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"Dead air... Burt! Dead air! Go to a song, commercial, anything!!"
Radio Producer Lucy, Dead Air (2009)

Dead air, the terror of radio show producers the world over. Since radio is an auditory medium, extended periods of silence is one of the worst things you can have as part of your programming, as it will often cause impatient listeners to switch over to competing stations. For this reason, many radio stations would even prefer airing commercials over dead air, as an advertisement at least has a chance of keeping the audience's interest.

Dead air can be caused by the failure of equipment, either through mechanical breakdowns or loss of power, which will send studio technicians scrambling to find a solution as quickly as possible. In other cases it can come about due to a radio equivalent of stage fright, or a Heroic BSoD on the part of the DJ. If the DJ in question has been under pressure from their higher ups to become Lighter and Softer as part of studio policy, a brief period of dead air can herald the moment where the DJ throws caution to the wind, and decides to tell his bosses (and everyone else listening, of course) exactly how he feels about it.

This trope can also be used to show the lengths radio crews will go to avoid dead air. A trusty sidekick may ramble on in place of their suddenly mute comrades, or a dedicated DJ may risk his or her own life to keep broadcasting while disaster strikes the studio. In worst cases it can lead to Nothing Is Scarier.

An instance of Truth in Television, much to the chagrin of radio broadcasters everywhere. Some stations will even pre-record interviews and re-edit them just to avoid it, or have songs on standby to use at a moment's notice if needed. Additionally, many stations around the world (particularly public broadcasters) are programmed to switch to an Emergency Broadcast system, often if there is dead air for any more than 30 seconds, making this something of a Justified Trope. There is also a practice where broadcasters pre-record dialogue and play them in lieu of live conversations to fill time, known as relief tapes. Since dead air can occur for almost any reason in Real Life, only notable instances should be listed in the examples section.

Compare Performance Anxiety. Contrast Silence Is Golden.

Not to be confused with Dead Air (2009), the 2009 U.S. horror film directed by Corbin Bernson. Or Dead Air 2007, the 2007 Hong Kong horror film directed by Xavier Lee Pak Tat. Or Dead Air, a novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks. Or the Shadowrun licensed novel Dead Air, or "Dead Air", one of the levels in the original Left 4 Dead video game.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • This "security camera footage" (actually a viral campaign for a now-defunct FM station in Greece) shows a fire breaking out in the studio during a live radio broadcast. The DJ keeps talking away while futilely trying to stomp out the quickly spreading fire until some assistants arrive with water and fire extinguishers.

    Film 
  • In the punnily titled zombie flick Dead Air (2009), TV news broadcasts of the burgeoning Technically-Living Zombie Apocalypse shock the protagonist DJ and his sidekick into momentary silence, leading to a panicked reaction from their producer, Lucy.
  • The Brave One: When New York DJ Erica Bane resumes her first radio broadcast after her vicious attack (and subsequent vigilante slaying), she falls silent in the middle of reading her opening monologue. Her savvy producer decides to let the scene play out, and a few seconds later Erica starts over with a raw and emotional impromptu dialogue about how terrifying the once familiar city can become after being victimized for the first time.
  • In Almost Famous there's a radio interview scene where the overnight DJ, higher than a very high thing, falls asleep and the band being interviewed realizes the air is dead. Not for long, though.
  • In The King's Speech, there are a few instances of Dead Air, most notably in the first speech shown where he stood there for over two minutes trying to talk into the microphone without being able to get anything out and even after that there was a lot of stuttering and long pauses.
  • The Boat That Rocked: With the government out to shut them down, Radio Rock promises that there will be no Dead Air if they can help it. The first time the official on their tail thinks he's finally finished them, there's only a few seconds of silence before the Count busts in reassuring their audience that they have no intention of shutting down. Later, as the ship is going down, the Count solemnly decides to broadcast until the very last. The former is certainly awesome, while the latter tugs at the heartstrings.
  • Grosse Pointe Blank has Martin interrupt Debi's show, and she is so distracted by his re-appearance that she sits there staring when she's supposed to be talking. Then she remembers herself and puts on the Specials, playing ... one of their songs ...
  • In Gremlins, The Unseen DJ Rockin' Rickie gets attacked by gremlins during a broadcast, but is back in the studio and boasting that he's still on the air soon afterward.
  • A Prairie Home Companion: When one of the show's performers dies in his dressing room, Garrison insists that The Show Must Go On, while one of the characters suggests a moment of silence on the show for him.

