In late 1961, Bruce Temple has fulfilled his military obligation and takes over the job he was hired to do two years earlier at a TV station in Two Rivers, Mississippi. Bruce also takes up where he left off with Sue Ann Crawford, his true love and senior pre-med student at Memphis State University. A few weeks into the new job, Bruce is fired after several unnerving civil rights-related incidents, beginning when a lynch mob comes to the studio seeking a Black politician and culminating when Bruce and a cohort are severely beaten after they filmed Freedom Riders attempting to integrate a Greyhound bus station. Confused and desperate, Bruce accepts a TV job offer in Texas, sight unseen. He realizes he has made a monumental mistake the moment he enters the station. He reluctantly accepts the challenge; however, maintaining a serious love relationship between Banta, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee, is difficult at best. Besides a pipsqueak program director and a tyrannical general manager in Texas, Bruce’s situation is further complicated by a beautiful weather girl and a nympho traffic director, each of whom wants to test his loyalty to his betrothed.