On Air. You're listening to SYN 9-0-7

Melbourne Uni's media collective have started a radio show called S.P.I.T. Don't ask me what it means, I forgot. After a few weeks of preparation on segments like news, comedy, arts and reviews, the show aired for the first time today on community radio station SYN, bandwith SYN fm, 90.7....so if you're in Victoria (Australia), tune in. It's on Tuesdays, 2-4pm.

Anyways. I popped by the SYN studios today to take some photos of the nervous presenters, Ben and Hagen, stressing out, I caught them fumbling with CDs on the desk, headphones dangling on their necks, pushing buttons and going..."ok, what's next? Are you gonna talk about that song? How bout this song?" Perhaps they weren't too pleased I showed up with a camera but they let me sit in anyway.

Two other segment presenters for pop culture and review was sitting outside, waiting for their turn to come in and talk. But inside, the announcers were screwing up certain bits and I just sat and laughed. We grimaced when some songs had the 'f' word in it, because they didn't give a language warning. We just broke one of the station rules.

Then once Hagen hit the 'off' button on the CD volume by accident and the song halted for 1-2 secs...on air. Ben switched it back on--"What the hell are you doing??!" We were laughing our faces red, to Hagen's exclamation "I can't BELIEVE I did that!!"

After they recovered from that mishap, they put on a comedy segment...only to have a girl come into the studio 3 minutes later. "Guys? What happened? You're off-air."

"WHAT?!"

"The back-up music is playing....you must have had dead air for 7 seconds or something."

So the guys scramble to cut the segment and play some music to get back on air. Just then, a call comes in.

"You....the managers are gonna be mad at your foul content!"

Hagen's eyes nearly pop out and he swings around to face Ben and I. His face was pale for a moment. This was probably the worst imaginable thing to happen, get your show ticked off even from its debut airing. We all read Hagen's panic on his face and held our breath-for a few secs. Because then Hagen broke out laughing. It was just one of our production editors playing a prank.

WELL. What a day.