Bleeping on the live show

[Gleepglop]

I've only ever heard The Best Show via iTunes downloads or streams from the WFMU archives. It can be confusing when callers do bleep-worthy things, because in the podcast/archive form, the offending portion of the show is just excised. It's lost time. I only ever know what happened if Tom complains after a bad caller, like "You rat, using language like that," etc.

But it's led me to wonder what happens during the live show. Do you just hear silence during those portions?

I ask because I'm trying to figure out what happens when the podcast versions are produced- is someone actually manually trimming out bleeped portions of the show? There is software that can automatically weed out silence, but the show is full of pauses as a matter of course, and Wurster calls often have intentional bleeps/silence which do end up in the podcasts. I don't know how bleeping works in radio stations; is it possible the offending material actually gets recorded (even if not broadcast over the air) and therefore needs to be trimmed before the podcast is posted?

Just an idle curiosity. And some envy for folks who get to listen live.

[The Brighamist]

This is how I understand it:

Live listeners hear the same thing you hear on the podcast, except that they also hear the music. Because of FTC rules regarding obscenity, radio shows are broadcast with a delay of several seconds (the title of WFMU show Seven Second Delay with Andy and Ken is a reference to that). When someone swears, Tom presses the "DUMP button" on his control panel which will dump the delayed time from the show, making it live, but also skipping over the profanity. The button also hangs up on the current caller. Since the show is now live, the system will add small unnoticeable amounts of silence into the broadcast until the delay has caught up again.

See the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_delay wiki.

[Purple Aki]

I had a question as well, but it's way more basic: Why can't you swear on the radio? It's from 21:00 to 00:00, isn't it? That's after the watershed, I imagine.

[Gleepglop]

Oh, neat. I was familiar with the "seven second delay" concept but had no idea there was a built-in reset mechanism.

[Gleepglop]

I had a question as well, but it's way more basic: Why can't you swear on the radio? It's from 21:00 to 00:00, isn't it? That's after the watershed, I imagine.

While it wouldn't technically be an FCC violation, there are people in the listening audience just WAITING for stations to mess up so they can file complaints, either with the station or with the FCC.

Stations stay clean during Safe Harbor so as not to scare away advertisers or sponsors, as well as to stay off the radar of local government, who may have their own policies and standards. Plus the FCC is capricious and powerful. Even if you're not violating the letter of the law, if they get enough complaints they might reconsider renewing your broadcasting license if you're causing them too much paperwork.

Oh... then there's also the distinction between "indecent" and "obscene." Obscenity is never allowed (Safe Harbor only protects "indecent" content), and no broadcaster wants to leave the decision of what qualifies as obscene up to regulators. Better to not leave anything to chance.

[Steve of Bloomington]

Those fines are pretty horrendous, so really you want to cut your risk of getting one down to zero even if it is low but non-zero due to Safe Harbor. The more potential listeners, the more risk.

[narwhale]

You can also hear the bed music getting stretched out sometimes after the 'dump'.