The Nixon Show
"Alright there all you diner punks and drifters out there, it's about time for the old Captain to sign off for the night. Super Soul and Johnny Midnight are both away on an important fact-finding mission in New Tijuana, so we're going to let Tricky Dick cover the late-night shift tonight. Until next time, this is Captain Fallout reminding you that the letters in Spiro Agnew's name can be rearranged to spell 'Grow A Penis'."The Emergency Broadcast System stopped broadcasting when the bombs hit, but several months later those who periodically checked their radios for a signal got the unexpected surprise of hearing President Richard Nixon's not-particularly-soothing voice coming from their speakers. The ten-minute message, which was replayed hourly for two weeks, assured the citizens of the former United States that the government was working on restoring normalcy and the Union remained strong. Pretty much nobody believed that. After the initial broadcast, Nixon's unscheduled transmissions started getting a lot more insteresting. Sure, some broadcasts are filled with the empty platitudes and unlikely reassurances of a man who is either deeply delusional about the current state of the nation or just outright lying. Often, however, "The Nixon Show" consists of the ravings of a man slowly going mad in some deeply-buried underground bunker, and those can be hilarious. The President has been known to reveal damning secrets about himself and others, complain about the tedium of bunker life, and explain in great detail which (likely now-dead) politicians and government functionaries are dirty sons of a bitches. He also occasionally offers rebuttals to the jabs of Captain Fallout, whose radio transmissions must reach whatever hole Tricky Dick is hiding in. Radiation Radio typically does not air Nixon's broadcasts live, but they always have someone listening in so they can break in with clips and commentary when he says something particularly outrageous or entertaining.
Historical Details
Public Reaction
When Nixon starts broadcasting, a lot of people turn it off after five or ten minutes, but the people who turn it off vary according to the tenor of the broadcast. Those who were Nixon supporters generally only listen when Nixon seems sane, sober, and ready to assure them that America will persevere. Everybody else tends to skip these transmissions, preferring the "fun" shows when Nixon is drunk, angry, depressed, or brutally frank about the fact that the world is a post-apocalyptic hellscape.
Legacy
After only a handful of Nixon's broadcasts, those with the necessary equipment and the juice to run it started taping The Nixon Show, usually keeping the "good" shows and recording over the bad ones later. Once dinertowns started poppping up, those who had Nixon tapes found they could make a steady profit selling copies or charging people admission to a public replay of selected portions of the better episodes. The most bonkers of these broadcasts tend to be the most popular, with "I Killed and Ate Henry Kissinger" being the undisputed favorite throughout the Boomlands.
Radiation Radio has managed to record many of the broadcasts and acquired copies of most of the ones they missed. When they're short-handed, they often avoid dead air with a few hours of Nixon's greatest hits.
Medium
Analog Recording, Audio
Authoring Date
1972-Present
Location
Authors
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