After listening to a program today on WAAV 980 AM out of Wilmington, NC, that ended at 7 pm, the CNN radio news came on for its 120 second spot, then 60 seconds of ads, then, as Michael Savage was supposed to start, there was nothing but dead air (with audible static). Said dead air continued until 7:30 when it beeped and the CNN news came on again for its scheduled 60 seconds of news, then a minute of ads, then more dead air, still occurring as I write this. Dead air has been a hallmark of this station, but until now, only for 5-8 minutes in the wee hours, or at 5:00 p.m (!).
GQ: Is this a violation of FCC rules? If so, how serious is it? What can an aggrieved listener do about it (solving the problem) besides changing stations?
Frankly, I do find the dead air preferable to M. Savage, but there are other times when I’d like to hear the 2 minutes of news on the hour and sometimes half hour.
Have you contacted the station? As weird as it sounds, perhaps they don’t know. It would not be the first time a radio station had excessive dead air, “everyone” was complaining but no one actually contacted the station about it.
GQ answer: No, radio stations aren’t supposed to broadcast dead air, but assuming they aren’t doing it to jam someone else’s signal, the worst the FCC will probably do is to send them a reprimand to get their act together. You achieve roughly the same result (and a lot faster) by calling the station and complaining.
It sounds like the station simply isn’t picking up the satellite transmission of Michael Savage. So, at 7:00 p.m., the computer switched the live feed to CNN. Then, three minutes later, switched to what was supposed to be Savage. But the satellite signal was out, or the dish was misaimed, or Savage had switched to a different satellite channel and someone forgot to tell the computer, or some other basically trivial problem popped up. Nothing happens for 28 minutes, then the computer switches back to CNN, etc. etc.
The station is not being monitored. It is not a violation of FCC rules. It is a violation of proper programming. If they are not going to have a live person there to handle the program presentation they at least need a silence beeper to alert whoever is there that the station doesn’t have sound.
You hear the beeping. You run in to see why the thing is silent.
Yes, assuming there is someone on the premises to do the running.
As I understand it, a radio station is only required to have one person keeping it on the air…an engineer with a First Class FCC license to mind the transmitter. If the tower/main transmitter is not located on the same physical grounds as the station itself (often the case), that means the building from which the broadcasting takes place may be empty for long periods of time.
As you say, there should be some kind of alarm that notifies someone when there is a significant stretch of dead air. You would think it would beep out at the transmitter and alert the engineer, but perhaps the station is operating in violation of the above policy.
Either that, or the engineer is seriously asleep on the job.