{
  "title": "DEAD AIR",
  "category": "[SHORT-STORY]",
  "article": "Short story by Rick Kennett…\n““Dead Air”: While working at public radio station 3LTD, Ernie and radical feminist Polly\nStyrene encounter an evil magician intent on bringing beings of the Cthulhu Mythos through a\nportal in the space occupied by the station. Published in Esoteric Order of Dagon #6, 1992.”\n\"The Windows\": During the graveyard shift at public radio station 3LTD, a DJ watches through\nthe studio window as a wannabe magician performs strange rites with oversized records labeled\nin Latin. But the more he watches, the more he sense all is not going well with the magic.\nPublished in Ghosts & Scholars #13, 1991,  EOD #9, 1994, Redsine #4, 2001, and 13 (Jacobyte\nBooks), 2001.\n“Radio Daze”: An article concerning my years hosting an SF/F/H program on Melbourne’s public\nradio station 3PBS, improbably titled \"Pilots into the Unknown.\" Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight\nMagazine #21, January 2006; second printing, Tabula Rasa (web site), 2006.\nRick Kennett: “It was 1985 and Glen Matthews, whom I'd met the year before at an SF writers'\nworkshop, had this bee in his bonnet about bringing out a science fiction fanzine. I was\nunenthusiastic. Never daunted he said, \"All right then, how about a radio show?\"\n“Almost before I could say Wot? We were down at the offices of public radio station 3PBS FM,\nsituated at 171 Fitzroy Street in the Melbourne beachside suburb of St. Kilda. We pitched them the\nidea of doing a spoken word program of science fiction, fantasy and horror.\n“Our show needed a name. I was all for Unknown, in honour of the short-lived, much-loved\nfantasy magazine of the early forties. Glen, with a more artistic bent, wanted to call us Pilots into\nthe Purple Twilight. We compromised and called it Pilots into the Unknown.\n“At that time radio drama on 3PBS consisted solely of a two-hour program Sunday at 10 p.m.\ncalled Wireless Playhouse, featuring talks on the entertainment scene, interviews and movie\nreviews. Airing of actual radio drama was a rarity. Its presenters were Greg, a big, bluff,\nbewhiskered fellow who doubled as a technician about the station, and Debby, a young media\nstudent and almost stereotypical radical Marxist feminist. As it turned out, Greg and Debby\nwelcomed the idea of alternating with Pilots into the Unknown every other week, thus giving\nthemselves a break. Within this alternation Glen and I would alternate presenting Pilots for that\nparticular fortnight, which usually worked out as one show each per month.\n“On 3rd August 1986, Pilots broadcast my Lovecraftian novelette, \"Dead Air\", set within the\nconfines of fictional radio station 3LTD. (If nothing else, eighteen months at 3PBS had provided\ngrist for the writing mill.) Glen read the story in two long spurts, which took up the entire two\nhours of the program. The music I selected to go with it was \"The Piltdown Man\" section of\nTubular Bells and \"Peter Gunn\" by Art of Noise with its repeated dom-dom-dom motif.\n“A group interested in producing radio drama adapted my Lovecraftian story \"Dead Air\" into a\nradio play. I heard some of what they'd recorded and was fascinated by the experience of hearing\nmy words being spoken aloud in dramatic form. It's one thing to see words in cold print, quite\nanother to hear them acted out. One night on the show I interviewed the organiser of the group,\nJenny Fyfer. We talked about how they had produced \"Dead Air\" and about radio production in\ngeneral. Noises were made about \"Dead Air\" being broadcast before too long on 3PBS, either as\npart of Pilots or in a special time slot of its own. Then, suddenly ... nothing happened. The project\ndisappeared, despite being all but finished. To this day I have no idea why.”",
  "origination": "",
  "duration": "",
  "personnel": "",
  "extant_recordings": "",
  "chronology": "PILOTS INTO THE UNKNOWN (3PBS, ST. KILDA)\n[Sunday—10:00 PM-12:00 MIDNIGHT]\nAugust 3, 1986\n“Dead Air”\nSCRIPT: Rick Kennett.\nPERSONNEL: Glen Matthews (reader).",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}