    Literature 
  • In Radio 5th Grade by David Korman, a guest on an ELEMENTARY school radio station pauses briefly while reading a story he had written. The announcer, 10 years old, immediately tells him that's all the time they have for his story and moves on to the next segment to prevent a second of dead air.
    • To be fair, the announcer's inner monologue shows that said guest did this every time; he'd come in and rant himself into a frenzy over something, mainly as an overreaction to some perceived danger, before reaching a point where'd he just sit there seething until someone else spoke. The announcer recognized the signs and reacted quickly to prevent the dead air from lasting any longer.
  • After John Galt hacks the radio transmissions and delivers his speech in Atlas Shrugged, the other characters do anything to fill up the dead air afterward, but this is treated more as a Follow the Leader response of the radio producers that came before them.
  • Both literally and metaphorically the subject of Iain Banks' novel Dead Air. The protagonist is a radio presenter who purposefully avoids moments of silence of radio, but his lifestyle is shown to be a sequence of meaningless, empty events, of no consequence to humanity despite his celebrity status. A British response to Bret Easton Ellis, if you will.

     Live Action TV 
  • WKRP in Cincinnati, unsurprisingly as it's about a radio station, had at least a few examples.
    • In a one-off joke, DJ Johnny Fever went out to the receptionist area to chat up Jennifer, who rather than shooting him down just turned on the radio monitor, letting him know the air was dead. He gallops back to the control room.
    • A remote broadcast ran into trouble and went dead. Station manager Andy wanted to run some PSAs since that'd at least be something, but Les decided to go live with one of his irrelevant anti-communist speeches instead.
    • There was a bomb scare at the station so DJs Johnny & Venus were sent to the broadcast tower to do their show. It turned out that the bomb was at the transmitter rather than at the station, so they suddenly went off the air. They had to field calls from confused listeners.
      How can we announce that we are off the air when we are off the air?
    And Les was a little confused about how radio works.
    Les: How'd you like it, Andy?
    Andy: How'd I like what, Les?
    Les: My four o'clock news report. Didn't you listen?
    Andy: Les, the transmitter blew up!
    Les: Of course! That was my lead!
    Johnny: You led off the newscast by telling them that we're off the air?
    • In one episode Arthur and Bailey step into the booth to make an on-air appeal in support of saving the building they work in. Afterward they discuss it, pleased with their work, and everybody seems to forget they're running a radio station until Venus suddenly bursts into the room and grabs the mic.
      Venus: The preceding moment of silence was brought to you a public service for our hearing-impaired listeners.
  • Full House: Used for a brief joke when some of the family is visiting Jesse and Joey at their job at the radio station. At one point, they all realize that nothing is being broadcast, and rather than allow the dead air, they all begin chattering, singing, etc. into the mic at the same time.
  • In the Quantum Leap episode "Good Morning, Peoria", the air goes dead when an intimate conversation between the radio station owner and Sam (who has leapt into a DJ) extends past the end of the record. He picks it up well, though:
    Sam: "For the last couple of minutes you folks have been listening to something by Dull Needle and the Statics. A lot of people find it repetitive, I like to think of it as just plain old daring."
  • Happens on the episode of Dharma & Greg when Dharma creates a pirate radio station. She gets into an argument with Greg for several seconds before realizing she's left dead air and panics, bringing out all the instruments she has on the table.
  • SCTV once had an episode about an up-and-coming boxer who was slated to fight the champ on their station. The entire episode is spent hyping up the underdog, even making a short film about him. At the end, when the fight begins, the underdog is knocked out by a single punch, leaving SCTV with nothing but dead air for the remainder of the program as they desperately looked for something, anything they could fill it with.
  • This was a semi-regular feature on Frasier.
    • Throughout his eleven years as a radio personality, Frasier never managed to master timing and pacing his comments to fit into the allotted time, often ending early only for Roz to desperately motion for him to keep talking. There are also times when he becomes so distracted by something going on in the studio that he forgets to start talking when the "on-air" light comes on.
    • When the cast put on a murder mystery show, Frasier's over-directing caused Niles to rush through to the end, leaving nine minutes remaining. Frasier tries to salvage the situation by conducting a discussion about the show, but is left fumbling by himself because the cast angrily refuses to Step Up to the Microphone.
    • Another episode has, due to a long and tangled series of events, Roz call the show pretending to be a genuine caller. The conversation then becomes increasingly difficult as Roz unexpectedly finds herself revealing her insecurity over a recently failed relationship. Frasier ends up pulling her into a hug to console her... but the heartwarming moment is ruined when their station manager runs into the studio frantically gesturing at the 'On Air' sign.
    • "Dr. Nora" ends with Nora running screaming from the booth after Frasier brings her estranged mother into the studio during a show. As mother and daughter chase each other through the halls Roz yells for Frasier to get in and cover the dead air.
  • Andy Kaufman's first appearance on Saturday Night Live was supposed to invoke the TV equivalent of this: He stared at the camera for uncomfortably long moment, then turned on a recording of the Mighty Mouse theme song, and lip-synched the line "Here I come to save the day!" and nothing else.
    • The biopic Man on the Moon has a scene depicting the filming of this sketch. The SNL producers face-palm over Kaufman's apparent stage fright and the resulting dead air, because Kaufman never told them that the awkward silence (and the awkward doing-nothing-while-waiting-for-his-cue) was the entire joke of the sketch.
  • Discussed in an episode of I'm Alan Partridge when, following a fellow DJ's pun-filled jibes over an embarrassing street cone-related incident the previous evening, Alan gets fed up and tells him to "Fuck off!" while they're still on the air. This ends up leading to a rare Moment Of Awesome for Alan:
    Dave: [Pompously] You and I both know that dead air is a crime, and I think it's terrible that you have to fill it with swearing on your show.
    Alan: Unfortunately Dave, you are bang wrong. It's one minute past seven, it's your show, you are responsible for the output, I am technically a guest and you have failed to control me. Read the small print in your cone-tract.

