Dream Theater: Disney Television!

Image from The Beaufort Gazette

Once again I dreamed I was working in an advertising agency. (This is how I spent the majority of my career.)

It was a small shop with a modest client list, and we were working on a new-business pitch. To help us, someone had brought in their friend Bob.

Bob was this old guy, in a stretched out golf shirt tucked into brown polyester pants. If he’d ever had a prime, he was well past it.

But he claimed to have a great idea: "Disney Television." He wanted us to propose creating a brand new TV channel for our client and calling it Disney Television. The name alone would guarantee "a lot of eyeballs" he promised. 

I listened to all this incredulously and finally raised my hand. "Doesn’t Disney already have a TV division?" I asked. "And lots of channels?" No one, Bob especially, seemed happy about me bringing up the obvious.

We thanked Bob for his time and broke for lunch. I was surprised to find that P_____ was working there, too. She was always pretty sharp, and I asked her to get something to eat with me.

While we were walking I asked what she really thought about Bob and his idea. Were we really going to move forward with it?

P_____ told me Bob’s claim to fame was that he used to run a newsletter for barbers. He’d given her an article from it as way of presenting his credentials. Being a copywriter, P_____ naturally felt it was terribly written.

“I just don’t see how creating a whole TV channel called Disney Television is going to help the client," I said.

That’s when I realized Bob had followed us out of the building. He'd heard everything we'd said. Now he was standing next to a wall, one that had been tagged with racist graffiti the night before.