12.Practice.Tests.for.the.SAT_2015-2016_1128p

Section 7
538 Practice Test Six
Directions: The passages below are followed by questions based on their content; questions follog a pair of relted
passages may also be based on the relationship between the paired pass .
ages. Answer the qu .
est10ns on the basis of
what is stated or implied in the passages and in any introductory material that may be provided.
Questions 7-19 are based on the following passage.
The following passage is an excerpt from
.
a nvel abou a
talk show host who is learning to deal with life after his
program is cancelled.
The way late-night talk show host Randolph
Meyer learned of his long-running television program's
demise was not at all how he pictred t
Line would be. The foreboding phone call he imagmed,
(5) from his producer or a network head, was instead
replaced by a small, unforgiving headline in the
morning's paper: 'Talk Night' Gets the Axe.
He should have sensed something was wrong
by the line of commiserative eyes that quietly
(10) fell upon him as he entered the diner, and the
unusually gracious treatment by the normally
curt waitress. Instead, he made the egotistical
error of mistaking compassion for adulation. The
unsettling gawks of strangers, which on previous
(15) mornings had imparted to him a confirmation of
his success, were now prying daggers. Randolph's
heart began to pound in his chest-not a good
thing for a man his age. He paid for his breakfast
and attempted to walk nonchalantly out of the
(20) establishment, suppressing the urge to run to the
tinted refuge of his car.
The canceling of the talk show came as a complete
surprise to everyone but Randolph. Despite
the show's decent ratings, he had a sense that the
(25) network had purposely neglected Talk Night since
the hiring of its new president Abel Carver a year
earlier. Armed with the latest buzzwords and a
new "groundbreaking vision" for the sinking network,
Carver introduced a strong course of action
(30) that Randolph quickly distilled into three words:
Style Over Substance. To Randolph, that was a
good description of Carver, as well.
"You gotta think outside the box," Carver
would often tell Randolph. "It's the only way you
(35) can survive in this industry."
Randolph was a familiar fixture on late-night
television for three generations of Americans. He
had managed to not only survive but to thrive in
the industry for five decades prior to Abel Carver's
( 40) tenure. Certainly "our old man" (Carver's pet
name for Randolph) knew a thing or two about
entertainment, and he was not about to change
horses midstream. He thought about the legions
of adoring (though he had to admit, graying) fans
(45) and the numerous Emmys, achievement awads,
and other various accolades that filled an entire
wall of his office. He then recalled his interviews
and correspondences with some of the world's
most powerful and intriguing figures, and dis-
(50) missed Carver with a lordly grunt.
.
True, Randolph's older and intellectual audience
didn't fit Carver's target demographic, but
CNS wasn't some cable theme channel; it was a
genuine, one-of-a-kind network television insti-
(55) tution, one of the first ever to brodca
,
t over
the country's airwaves. Networks like Chrome
catered to the lowest common denominator;
CNS did not. It all seemed a little backward to
Randolph, anyway. By pandering to one specific
( 60) segment of your audience, you completely ignre
the others. The object was to attract as many viewers
as possible; at least that was what Randolph
always believed.
At this time of the day, Randolph's mobile
( 65) phone would normally be ringing off te hok.
Today, it was eerily silent. He stared at its shmy
plastic housing and tried to will it to ring, to no
avail. Who would be the first person to call? It
should have been Carver, and he should have had
(70) the professional courtesy to personally break the
news to him last night. Randolph, however, was
not surprised by this selfishness and lack of
professionalism. He never put much faith in those
who demanded the respect of others rather than
(75) earning it.
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