Talk:Dead air

Silent Knight (45rpm vinyl disc)

I remember a radio mention years ago of a record named something like "three minutes of silence", re-issued under the name "Silent Knight". According to an announcer on an American Top 40-style programme, the disc was issued decades ago and never got any radio airplay, but got a fair amount of play on jukeboxes where it served as a placeholder if someone simply wanted to temporarily silence the machine.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any WP:RS on this novelty bit of vinyl-recorded dead air at the moment, so I can't add it to this page. --66.102.80.212 (talk) 01:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Here are references: [1], [2], [3]. But since it was only used in jukeboxes and never broadcast, it's not an example of "dead air". - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:43, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Legal/licensing implications, and automatic avoidance mechanisms

I can recall hearing a presenter on Talk Radio UK many years ago saying that dead air over a certain threshold (maybe a few minutes) attracted substantial fines. I've managed to find this decision from Ofcom fining a small community radio station £500 for massive dead air atrocities in 2011, but I suspect they were much more lenient in that case than they would be if a major national broadcaster went dead. Does anyone know more about the system for penalising dead air as a breach of a station's broadcast licence in the UK or elsewhere? If so, it would be great to see this information in the article. Also, I have heard of systems used by radio stations to prevent dead air which monitor the station's output and kick in with some kind of backup tape if everything goes quiet. Does anyone know more about these? Credulity (talk) 18:25, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

(1) In the USA, dead air, if it’s prolonged, and occurs without FCC permission, it is an actionable offense. (2) Yes, there are broadcast engineering tools called silence monitors. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:56, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Back in the 1980's I worked in some radio studios in my city here in Sweden. The studios were spread out in the city and were all connected through analogue copper wires to the large TV and radio tower just outside the city. Those copper wires ran in the same tunnels under the city, in the same bundles as the phone wires. The reason we were forbidden to send dead air was that our copper wires often picked up crosstalk from the phone wires. So if a studio went quiet for more than some seconds, the listeners could turn up the volume on their receivers and hear people talking in phone calls! That is, normal people making a call from their home or office.

We were allowed to totally turn off our wire (stop sending electric signal). Then the equipment at the radio tower automatically started sending a simple pause melody, and after some minutes it turned off the sending altogether (no carrier wave). And that was the normal procedure at night when the programming ended. That is, we said "This is the end of today's programming. Good night and good bye.". Then we turned the key on our exit box to OFF, thus electrically disconnecting us. And then the radio tower's pause melody immediately went on.

Some years later the radio tower was upgraded with a device that detected dead air (to quiet / no sound) and started the pause melody even if a studio were still sending electric power. (Even if we had not turned off our exit box.) And that could sometimes be a bit hilarious (and very annoying) when an inexperienced radio host went quiet for to many seconds thinking about what to say...

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:36, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

I have seen it mentioned some times that also in other countries than Sweden the main reason for not allowing dead air is/was the crosstalk problem (that phone calls might be overheard). I assume that today most studios have a digital connection to the radio tower thus phone calls usually don't leak through any more. I think we should add this crosstalk problem to the article, since without it people don't understand why even short times (minutes) of silence is such a bad thing and so harshly regulated. Although I have no reference for this so I haven't added it to the article myself.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I tagged the article (PLEASE STOP DUMPING)

…added an in-markup emphatic note, and added inline citations. In rewriting the lede (so it matched a published esteemed dictionary definition), I replaced the one inaccurate MW citation with two—the correct MW citation and an Oxford citation. Hence, I reduced the citations by 33% (3 to 2), then doubled them (2 to 4), for an overall increase in the citations of 25%. mdr

This also leaves is with approximately 25% of the verifiability expected under WP:VERIFY — with 4 of about 16 needed sourced identified. If the in-markup note to cease dumping unsourced material is heeded, at a pace of 4 citations added a year (the apparent current rate of improvement), we'll have a verifiable article some time after the next president is sworn in. Perhaps the campaign season will offer us entire atmospheres of dead air. We should be so fortunate. (About the article getting its sources I mean.) Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 06:21, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Unmodulated signals in television

