Rush Limbaugh Closes First Hour With Dead Air

[Pab Sungenis]

16. More likely than not this was an automation failure at WABC.

I used to be a local board-operator for the Limbaugh show on WOND (which dropped the show more than a month ago I'm proud to say) and I know how the show is structured.

An hour of Limbaugh's show ends at :58:50. A station's "Legal ID" (the top of hour identification required by the FCC, including call sign and city of license) plays at :59:50. The one minute gap is there for local stations to play an ad or other local material. (Some stations will do 60 seconds of local headlines and weather leading into the network news at the top of the hour, for example.)

During most local breaks, the network will feed either PSA's or other filler material during that time in case a station forgets to go to their local spots or (as is starting to happen with Limbaugh now) has nothing it can air at that time. This is not the case at :58:50, however. At :58:50 the network goes silent for one minute so if a station doesn't cut away for local material, then there is silence.

The silence is there because from the top of the hour until about :05:00 the network runs "closed circuit" feeds. If a station has paid (!!) to have Limbaugh or his announcer do liners with the station's name or call-sign they'll often be fed in this spot. They also feed produced promotional spots that stations can tag with the time the show airs locally and their name or call letters. If there's any time left they'll fill with "comedy" bits and songs that have featured in the show or with filler music. Then there's another minute of silence until :06:00 when the theme music comes up, with Rush speaking at :06:20.

The minute of silence on each side is to make sure that none of the closed circuit material airs on any station by mistake, and so a station recording the feed for the closed circuit material can easily find the material by fast forwarding a tape or looking for the huge dead spots in the waveform.

As much as I would love to attribute this to a lack of sponsors that's probably not the case. Someone at WABC responsible for programming the automation computer probably forgot to put a spot in that place, or the sound file that should have played there was damaged. Then at :58:50 the trigger tone from ABC Network News for the Legal ID reset the system and put everything back to normal.