Dr. William F. Flanagan

Flanagan does a number on TV

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, August 5, 2007

NEW BEDLAM,

by Bill Flanagan.
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Bill Flanagan is not afraid to bite the hand that feeds him.Twice.

The Rhode Island native is vice president of MTV networks and a frequent contributor on musical subjects to the CBS Sunday Morning program.In his first novel, A&R, in 2000, he turned a knowing eye on the music industry.Now he takes on the TV business with comic gusto in his second, New Bedlam.

Flanagan, who grew up in Warwick (son of the late William F. Flanagan, former president of Rhode Island Junior College, now CCRI) and attended Brown University, set most of the novel in Rhode Island, so there's plenty of opportunity for him to mine the rich lode of comic material that is life in the Ocean State.
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Flanagan clearly knows the media business - he's apparently spent a little time among comic-books geeks as well - and occasionally drops in a trenchant observation amidst the absurd goings-on at King Cable.

(He points out how, thanks to ubiquitous reruns, several generations of Americans share the same cultural touchstones, such as I Love Lucy and Leave It to Beaver.)

New Bedlam might not be a laugh-out-loud funny read, but it's definitely chuckle-out-loud funny.And Rhode Islanders will probably chuckle more than most.

Flanagan knows the territory, from the state's proliferation of doughnut shops to our rich tapestry of ethnic rivalries.He has fun, for example, with the Rhode Island Hall of Fame, whose members get their pictures hung in the Dunkin' Donuts Center.

Henderson said from there, CCRI's first president, Dr. William F. Flanagan, asked him to work part time on the master plan for the Warwick campus.

Responding to the desire of RIJC's first president, Dr. William F. Flanagan, and a request from students, Cullen, a math professor, started the basketball program in 1965 and followed with a baseball program the following spring.Whitey Fell was the first coach.Golf and ice hockey joined the lineup while the school was in Providence.

Cullen was actively involved in the construction of the fieldhouse as the Warwick campus was built.He spent hours with officials at Brown, Colby and other schools learning about multipurpose fieldhouses with new artificial surfaces, a radical new concept in the late 1960s.The lessons he learned resulted in the ditching of the architect's original plan for a gym with a folding wall.