    Puppet Shows 
  • The phrase is frequently invoked by cast and channel alike when there are no puppets on stage on The Funday Pawpet Show.

    Radio 
  • There's an Alan Partridge sketch from the original radio version of Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge in which Alan holds a two-minute silence for some departed celeb, but keeps talking over it to let people know their radios haven't gone wrong.
  • When Chris Moyles was presenting the BBC Radio One Breakfast Show, at one point he & sidekick "Comedy" Dave decide to play a game of Chicken, by staying silent for as long as possible before the automated emergency broadcast took over. They never got that far, as the show's producer interrupted the silence by pointing out how long it would take to restore normal service.
    • Mark and Lard's final show ended with a silence of some twenty seconds causing the network to switch to the emergency tape.
  • On The Brewing Network Justin is a stickler for broadcast standards, including going nuts at brewcasters who forget to turn their microphone off when they eat or drink and at one point going on a long rant when they criticized the pictures in a calendar which was being discussed because it was made by a new sponsor.
  • WREK-FM in Atlanta GA (Georgia Tech student station) had a show Wednesday nights in the early 80s called "Dead Air." It was a 90-minute show featuring the music of Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead.
  • In 1977, Panama City FL station WPFM broke at the top of the hour for ABC news. After the news there was the sound of silent noise for some four minutes before interstitial music started playing. The station's DJ returned and quipped "If there's one thing I've learned, it's never go to the bathroom during ABC News."
  • The engagingly flaky Sarah Kennedy was renowned for this during her early-morning BBC radio show. It was especially evident on those occasions where she was overcome by her prescription medication.

    Theatre 

  • This is the ending of the play Talk Radio by Eric Bogosian. The protagonist, Barry (a shock jock who has been dealing with progressively stranger callers all night) has a Freak Out about how much the callers scare him and about how he doesn't want to do it anymore. He opens up the lines, we hear callers, he quickly hangs up on them, until a caller is nice to him and invites him to a house for a drink. He just stops talking, and his producer, Stu, prods him to speak. The last lines:
    Stu: Sixty seconds left in the show, Barry.
    Long Pause
    Stu: This is dead air, Barry. Dead air.
    Long Pause
    Barry: I guess... we're stuck with each other. This is Barry Champlain.

     Video Games 
  • In Barrow Hill, the radio DJ you've just phoned gets chased from her beat-up winnebago by the stalking menace. If you hang up the phone, go back inside, and check the radio, all you hear is dead air. This can be fixed if you visit the now-abandoned winnebago and reset the equipment to broadcast a station-identification message.
  • This happens to James Pedeaston, host of The Wild Traveler in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. His audience stops calling in after a few insulting and disturbing comments. When the silence begins, he starts begging people to call him, and only receives two calls, one of whom was a jumper.
  • In Mad TV (1991), failing to fill the schedule completely will result in your station showing nothing but a test pattern. Your boss will chew you out for this come next day.
  • Ensemble Stars!: in 1001 Arabian Nights, Undead temporarily take over the school's PA due to the Broadcasting Club being busy, but this turns out to be very difficult for Adonis, who doesn't talk much even among his friends and struggles to believe that any of Undead's fans are interested in him personally. This results in Kaoru and Kouga scrambling to cover for Adonis whenever he gives curt answers to questions, oblivious to prompts that he talk at length about something, or even fails to come up with anything to say at all, all while they admonish him that silence is death for radio.

     Web Animation 

     Web Original 
  • Random Assault: Averted, as the podcast is edited, so un-needed dead air will be cut. However, it is left in if the hosts acknowledge it.
  • This is a very common problem with most new Lets Players, whether it be a case of being camera shy or not having much to talk about at the moment, leaving an awkward silence in areas where the game itself can't take up the slack. The most commonly regarded turning point for a LPer going from an amateur to a veteran is their ability to let the game itself take center stage without their silence feeling awkward.

     Real Life 
  • Billy Joel invoked a live-performance version of this trope during the 1994 Grammy Award Show. The director of the show cut short Frank Sinatra's acceptance speech for receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, and this pissed Joel off to the point that he stopped his performance of "The River of Dreams" in the middle. He sat there, grinning at the audience, checking his watch and saying, "Valuable advertising time going by", and then he resumed playing the song.
  • When the MTV studio caught fire back in the 80s, the old-school live VJs stayed on the air and kept introducing videos while the blaze was put out.
  • Plenty of phone-in radio show DJs in Hurricane Sandy's path kept broadcasting as long as their stations' power held out, even if their phone lines were down and they had no one to trade quips with except each other.
  • In a very British, stiff upper lip example, during the 9 o'clock radio news on 15th October 1940 the BBC's Broadcasting House took a direct hit from a German bomb. Seven people were killed but Bruce Belfrage the newsreader, who was covered in plaster and soot, carried on the bulletin after a brief pause as if nothing had happened.
  • In the United Kingdom, it's deliberately invoked during respectful "Moment of Silence" ceremonies, such as during Remembrance Sunday. The BBC avoids literal dead air during this period by playing a recording of the chimes of Big Ben, which take almost exactly two minutes to sound the 11th hour. Commercial radio stations are not obliged to follow suit by law, but most do so anyway because observing the proper ceremonies around Armistice Day is very Serious Business in Britain.
  • Again in the U.K., BBC Radio 3, being a non-commercial classical music station, does not fear Dead Air and is quite happy to broadcast long periods of silence, for instance at the beginning and end of a piece.
  • In a November 1976 episode of Panorama, presenter David Dimbleby introduced a filmed segment about Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) which initially rolled without sound... and then stopped rolling altogether. The flustered Dimbleby tried instead to introduce a different segment about the UK's deteriorating standing with the IMF, only to receive a call on the phone on his desk that they didn't have that film ready either, leaving Dimbleby apologising to the viewers while trying (with limited success) to fill several minutes of dead air until the Rhodesia film finally started rolling successfully.
  • The late British DJ John Peel, widely considered The Last DJ on BBC Radio 1, used to have this happen regularly whenever some ancient 78rpm record he'd found in a junk shop or the demo tape some Garage Band had sent in refused to cooperate; his exasperated mutter of "Just talk amongst yourselves for a minute" became a catchphrase.
  • Connoisseurs of British radio hostess Sarah Kennedy knew something interesting was going on when dead air announced she had been pulled from her morning show on BBC radio as too, err, ill to continue. This happened more than once, and by the third time, her producers knew to withdraw her from service during music, so that the stand-in replacement could seamlessly take over without too much of an upheaval or necessary silence.
  • Indeed, the BBC has automatic systems ensuring that if dead air goes on too long, it is usually replaced by automatic music or a recording of birdsong. According to an apocryphal story - this is because if the dead air were to continue for more than five-to-six minutes, it will be assumed something terrible has happened and the silence will be replaced by the National Emergency tapes to be broadcast to the British nation in the event of nuclear war, natural disaster or the Armageddon.
  • The entry for The Boat That Rocked was based on at least two Real Life examples of a Buccaneer Broadcaster continuing to broadcast even as they were preparing to Abandon Ship. Although in this memorable example they were more concerned with frantically calling for rescue than Going Down with the Ship Titanic Band-style. (All hands made it to the lifeboats and were rescued with only minor injuries, by the way.)
  • A highly dramatic example came during Hurricane Harvey, when KHOU, the Houston CBS affiliate, needed to evacuate their flooding studios. After the evacuation a single reporter was left on air and continued to broadcast for around 20 minutes (and helped save the life of a man trapped in a truck during the broadcast) until the signal cut out. Then KHOU's sister station in Dallas provided coverage on social media until KHOU could return to the air using a temporary studio.
  • On September 11, 1987, Dan Rather, then anchoring the CBS Evening News and eager to cover a remote broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, found out that a U.S. Open tennis match was running long and would preempt the news coverage note . Rather angrily walked off the set and told the sports department to fill in the entire half hour if that's what they were going to do. The match didn't run that long, and coverage ended only two minutes into the broadcast (with CBS deciding to ditch the post-match commentary), but Rather was nowhere to be found. Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Rather apologized the next day, but this was a serious breach in protocol, as you just don't broadcast dead airnote , and nobody let him forget it. Even George H. W. Bush didn't let him forget it when Rather interviewed him in the following year's presidential campaign; when Rather tried to grill Bush on his role in the Iran-Contra affair, Bush responded, "Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?", a retort so powerful that his polls got a boost from it. You don't put dead air on a prime-time national TV broadcast.


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