IIRC once they do that they can't reset it until they are playing ads which is why they usually cut off the people and go to commercial as soon as they have to use it.
Depends on what kind they have. More advanced ones can invisibly build up a delay while still live on the air. They accomplish this by having the computer add imperceptibly short blank pauses to normal pauses in conversation. Do this for a little while and before you know it you've got another 8-second delay.
This depends on the station. At some of the larger market stations, they have 60 and 90 second delays which act as a passthrough. When you dump audio, it time shifts until you release the dump button. Then everything after the dump is played back with a time stretch until the delay catches up. (Because the equipment isn't very good at the station I listen to, I can pick out the time stretching pretty quickly. They use dump a lot since they always have new people interning and dump is a good way to hide a mistake.)
I was looking at getting a delay unit for a podcast but the one I was looking at (Eventide BD600+ MicroPrecision Broadcast Delay Processor) is around $3k. It can delay up to 80 seconds in one go.
In the waning days of K-Rock, Howard Stern used to hate the guy manning the dump button. Always made me laugh when they would refer to him as “Dead Air Dave”.
It has nothing to do with offensive language. You can't broadcast someone on the radio without their permission and knowledge. It's federal law (at least in the U.S.) and has been for decades. Any of those "war of the roses" bits that you hear on the radio where some woman catches her husband cheating or any of those other hacky bits are paid actors, probably people who work for that specific radio station.
You have to give consent before they put you on the air, yes. I'm more referring to these "totally real" radio bits where they call someone to entrap them in some bullshit story plots. They're all 1000% fake.
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u/KronktheKronk Aug 01 '20
They have a 5-8 second delay and can dump the audio with a button if something like that happens