The article notes that for radio transmissions, absence of sound results in an unmodulated carrier (which holds at least for AM and FM; not sure about digital transmissions). For television however, if I understand correctly, when a black image is transmitted there are also still synchronization signals present, so it is not just an unmodulated carrier. I do think that an unmodulated TV carrier results in a black image though, although again I'm not enough in the know to be sure. Should this be discussed in the article? – gpvos (talk) 10:59, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Chris Evans

"On January 21, 2015, BBC Radio 2 host Chris Evans did not arrive for work on time, resulting in Vanessa Feltz filling in for 30 minutes until Evans took the microphone. The Guardian characterized it as a promotional stunt that forced Feltz "to fill the dead air with jokes"". Host #2 was late, forcing Host #1 to stay at the microphone until Host #2 arrived and took over. Since there was no actual period of silence, this isn't a 'notable example' of dead air. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:02, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

References

Regulations section citations are not accurate

"In the U.S., dead air, if prolonged and occurring without permission, is an actionable offense that can result in fines from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)."

The citations provided are for enforcement actions against stations going "dark," that is, shutting down their transmitter, without following proper notification procedures and failing to meet the terms of their licensing.

I am unable to find anything within 47 CFR Part 73 or any FCC documents that indicate dead air, in and of itself, is a violation. It could of course lead to a violation for failure to provide station identification. CWRSTL (talk) 19:09, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, while the existing text was technically correct, it needed some clarification of what "prolonged" means in this context. Edited for clarity. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:29, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Alternate name for "dead air"?

Regarding the definition added here, do multiple WP:RS consider "unmodulated carrier" a significant alternate name for "dead air"? I'm sure there are plenty of other names for it: unintended silence, unintended interruption, sudden signal loss, transmission interruption, radio silence, etc. What makes "unmodulated carrier" the primary alternate definition? - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:44, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

@LuckyLouie: Short answer: Dead air (no sound) is bad. No radio waves at all is less of a problem. And "radio silence" is a third thing. So there is a need for the terminology to keep the three things apart.

Long answer: As the article correctly states at the moment: "Dead air" is when sending no sound but still sending the radio carrier wave. Which for analogue radio means it is technically an "unmodulated carrier". And yeah, that is a form of "unintended silence". While "signal loss" and "transmission interruption" as far as I know means the sender has stopped sending altogether (no carrier wave = no radio waves). Of course, it depends on your viewpoint: If the studio stops transmitting sound (or some other equipment along the way fails so the sound doesn't reach the sender), but the radio tower is still sending radio waves, is that a signal loss? Since I am Swedish I don't know the exact English terminology. Although radio silence is another situation, see that article.

See my comment further up this page about cross talk that can cause phone calls to accidentally end up being audible during dead air. Here in Sweden when I worked in radio studios in the 1980s that was considered the main problem. You could be fined for sending dead air even just for a minute or so. Although they were pretty lenient, you had to screw up several times before they bothered to fine your studio. But if you kept doing it to often and to long your company/organisation could lose your entire sending permission and not be allowed back on the air for more than a year or so.

Totally turning off sending (no radio waves) was fine, since it caused no problems. So if we were understaffed during for instance cold and flu season we simply didn't send some of the shows. (If possible just the late night programming.) That is, we totally turned of the sender. Of course, a station that stopped using its channel for more than some weeks would eventually loose its sending permission and some other organisation would get that frequency or time slot.

Note, I was just a "radio technician" (manned the mixing desk) and occasional radio host, so I wasn't involved in the bureaucracy.

To check that things was working correctly (no dead air, correct sound levels etc.) we had a desktop radio receiver in the studio next to the mixing desk, which we turned on for a few seconds in the beginning of each program once the radio technician was not so busy, for instance while the first song was playing.

We had several studios and several organisations spread out over the city that was sharing the same radio frequency and the same radio tower. We sent our programming at different times. Each studio in the city had an "exit box" with a turnkey. If you forgot to turn the key to "off" after your show was done, then you were sending dead air and no other studio in the city could get on the air, since you were still hooked up to the radio tower. Kind of like forgetting to hang up in the end of a phone call with an old landline phone.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:54, 19 December 2023 (UTC)