HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: “TV: A Novel”

Author: Brian Brown

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Price: $24

In the beginning, this novel appears to have potential. The reader is given the impression this is going to be a fascinating story about a TV director who abuses everything and everyone, including himself. Caesar Fortunato is addicted to power and gambling, among other things. After an award-winning network career, he ends up working at an all-sports radio station in San Diego and dies young.

If the intention of the author, Brian Brown, is to expose the underbelly of the sports television business, he succeeds. If the intention is to captivate the reader, he fails miserably.

Brown is a former newspaper reporter who switched to sports television production when he was 30. He is the coordinating producer of HBO’s “On the Record” with Bob Costas. This is his first novel, and it shows.

At the start of the book, Brown writes a disclaimer he says is not a disclaimer. He says his central character will bear some resemblance to several people but is not based on any one man. Who’s he trying to kid? Fortunato was also a college basketball star. Fortunato not only resembles Chet Forte, he could be his clone.