp mogul, with reports suggesting the evidence may rest on a “smoking gun e-mail,” sent to all senior Rabbit network executives, ordering them to “double-delete electronic files” related to Rabbit Deutschland’s bingo-related operations. Among those who allegedly received the order: Nigel Crowther, who currently has plenty of his own financial problems, following the repossession last week of his yacht,
The Talent and the Glory.

Leaked details of the e-mail indicate it was written in code, with Sir Harold using his mother’s native tongue—a tribal language from the South African region of Nbdala—to maintain secrecy. It remains a mystery how anyone outside Big Corp’s inner circle could have intercepted—or indeed translated—such a message. There have been persistent rumors, however, that Big Corp was infiltrated by at least one intelligence officer working for the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency. The BND has neither confirmed nor denied these rumors, but one popular German website says it has confirmed the undercover agent’s cryptic, single-letter call sign: “Z.”