←

NIGHTBAND

Six frequencies · broadcast almanac · vol. 12

99.5 MHz FM WLTZ · Slow Waltz

Drag the glass · click to seek · ← → fine tune Carrier locked

On airKELP 89.30100–0400

Nocturne Desk

Four hours of correspondence read aloud by people who cannot sleep, scored to the hum of a refrigerator in Studio C.

Every night the desk receives about ninety letters and reads eleven of them. The rest are filed in a cabinet that has not been opened since the flood. Our host, Ines Marchetti, insists that the unread letters are the reason the show works — a kind of ballast under the studio floor.

The signal is weakest between two and three in the morning, when the transmitter on Redhill cools and drifts nearly a tenth of a megahertz. Regular listeners have learned to drift with it.

  1. The Opening LetterRead cold
  2. Refrigerator Hum, Side AAmbient
  3. Postmarks We Could Not PlaceSegment
  4. Answering Machine ArchiveTape
  5. Sign-off & Weather for SailorsLive

On airWIRE 92.70700–1000

The Filing Cabinet

A morning programme about bureaucracy, told entirely through documents that were never meant to be interesting.

Each episode takes one form — a parking appeal, a fishing licence, a request for a new streetlight — and follows it through every desk it touched. The result is less dry than it sounds; roughly a third of episodes end in litigation.

Producer Otto Reyes keeps the show's tempo at a strict 96 words per minute, a pace borrowed from shipping forecasts.

  1. Form 14-B, In FullFeature
  2. Marginal HandwritingAnalysis
  3. The Complaints LineCall-in
  4. Rubber Stamp RhythmsMusic bed

On airKRVN 96.11200–1500

Marginalia

Books read sideways: we broadcast only what people scribbled in the margins of second-hand copies.

A listener in Harrow sent us a 1971 paperback containing 212 pencilled notes, one argument with the author, and a shopping list. We aired all of it. The shopping list drew more mail than the argument.

The programme runs without music. Delphine Okafor reads; the silence between notes is deliberate and occasionally alarming.

  1. Pencil, Second HandReading
  2. Disagreements With Chapter FourSegment
  3. Library Stamps & Due DatesArchive
  4. Listener MarginsMailbag

On airWLTZ 99.51800–2100

Slow Waltz

Three hours at sixty beats per minute or fewer. Nothing faster has been played on this frequency since 1994.

The rule is enforced by a metronome bolted to the mixing desk and by Hal Brannigan, who has fired two engineers over it. Listeners send in tempo complaints; each is answered by postcard within a fortnight.

The station's signature is the eleven seconds of dead air observed at the top of every hour — long enough that new listeners often check their receivers.

  1. Eleven Seconds of NothingSignature
  2. The Sixty SetMusic
  3. Tempo Complaints Read AloudMailbag
  4. Records That Warped in the VanMusic
  5. Metronome, UnaccompaniedClose

On airKHAZ 103.22100–2300

Static Gardens

Field recordings from places where the reception fails: car parks, lift shafts, the eastern side of any hill.

We send two people out with a receiver and a notebook. They record whatever the dial gives them and describe the room it was heard in. Some nights this is thirty minutes of hiss. Those are the good nights.

Marguerite Sy maps every recording onto a wall chart in the lobby; visitors are welcome to add pins.

  1. Underground Car Park, Level 3Field
  2. Interference From The FerryField
  3. Hiss, UninterruptedAmbient

On airWFEN 106.82300–0100

The Long Fence

Interviews conducted entirely across property lines, with both parties standing outside in whatever weather arrives.

The premise is simple and the logistics are terrible. A microphone on each side of a fence, a producer in a parked car, and a conversation that ends when someone gets cold. Average runtime: forty-one minutes.

Aurelio Pike has recorded 308 of these. He owns eleven coats.

  1. Fence No. 309 — Beet FarmerInterview
  2. Weather InterruptionLive
  3. Notes From The Parked CarEssay

No carrierBetween stations

Dead air, and what lives in it

You are off-station. Keep drifting, or nudge the needle toward the nearest lit marker on the glass.

Nightband holds six licences and leaves the gaps deliberately empty. The engineers call the space between carriers the shoulder — technically silent, practically full of ferries, thunderstorms and someone's doorbell in Bexley.

Broadcast log — week 29

FreqStationProgrammeDurationCondition
89.3KELPNocturne Desk — Postmarks We Could Not Place3h 04mDrift, 0.08 MHz
92.7WIREThe Filing Cabinet — Form 14-B, In Full2h 58mClean
96.1KRVNMarginalia — Listener Margins3h 00mClean
99.5WLTZSlow Waltz — The Sixty Set3h 00mMetronome audible
103.2KHAZStatic Gardens — Hiss, Uninterrupted1h 55mIntentional noise
106.8WFENThe Long Fence — Fence No. 3092h 02mWind, heavy