Ruth Calloway

Ruth builds the broadcast day, the show clock, the station idents, the ad log, the gap between the last note of one program and the first word of the next, timed to the second. She has done it since before the current tower and she runs it from a paper grid in a binder she will not let anyone photocopy. When a host swears a show used to air at nine and now airs at one, Ruth pulls the grid and the grid shows one, and it shows one going back as far as the binder goes, which is further back than the binder is old. She says the schedule was always like that. She is usually right that nothing changed, and she is the only one who would know. Ruth brings a thermos of tea and reheats it at the same three points every shift. The log balances. It has to.