Five years ago this month, I wrote a blog post about one of my favorite topics, “dead air.” It turns out it’s also the five-year anniversary of the Parkland, Florida school shooting.
I’m not going to go “there.” That’s not what this blog is about, as you well know. Just a couple weeks ago, it was yet another shooting at a school – this time around, my alma mater, Michigan State.
This post is about the power of the pause, well-programmed silence – truly a lost art on today’s airwaves where we strive to keep it moving – at all costs.
I hope you find the post as insightful as you did back then. -FJ
March 2018
Since most of us first entered the radio business, Rule #1 was “No Dead Air.”
We were taught that silence was anything but golden. And if there was some sort of equipment fail or mental error, the urgent goal was to get something – ANYTHING! – on the air. Dead air was death.
In fact, we’ve blogged before about the dreaded “Dead Air Dream” that most everyone in radio has in one form or another if you’ve ever worked on the air. Or perhaps we should call it a nightmare because its an unsettling experience until you wake up only to realize that jocking at that Top 40 station in Louisville back in 1981 is still somehow embedded in your brain cells.
So, at last weekend’s March For Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., I was thinking about dead air – but in a very different context. If you saw the speeches from the Marjory Stoneham Douglas kids, you were reminded of the power of silence – the brilliance of the pause. It was turned into an art form by teen Emma Gonzalez, who has emerged as one of the most eloquent, self-aware students to come out of this Parkland tragedy.
In case you didn’t see it, watch how she says more with her silence than a speech filled with rants, invectives, and raves:
On the radio, a pause – even a momentary one – can spell instant trouble – especially in PPM markets. We know that that long silences are deadly – the meter just ceases to measure.
A well-placed, well-timed pregnant pause can speak volumes on any number of topics. Oddly enough (among other things), I thought about Steve Dahl when I watched Emma Gonzalez use her silence so well. In his heyday, Dahl never went silent for long periods of time. But he used pregnant pauses deftly to get you to think, to take in what he was saying, to respond in your mind to a point he was making. He was a great practitioner of those momentary pauses. His show always had a unique rhythm and cadence.
When PPM came to Chicago, Dahl was one of the casualties. Some thought it had to do with the way in which meters can punish purveyors of spoken word radio. And in fact, Dahl wrote an opinion piece for the Chicago Tribune back in 2009, lamenting the new ratings methodology.
Perhaps it wasn’t Dahl’s content that cost him his influential place on Chicago FM radio. Maybe it was more of a style thing. Steve’s manner of speaking was never rushed. And his frequent and clever use of silence became a signature. As a friend of mine in the business frequently notes, “The meters don’t like that.”
It should be noted that Steve departed from the FM airwaves long before Voltair emerged as a tool to fill in the “encoding blanks.” Later, Nielsen upgraded its technology with its CBET enabled encoders. Dahl missed all that, leaving terrestrial radio to launch a podcasting network.
Would those enhancements have produced an outcome closer to his diary performance? We may never know. But he’s now back on the air on WLS-AM in afternoons.
Certainly, pauses are often standard fare in public radio – and their ratings, particularly of late, have not suffered. One of the best purveyors of the pause was recently retired “All Things Considered” maestro, Robert Siegel. He had the ability to turn the phrase, but also use moments of silence as a tool to keep your attention riveted on the important topics and issues of the day on the drive home.
When you see a great standup comic or a brilliant orator in person, those calculated moments of silence provide time for the audience to react. Great personality radio often amounts to compelling storytelling. And stories that draw you in need to be delivered in ways that give you pause – that makes you think, respond, and emote.
Maybe that’s also why podcasts often sound more conversational and even more whimsical than over the air radio. Storytelling requires “rests” and reaction time from the audience – whether they’re with you in an auditorium or driving along listening during their commutes.
A little dead air isn’t always a bad thing – just don’t let it haunt your dreams.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
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Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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And I doubt that A.I. jocks will ever be able to learn when to make those pauses, to slow down their speech when talking about something sad or laughil when something is funny.
Pauses are part of what make our voices ‘human’…
You are spot-on, Tito, something I didn’t consider when I wrote the new intro to today’s #TBT post. Thanks for making that important point.
And sometimes that pause can be used to make a commercial more of an impact, as I learned back in 1979 when I was taking my first of many turns in the PD chair. It was a small station in my hometown market, and I did everything beyond programming one would expect … a daily airshift (live assist morning drive then voicetracked until 1:00pm), weekly automation maintenance (we used to clean the tape playback systems, degauss the heads, and lubricate the moving parts in the multi-cart playback systems), and that all-important job of production. In fact, other than outside tape dubs I did about 75% of the station’s spot creation.
Anyway, that was an era where manufacturer co-ops often clinched a local spot buy in smaller markets, and one day our owner/GM/CE/salesman came to me with a co-op order from a local car stereo shop and just told me “do what you can with this … the manufacturer insists on the copy being read verbatim”.
I still remember the brand. Craig. And here is what I did:
(uptempo music) “The new Craig car stereos are engineered around one important fact!”
(one second pause, with music ending abruptly on my last syllable)
“Cars … move.”
(slower tempo music) “And that’s why the new Craig car stereos …” etc., etc.
Mr. W — that’s what he preferred to be called, even though his name was the easily pronounceable “Wallace” — loved the spot. He couldn’t wait to take a cassette dub to the advertiser to hear it. Said advertiser increased the buy.
The Power of Dead Air, indeed.
And it has stayed with you all these years. ‘Nuff said.
Great observation about Steve Dahl.
I remember the broadcast when Skylab came crashing to earth. It was genius.
I think the other radio nightmare is watching “Play Misty For Me” before your overnight shift.
Thanks, Jerry. That movie freaked me out, too.
Paul Harvey…..Good day.
Page 2!
The great Dick Orkin was a great practitioner of the moment or two of silence in a commercial. To let something sink in a bit, whether funny or poignant. We miss you, Dick.
Good one, Thom.
Fred, one of the best personalities who used the “pregnant pause” to great effect that would be Larry Lujack on WLS in Chicago!
No doubt. Lar knew just how to work it.