Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Malty <>]

I've had to inquire about such "silence alarms" at my station as well, 
for a Francisco Lopez piece I wanted to air. Even though I made mention 
of the silence beforehand, I was still somewhat uncomfortable with 
knowing that there would be people tuning out or skipping the channel 
due to the perceived lack of programming. Though I always hope that my 
listeners tune in from start to finish, I know that this is rarely the 
case in modern radio.

--DaveX

On 2/21/2011 11:15 AM, Richard Friedman wrote:
> Long silences on radio do present a problem. Some stations have signal
> alarms that go off if a long segment with a very low output signal is
> detected.
>
> Long silences also trigger a reaction from the audience to change stations,
> assuming something has gone wrong.  This, more than any other reason, makes
> for bad radio (if you consider losing your audience as being counter
> productive).
>
> Unfortunately, pieces with especially long silences (lets say 1 minute or
> longer), or with extremely low levels, are not successful for most radio
> programs. E.g. 4'33" could be broadcast if the audience ambience was loud
> enough to keep interest and prevent the studio alarms from going off %-)  )
>
> <R>
>
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 4:48 AM, Glenn 
> Freeman<>
>   wrote:
>
> > > I'm curious about a practical aspect of the broadcast. According to
> > > the listing on Amazon, 108 appears to include stretches of silence
> > > lasting several minutes. Will you be broadcasting that much of what we
> > > used to call "dead air?" That would be quite unusual within a show,
> > > but not impossible.