David Sunshine ─ A Novel of the Communications Industry

When blond, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered, college football hero T. J. Brinkman leaves Sweet Dreams, Arkansas, to make his name and fame in the world of big city television, he is lucky enough to find employment with the industry’s most prominent and highly regarded producer, David Sunshine, widely considered the brightest hope for television’s future. A media darling considered the best in the business by people who accept his public image, David Sunshine in real life immediat
ely proves himself a far cry from the public’s, the media’s, and T.J. Brinkman’s naive and gullible assessments of him. What happens when T.J.’s innocence and idealism clash with David Sunshine’s egotism and opportunism is at times hilarious, at other times heart-breaking. Filled to overflowing with characters who range from fragile to cruel to beautiful to eccentric, David Sunshine re-creates a world gone by and tells the story of how it really was as television began to decline from its Golden Age into a far more cynical industry. David Sunshine is best described as “a comedy of substance.” In depicting the American television industry of the 1960’s, it is as accurate as it is funny.