History
After commencing his career as an announcer and journalist in commercial radio, Stuart Gary joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as a news journalist in 1989. In 1994, he moved to ABC NewsRadio, then known as the Parliamentary and News Network, a newly launched service with the mandate of providing a continuous news radio broadcast.
Gary's interest in science was sparked when NewsRadio's founder and inaugural manager Dr Ian Wolfe tasked him with producing a short report on loop quantum gravity. StarStuff was first broadcast in 1998, initially as a weekly five-minute space news segment, though by 1999 it had grown to become a half-hour show. Its name was taken from the quote "We are made of star-stuff", as popularised by Carl Sagan in his 1973 book The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective. The program was broadcast on NewsRadio every Sunday night between 1998 and 2008, with a replay the following Saturday evening.
StarStuff was designed as an hour-long science news bulletin wrapping up all the past week's developments and advances in science and technology. StarStuff's strict news bulletin format made it unique in Australian science broadcasting. The show was designed as a one-person operation with the presenter Stuart Gary, also sourcing, writing and editing the program on top of his regular evening show, five nights a week. StarStuff's material was sourced from ABC news and current affairs reports, syndicated wires copy, and scientific peer reviewed journals.
The ABC was an early adopter of podcasting technology, conducting its first trial in December 2004. NewsRadio began co-releasing StarStuff as a podcast in mid-2006, having previously only supported the direct downloading of recordings from the station website.
In 2008, StarStuff was axed. After numerous complaints to the ABC, the show was restarted as a podcast published by ABC Science Online.
As part of ABC Science Online, StarStuff averaged over a million downloads a year. The complete StarStuff program was also broadcast in the United States on Science 360 Radio.
On 1 July 2015 ABC Science Online was incorporated into the ABC's Radio National network (RN). In December 2015 Ben Watts from ABC Multi-platform announced the axing of StarStuff claiming the show’s numbers were not strong enough. The same month, Stuart Gary announced via the official StarStuff Twitter account that he had been made redundant by the ABC. Gary was offered the chance for redeployment within the ABC, but instead resigned to keep StarStuff going as a private venture.
Gary has since renamed the program to SpaceTime.
The program is now produced as a free thrice weekly podcast.
The show is still broadcast coast to coast across the United States on Science 360 Radio. As of July 2017 SpaceTime with Stuart Gary was achieving over 63,000 downloads a week.
