Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [111]
‘Have you got a hangover?’ Annika said, pushing the cheese away to make a place on the kitchen table. Thomas sighed loudly and moved two millimetres to make space for her.
‘Like a bitch, but that doesn’t matter. Björnlund has shut down the channel.’
Annika pushed the bread away to make more room.
‘What are you talking about?’ she said.
‘The Minister of Culture has just made me redundant. Says so in the paper.’
Thomas demonstratively turned ninety degrees away from her, his shoulders screaming out that he was actively distancing himself.
‘What? I’ve just read it.’
‘Top of the front page.’
Annika leaned forward and took hold of the first part of the paper as Thomas was reading it to peer at the front page. He snatched it away in irritation.
‘Hang on,’ Annika said, ‘can I just take a quick look? Björnlund changes terms for digital broadcast rights. And?’
‘The board were told last night, they got the last plane from New York and landed half an hour ago. They’ve already announced that the launch is being postponed. There’s an official board meeting at two thirty, and all our planning’s going to be stopped and TV Scandinavia wound down. I’m going to end up as the arts reporter for Radio Sjuhärad.’
‘But we shouldn’t think the worst,’ Annika said, hitting Thomas on the knee to get more room. Why can’t you become a satellite channel, or a cable channel?’
Anne started crying and the seriousness of the situation hit Annika, as well as guilt.
‘Hang on, I’m going to change phones,’ she said.
She put the receiver down and accidentally knocked Thomas as she jumped down from the table.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said, crumpling the paper in his lap.
‘Just carry on, I’m moving,’ Annika said and skipped down the hall and into the bedroom with her towel round her, then dropped it on the floor. She crept under the covers and picked up the phone by the bed.
‘There’s got to be a solution somewhere,’ was the first thing she said. ‘What’s the problem?’
Anne pulled herself together. ‘I told you before,’ she said grouchily, and Annika interrupted her.
‘I know I haven’t been a good listener. To me it’s always seemed a bit technical, like if I started telling you about print timings and plate changes. Tell me again.’
She sat up among the pillows and Anne took a deep breath.
‘The whole point of TV Scandinavia is, or was, to reach the whole of Scandinavia. That’s twenty-five million potential viewers, roughly a tenth of the population of the USA. And to reach that many people you need to be available in every household in Sweden, and that means broadcasting from Teracom’s transmitters. Advertisers in the American market aren’t interested in target groups smaller than that.’
‘Teracom?’
‘The national broadcast network, it used to be part of the old nationalized Televerket but got turned into a profit-making public company instead, along with everything else.’
The angels were silent, completely beaten by Anne Snapphane’s despair.
‘And there are no other masts? You’re not allowed to put up your own?’
‘Are you joking? Teracom is heading for bankruptcy even though all the masts already exist.’
Annika relaxed and tried to think of a solution, happily grasping this distraction Anne had provided, and leaving Thomas and Sophia and the children and Vaxholm behind.
‘But hardly anyone can watch digital television,’ she said. ‘You have to have one of those boxes, don’t you? Is it really such a big deal?’
‘In a couple of years digital television is all we’ll have. The government proposition is the big deal. When the terrestrial digital network works with the same criteria as the rest of the business – the world of satellite and cable – then the market will explode.’
Ellen’s excited yell penetrated the bedroom door a couple of seconds before the girl herself ran in, Kalle only a metre or so behind, growling in a deep voice and making claws with his fingers.
‘Mummy, help! The tiger’s after me!’
‘No,’ Annika said, and tried to calm them down with her hand, which was pointless, the children tumbled over her on the bed, laughing hysterically.