Radio Songs #42: Seven Seconds

I mentioned in my last radio post how on our Saturday morning quiz The Phantom Phonebox, occasionally we'd call a number only to have a bunch of teenagers scream abuse down the line at us. Trying to swear on live radio is an excellent past-time for the chronically short-of-brain cells, but it's one that we had to contend with far more frequently on the phone-in show.

 (Rigid Digit recently pointed out a couple of fine examples from live TV that live on in infamy.)

You'd be amazed at the lengths people went to in order to get their carefully chosen swearwords heard by thousands. The smart (and I use that word advisedly) ones knew not to scream their abuse the moment they got on air. Far better to lull the presenter into a false sense of security by talking about a subject of the day seriously for a few minutes before screaming, "YOU'RE A TEAPOT!" (replace teapot with your own selection of choice cusswords) in the hope that the jock would be at the back of the studio getting out some ads or doing some other job that stopped them pulling the fader down straight away.

To deal with this - as anyone who's ever listened to a radio phone-in will no doubt know - there is a wonderful device called the 7 second delay. At some point just before the phone-in began, the DJ pressed a button on the desk that slowed down the output by 7 seconds. I'm sure there is a far more hi-tec way of doing this nowadays, but back then this involved inserting tiny milliseconds of dead air in between what was being broadcast until what you heard over the airwaves was no longer live, it was happening seven seconds behind what was happening in the studio. (Eagle-eared listeners could probably tell when the delay was "charging up" as the output sounded a bit wibbly - the jock turned into a Dalek for a couple of minutes - until full delay was achieved.)

Stopping people from shouting "teapot"on live radio was not the main reason to use delay though. It really came into its own - and repaid the radio station's sizeable investment many times over - when it was used to stop people committing slander (not libel - that has to be written down, you utter teapots... god, the amount of times I had to explain that to people over the years) by naming a personal nemesis on air and then accusing them of putting a teapot up their teapot every Tuesday night, with the curtains open. If any such accusations were made... a quick press of the delay button and the last seven seconds of speech never made it to the listener's ears.

The most important reason for using the seven second delay however involved not slander but subjudice - people trying to talk about ongoing court cases. When a trial is taking place, the law forbids public discussion of it. The facts can be reported as news, but commentary, opinion and speculation are illegal. As "producer", one of my jobs was to always ask people if the issues they wanted to discuss involved ongoing court cases - if they did, they wouldn't be allowed on air. However, just as the "teapot" shouters worked out that they'd stand more chance of getting their obscenities broadcast if they lied and faked their way onto the programme, so did those people who wanted to break the law (and involve us, as accessories, in their lawbreaking for broadcasting their public discussion).

Oh, and sometimes the 7 second delay wouldn't work. That would be fun.

42. Youssou N'Dour featuring Neneh Cherry - 7 Seconds

I was never a big Neneh Cherry fan, but I always liked her duet with Senegal's future Minister of Tourism, Youssou N'Dour. And really, what else was I going to play today... apart from maybe something by Delays?