The very un-modern Stuart Sain is an upstanding, fatally honest, do-right employee of the Fielding Ratings Company, and later public television, who has no greater ambition in life than to have a friendly company softball team. Sain unwittingly rises to power amidst one of the greatest television mishaps of the century: due to an undetected error in the high-tech Fielding Ratings system, public television has become the top-rated network in the country. This sets in motion a frenzied free-for-all behind the scenes of the new television season as network executives scramble to compete with cultural programming, and Stuart Sain nearly loses the only thing in life he needs to get by: the integrity that keeps his beautiful, funny, wife Cary not only by his side but on his side.