NEW YORK – NBC’s breathless coverage of the farcical fraud cooked up by Richard and Mayumi Heene last week drew widespread ridicule among the handful of viewers intelligent enough to notice. Now, despite the fact that that portion of its demographic is shrinking on a daily basis, the network is seeking to repair its image by seizing a surprising dividend it says the ordeal has yielded.

“Even though it was built on a fraud, this story is just so compelling,” said  Eve Catsups, president of NBC News. “We’ve gone back, we’ve looked at the tape, and we’ve decided to make lemonade out of lemons.”

Catsups’ comments confirmed the network’s ill-kept secret plans to turn the 87 hours of coverage it has of a sagging, saucer-shaped balloon soaring through empty skies and the accompanying hours of dime-novel commentary into the storyboard for a children’s television special about a little boy and his balloon.

Catsup confirmed the title of the animated film, which will have an accompanying children’s book, was taken from The Today Show’s Day Five coverage of the event, which featured a segment entitled “The Boy Who Wasn’t on the Balloon” and which ran well after it was clear the boy in question – tousle-haired tyke Falcon Heene – was never in danger.

Would-be rescuers scampered to reach the balloon, within which the boy was not.

“What a catchy title, right?” crowed Catsups. “I mean, anyone can spend hours covering a boy who was on a balloon, but we managed to spend days covering a boy who wasn’t! I just hope some of that creativity makes it over to the children’s story.”

Ironically, the most interesting moment of the maudlin interview came when young Falcon upchucked on camera, apparently suffering a parasympathetic distaste for compulsory lying to a national television audience. That scene will not be featured in “The Boy Who Wasn’t on the Balloon.”

The unsightly, live regurgitation occurred as the family were in the midst of a whirlwind media tour in an effort to counter the damage wreaked when Falcon slipped up and told the truth to Larry King stand-in and part-time Israeli tank commander Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s Larry King Show Friday night. His efforts were unsuccessful, and rescue personnel, the media and even many TV viewers began to realize that the entire ordeal was an orchestrated hoax.

Charges against the Heene’s, who routinely employ a dangerous combination of their arm’s length acquaintance with amateur science and their intimate acquaintance of reality TV to seek fame, are pending.

NBC is moving ahead with the children’s programming regardless of the Heene’s outcome, Catsups said. “This is our content, our storyline, our brainchild,” he said, adding that the film and book would be modeled in the Dr. Seuss fashion. He provided this publication with a sneak-peek look at the title poem:

Last week we told a lovely tale
About a boy who had set sail –
Not in a craft of land or sea
But one that set him flying free!

For this delightful daring lad
And redneck scientist (his dad)
Worked long and hard from dusk ‘til noon
To craft a saucer-shaped balloon.

Its magic did not lie in flight
Nor in the way it gave some fright …
But how it showed for all to see
The total farce of NBC

They told the story far and wide:
This balloon has someone inside!

It is a boy and he might die!
And when he does we’ll be there live!

But when the craft crashed on the ground
And the Sheriff’s men gathered ‘round
They saw no boy – “He’s not inside!”
“Did he fall out while on the ride?”

At NBC they worried not
“We have our story, tot or not!”
There was no boy in that balloon
He did not die that afternoon
He did not do a thing at all
But hide inside an attic wall
He did not, could not fly that day
But we filmed it all anyway

Why cover war, why make such noise?
When we can cover prankster boys?
And that’s our story for today
If you like real news go away.

Originally posted 2009-10-19 19:29:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter