Joyce declared that with OTE, he and his collaborators "create 'direct-reference' collages, manipulating and mixing both found and original sounds to produce a new kind of audio animal.
Usually at the top of the hour Joyce performed a station identification for KPFA, and near the end of the show made a similar closing announcement.
At the very end of each episode Joyce played a recording of a woman's voice reading a statement attributed to photographer Man Ray: "To create is divine.
This is part of an ongoing Joyce-concocted plot and overarching narrative connecting the majority of Over the Edge broadcasts, featuring a cast of recurring characters and situations.
The audience phone participation ("Receptacle Programming") is another element of the format: listeners are encouraged to call in, and are placed on-air, sometimes two or three at a time, with no prior screening.
Topics vary wildly, from motion pictures, to various music and copyright issues and the CIA; one episode each was devoted to Ken Nordine and to radio comedy team Bob and Ray.
Each episode examines one facet of the unidentified flying object phenomenon, such as alien abduction, cattle mutilation, or the Roswell UFO incident.
While new developments in this storyline ebbed and flowed as Joyce's interests shifted and change over time, there are recurring characters that crop up fairly often.
UMN is supposedly funded by a wealthy recluse, C. Elliot Friday, who lives in a secret retreat on Howland Island, and emerges every four years to run for President on the Universal Party ticket.
He is an inventor who has devised various gadgets marketed as "Fridatronics", including the Cubulax and the new DIECORP technology designed to make all music available to everyone absolutely free.
Bendix was touted as the Cultural Reviewer and Director of Stylistic Premonitions for UMN, and typically greeted listeners with a cheery "Good hello!"
Leidecker continues this roleplaying practice by having his character Mike Worm, aspiring President of General Injectables and Signals, "host" the show or make announcements.
The group participated in many of the shows, a few of which have been released as edited-down cassettes and CDs: Don Joyce died of heart failure on July 22, 2015.
[6][7] After a tribute special, Over the Edge continued with fellow Negativlander Jon Leidecker ("Wobbly") and KPFA's Robert Cole ("KrOB") at the helm.
Leidecker wanted to change the name of the show to reflect its evolution, and called it Over The Edge Presents until April 24, 2020, when it reverted to its original title.
Joyce's assistants had been working for several years on digitizing all the Over the Edge tapes and arranged to store them on the Internet Archive for free download.