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"Jesus turned water into wine. I turn air into money." That’s rambunctious radio station manager "Fast Eddie"
Mason’s favorite claim. The year is 1978; Eddie is on deadline to sell enough air-time to fund his purchase of KDWG, Dawg Radio,
when competitors with "deep pockets", Graft & Rob Broadcasting, unleash KSFL San Francisco Lite, an immediate and
formidable threat to Eddie’s dream: to become a coast-to-coast radio legend.
Author Casey Stangl’s novel Off the Dial pulls back the curtain on the radio industry.
Lite is portrayed as a cost-cutting, automated format riding on a robust promotional budget, portentous to the evaporation of live,
local radio and the "dumbing-down" of much of America’s media. As the story unfolds, disheveled hustler Bobby G appears
at Dawg Radio after one of his tourist scams in Hawaii goes sour. In his tattered corduroy suit, he shows up for his first radio job
and is promptly smitten with Dawg receptionist (and mah-jongg champion) Ming-Lin Ling. Ming-Lin jabbers daily with Lei Akane, the
provocative assistant to Eddie’s protégé, Dana "The Money Machine" Boudin, the laid-back helmsman of Honolulu’s Heavyweight
98 FM. Dana is — as Kesey once called Kerouac — the perfect wall for Eddie to "bounce (his) ball of bulls**t ideas." With
tropical promises, Boudin induces shady Rocky Ocean to upend Graft & Rob’s assault.
As Eddie assembles his motley cast of characters to pull off the deal of his career, his prospects alternately soar and spiral
miserably out of control until finally, backed against the deadline, he musters an inimitable last-ditch financial twist that is
lauded and admired industry wide. "Fast Eddie" Mason collars The Dawg and becomes legendary, coast-to-coast.
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Casey Stangl is a veteran of the radio industry and has been an on-air DJ, programmer, a former vicepresident
of KQMQ radio in Honolulu, and an owner-operator of KIKI and I-94 radio. He has since turned to writing and his earlier work,
Voodoo Tower: A Hawaii Businessman’s Worst Nightmare chronicles the four tumultuous years during which he became
entangled in local politics and a battle of wills in his attempt to erect a radio and communications tower on the island of Kauai.
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