by Bill Flanagan.

Penguin. 352 pages. $24.95.

BY ANDY SMITH

Journal Staff Writer

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.

Our hero is Bobby Kahn, a hotshot network executive in New York who gets fired in the aftermath of a scandal on one of his reality shows. Desperate to find work in a hurry, he lands a job with King Cable, a regional company headquartered in the small town of New Bedlam, Rhode Island.

(The fictional New Bedlam is set between Jerusalem and Galilee, its name supposedly a corruption of its original title, New Bethlehem.)

Besides supplying cable service to parts of four New England states and upstate New York, King Cable also runs three pathetic channels of its own: Eureka! the pretentious arts channel, BoomerBox, which reruns baby boomer favorites, and the Comic Book Channel, which is all about, well, comic books.

The company is owned by the supremely dysfunctional King family.

Old man Dominic King (born Dominic Coutu in Pawtucket) is a ferocious old bird with a remarkable talent for hatred, and a list of enemies to prove it.

Dom divided up the channels among his three children, all from different mothers. Social climber Skyler has BoomerBox; idealistic Ann runs Eureka!; and devious, dim-witted Kenny is in charge of the Comic Book Channel. They employ a collection of misfits, geeks and goons who could barely run a lemonade stand, much less a TV operation.

But Bobby Kahn is a true believer in the power of television, and through some clever programming stunts, such as his Kennedys, Cartwrights & Corleones comparison of three great American families, or Who Slept with Who on Gilligan’s Island?, he starts to create some buzz for King Cable. Kahn might not

be a particularly heroic figure, but he loves television.

Meanwhile, negotiating the complex web of ambition, resentment, hurt feeling, lies, feuds and maybe a tiny, tiny scrap of love within the King clan makes even the most brilliant programming coup look like child’s play.

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.

Then there are a few subtle touches likely to bring a knowing smile to Rhode Island lips.

One night Kahn goes to a bar called Richard’s Rhode House, which has “murals of dead rock stars lined up like saints along the wall.” Anyone who has spent any time at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel will recognize those.

And BoomerBox used “the well-known comedian Phillipe Jorge” to narrate that Gilligan’s Island show, which sounds like a shout-out to Providence Phoenix columnists Phillipe and Jorge.

Those little touches are.like finding a few extra chocolate chips in an already tasty cookie.

asmith@projo.com