Astro News Radio is a news corporation operating out of the Aleph Cluster, which provides news about the headline events within the cluster.

Of the radio companies which operated around Traveller, Astro News Radio started as a council-sponsored community radio program in Unity Prime in pa_220 - one of many of its kind which have come and gone. The station became popular enough to become self-sufficient with community donations and begun reeling in large stories around the state with its journalists, ANR became an independent outlet of news media, broadcasting planet-wide.

During its flourishing period, ANR was given numerous buyout offers and merger offers by other radio and media companies, but the radio station was profitable enough to stay independent. Astro News Radio branched out into playing music, taking the Aleph Cluster's love for New Wave and Funk music. Playing music along with news broadcasts and the occasional advertisement was a winning formula.

Growing into its current groove that covers all of the cluster now, the scrappy outfit of enthusiast wireless techies and charismatic voices started making moves like a bigger company, making deals on its own terms, taking and leaving the sponsors and advertisers they wanted and the public wanted to hear more of. Despite expansion and rising cash and employees, Astro News Radio doesn't forget its roots.

Currently based out of many stations throughout the galaxy. Their base of operations is in Sargasso on the Traveller Colony. Important and emergency broadcasts are translated into many different languages, with some assistance from Unity Protocol's languages database and translation team.

Astro News Radio structures its content the following way:

• News Broadcasts - Delivered by the primary broadcaster for the hour of broadcasting. All a variety of topics and goings-on are covered.
• Music - The bread and butter of the station before becoming a more general radio broadcasting network, Astro plays lots of music from a grab bag of genres.
  • Regular Genres include: New Wave, Funk, Jazz Fusion, Pop, and Classic Rock.
• Chatter-Back - Occasionally, the broadcast will take calls from the audience over back and forth between multiple hosts or guests. Like any sensible radio station, there is an eight-second delay between recording and broadcast to weed out the cranks, hacks, and otherwise impolite.
• Interviews - Astro News frequently invites guests to their station to be interviewed. Whether it's in person, via camera drone, or digital linkage, there's rarely a dull moment in a lively interview.
• Advertisements - Interspersed between songs and other features is advertisement. Grants and community donations don't cover all the costs, unfortunately.

The typical schedule for weekday programming is as follows:

With digital broadcasting, there's hundreds of dozens of entities and competitors, large and small. The following organisations and entities work with Astro News Radio.

• Sponsors
  • One-Stop - At least a few advertisements per hour come from One-Stop or its subsidiaries.
  • Victor-Marshall - Another regular advertiser with the company.
  • Gruppen Tanhauss - Former frequent advertiser, but their advertising money dried up without notice one day and recent conflict between Tanhauss and Sargasso¹⁾ have collapsed the deal. If anything, Astro News Radio competes softly against Tanhauss' on publication, The Caduceus Report.
• Partners
  • Frame Running - Astro News Radio has a deal with the Aleph G-1 Frame Running series to simulcast the commentary of Frame Running races that take place within Unity Protocol. They also have the rights to simulcast any G-0 event that takes place within the Aleph Cluster. The odd structure of the deal is a result of negotiation from a weaker position, but Astro is planning to renegotiate and cast their net wider.
• Competitors
  • Log Wire - Though not a true competitor by structure, Log Wire is a federated series of networks primarily. Astro News Radio is on affable terms with Log Wire's instances and noteworthy administrators due to listener and employee overlap from the community's roots. Astro is included among Log Wire's curated news outlets on the landing page.

Astro News Radio is known to have have many entertaining hosts in the past. The primary voice of the station as of pa_270 is Dexter Marlin, an enthusiastic man in his fifties, native to Sargasso with a love for playing funk tunes after the news is done and the messages from the sponsors are over. Dexter got his start in community and college radio, working officially or trying his hand at pirate broadcasts with equally enthusiastic friends. They speak clearly and firmly, warm and welcoming to new viewers and a joy to be interviewed by, rarely pausing for breath²⁾. The following other hosts are present, swapping in and out for Dexter.

• Mia Kondo - A Hagblood woman in her thirties, having risen into the company from a university intern program during her twenties. A more laid back voice who generally does the interviews with the arts, entertainment and pop-cultural aspects of the news. Her voice is much more soft and laid back compared to the energetic Dexter. She has many interesting and colourful stories about the places she has seen in Sargasso's party and arts scenes. Stories that might make your parents blush.
• Officer Donald Ferris, Retired - An Oddbody expatriate from Albion in his sixties and a Royal Planetary Defence Navy veteran whose body content is over fifty percent artificial. Donald can best be described as 'charged' in an interview. For news he handles coverage and about severe or distressing events like wars, assassinations, military movements, and crime. Occasionally, the man softens to share an anecdote or two about his hobbies in gardening or gunsmithing, or war stories leading to how he is mostly artificial, Many of these stories are embellished, but common grain of truth is the loss of limb or two.
• VoiceProcess 12 (VP-12) - A mobile personal computer box with arms and legs, usually seated in their own room in the Astro News offices away from the rest of the communications infrastructure. VP-12's initial purpose was to be an artificially generated voice in case a host couldn't present, but they grew beyond their programming and the team at the time rolled with the new development. They appear to be self-conscious enough to disclaim their artificial nature upon first tuning in unless they're scheduled for a graveyard shifts themselves. Late-night listeners and staff don't mind the occasionally imperfect and stilted delivery, and call them 'Veep Veep' or 'Veepers Peepers'.

Theme songs:

• Mitch Murder - Frantic Aerobics
• Electric Light Orchestra - Here is the News