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David Perlmutter's avatar

Shouldn't the station's call letters be WTLT? Or KTLT? (Depends on whether Lewis Town is west or east of the Mississippi).

The story is really nicely done, though.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

That's a great catch! It was going to stand for Lewis Town Local Television, but I forgot that the FCC assigns call letters based upon the station location. Thanks for reading and commenting, David. 😁

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Caitriana NicNeacail's avatar

I really enjoyed this one! Love the way it added a bit more to the background of Lewis Town as well.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you! I'm working up the courage to create a longer serialized story that will explore how it all started, and then another to close out how it all ends. Lots of details to get right :)

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Caroline Barnard-Smith's avatar

That was creepy in all the best ways! I loved the 80's setting, too.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you, Caroline! A little 80s goes a long way. 😁

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Caroline Barnard-Smith's avatar

It does! Your story read a bit like a pulp 80's horror novel (which is a good thing, because I love those-the pulpier, the better!).

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David Perlmutter's avatar

It really matters. Here in Winnipeg, we get NBC and CBS from stations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area- the NBC one starts with "K" and the CBS one with "W", for obvious reasons.

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Michael S. Atkinson's avatar

There used to be a late-night radio show like this on the AM station I usually listened to for news and whatnot: I don't know if they're still on, and they didn't have incidents like *This*, sadly, but still, good times. The weirdest they had that I remember was a guy going on about how the world is like the surface of a balloon and the balloon is expanding and so on. I don't remember the rest. Very odd.

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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

AM stations and local access from the 80s were a whirlwind of oddities. If you hit up YouTube, there are plenty of videos from that era, during an age when free speech rights on public local access were being tested because it was government funded. Callers would call in and cuss out the hosts, prank call them, and the shows were full of strange characters. It's ultimately what gave me inspiration for this story. Thanks for reading and commenting, Michael!

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Feb 7, 2024
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Brian Reindel 👾⚔️'s avatar

Thank you, Sam! I really wanted to have the characters come across as youthful and carefree, a little flippant, so I'm glad it came across that way.

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