Lazy Employees, Liars, Office Ghosts No Match for THE CYA. New TV Sitcom Takes Slacking to New Level.

LOS ANGELES, CA, August 01, 2011 (Press-News.org) "I don't know about anyone else but I am tired of watching some of my co-workers collect a free paycheck. They come to work each day and do absolutely nothing of value for the company they work in. They spend a considerable amount of time surfing the internet, talking on personal phone calls and taking long lunches" - Posted by "Serious 12" on an internet forum entitled, "Useless Employees".

It is inevitable that, in large corporations and behemoth government agencies with thousands of employees, there will be slackers. And some slackers, as "Serious 12" notes, don' t hesitate to neglect doing work out in the open. However, other slackers are perhaps more covert. According to a recent study by consulting firm PwC, "One in three employees lies to avoid doing work." But it can get even worse. There are workers who don' t have to lie or slack to dodge work because they don't have any job responsibilities in the first place. They forgotten employees, lost in the shuffle. There is a name for these transparent souls: Office Ghosts.

Urban Dictionary.com defines Office Ghost as, "An employee who maintains a position at a company despite the fact that all of his job duties have been reassigned to other employees. This could be by the ghost's own design or due to restructuring within the department."

Now take all three of these phenomena - slacking at work, no longer having any job duties, and lying about it all - and you have a new sitcom entitled, "THE CYA", which airs on the new online network, FirstRun.tv (www.FirstRun.tv).

"CYA" often means "Cover Your A - - ". In the case of the sitcom, "CYA" is the name of an ultra-top secret agency established at the height of the Cold War. THE CYA was so top secret that, when the Cold War ended, nobody in the government remembered that the agency still existed! THE CYA is now obsolete, defunct, truly useless, and should have been mothballed decades ago. Yet, in 2011, the six remaining agents sneak through secret tunnels and stairways to get to their hidden (and also forgotten) office in the eighth-floor basement of a monolithic Washington DC building. Nobody else even knows the basement exists. They still come to work for one good reason: Their hefty secret agent paychecks keeps coming - and coming. It seems the government forgot about that, too! So now slacking, lying and hiding have become their job duties! They all work very hard at doing absolutely nothing and not getting noticed. Any attention brought to their existence would bring an end to their covert, cozy little world. In addition to being the name of the agency, CYA has also become their modus operandi - and there are a lot of you-know-whats to cover. THE CYA's world is threatened on a regular basis as rogue, computer-generated assignments still come their way, and there is a menacing service elevator that, when accidentally stumbled upon, brings unwanted visitors.

THE CYA is the strangest agency with the oddest crew the government has ever seen (or, in this case, has not seen). Although it is 2011, their ramshackle office is frozen in time, circa 1958. It is filled with old wooden desks, black rotary phones, manual typewriters, gas masks, and bomb shelter maps, all held together with a rainbow of duct tape. These workers never call or order anything from "upstairs". Just one wrong reminder of their existence could spell the end. They are self sufficient in their invisibility - bringing in their own paper clips and pens (for their personal projects), and taking home their own trash in their briefcases. THE CYA agents are Office Ghosts to the extreme!

Agnes Quackenbush (Valorie Paradise-Lant), the Commissioner of THE CYA, has been with agency since its inception. Hired straight from college, it is the only job she has ever had. Agnes is the only living person who knows all the secrets of THE CYA - including what the "Y" stands for - unknown to others because the agency shield once fell off the wall and shattered the rest of the word. But Agnes is not talking as she took a lifetime oath of secrecy. Not only does her knowledge make the others "upstairs".

Bernie Budnick (Peter Altschuler) is the CYA Bureau Chief. He is the most nerve-wracked person on the planet, always expecting doom and gloom. He is certain the agency will be discovered at any minute and his "career" will be over.

Ralph Hibler (Ron Ford) is the consummate stereotype slacker - literally sleeping, head down on his comfy pillow on this desk. But THE CYA would not exist without Ralph. Whenever a seemingly inextricable problem presents itself, he amazingly wakes up with a brilliant solution.

Other agents include Leo Romero (Benjamin Perez) who is THE CYA's mail courier. Because he wears a uniform, Leo can sneak "upstairs" to get a pulse on what's happening in the "outside world". Yolanda Goldstein (Leland Raymond) is the glib, brassy, cross-dressing receptionist (as if they really need a receptionist), and Jason Hooper (Ben Rosenfeld) is the young newbie agent, assigned to THE CYA through a computer error.

In the first episode, a major threat to THE CYA emerges. A young woman named Ashley Green (Nebula Gu) arrives at the office to start her new job. THE CYA never requests new employees. To make things worse, she is followed downstairs by nosey security guard, Dick Winslow (Tony Franchitto). The agency finds itself in perhaps the worst bind it has ever seen.

"THE CYA" was created, produced and co-written by Gary Kleinman, who worked for the Walt Disney Studios for the past 23 years. "The series idea was inspired by true events", said Kleinman. "As a result of management shuffles, I know someone who was literally forgotten in the company they work for. This person goes to work every day with nothing to do. The phone never rings. It was sad at first, but then became hysterical because it has been going on for two years now. This really happens to people but fortunately the paychecks keeps coming!" he added. For privacy reasons, Kleinman declined to identify the person or company.

Mario Jojola, the head writer of the "THE CYA" commented, "I stretched and prodded the characters within an inch of their fictional little souls, but the environment that they live in was not too far out so they were anchored in a reality. We wanted our characters to have quirks and behaviors that everyone could relate to and then we pushed them a little further out there. We wanted the humanity to be there. We had the CYA agents behave in the endearing, goofy ways that they do so the audience would want to see what the heck they would do next."

Peter Altschuler, who plays nervous Bureau Chief Bernie Budnick added, "There are countless Bernie Budnicks in the world but, in real life, they're not usually funny. That's why they work for the government. Besides, nobody tightens their belt inside the Beltway. They just seem to unbuckle them at all the wrong times, and Bernie's learned the value of staying zipped up to avoid getting caught . . . so far."

Episodes of "THE CYA" are now on FirstRun.tv (www.FirstRun.tv), a new network Kleinman created and launched in early July. FirstRun.tv features ten channels of new shows from independent filmmakers/producers, and is aimed at mobile viewers with smartphones, tablets, laptop computers, other mobile devices, as well as desktop computers and internet-ready TVs. FirstRun.tv is also debuting several other web-based series.

"THE CYA" is produced by StoryArc New Media. FirstRun.tv is owned and operated by Innovation Organization, LLC.

This press release, photos, and captions are available online for download at:
http://www.FirstRun.tv/press-publicity.htm

FirstRun.tv is a new TV network launched by veteran Disney Studios executive, Gary Kleinman. FirstRun.tv features 10 channels of new shows from independent producers, aimed at mobile viewers with smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.