Bring back the pause! Save hesitation now! It's too early to say that we shouldn't have no comment

Spectator, The, Feb 8, 1997 by Parris, Matthew

Freelancers who, like myself, submit themselves frequently to interview on BBC radio will be familiar with rooms 1R, S, T and U at Broadcasting House in London. These studios, sometimes called 'self-op', are part of a row of soundproofed capsules at the heart of the BBC's headquarters. They are used by guests for interview by broadcasters operating from outside London - local radio, Pebble Mill, Scotland, Belfast or beyond.

The studios flank a big, open-plan office whose aspect and ambience are redolent of the cockpit on Starship Enterprise. It feels important. The door is always locked opened for you only after Entryphone contact with those within. Amid bank upon bank of computers, screens, flashing lights, video display units and switching gear, not unlike the interior of a medium-sized telephone exchange, flit two boffins initiated in these mysteries: ghosts in the machine. These ever-helpful wizards will rescue your link or your feedback when things go wrong.

Their room is really the technical brain of BBC radio. Through their equipment passes the totality of the signal - the output - of the whole great building with its myriad studios. From this driving seat your hand could stay or let pass every airbound pulse which, received by our radios, will reach us as speech or music. It seems incredible that one room can be the point of departure for so much - yet the boffins tell me its bulky hardware is already obsolete: modern equipment will soon shrink the operation further.

I asked what the television screens attached to the ceiling were for. On five sets, suspended from above, dance animated bar-charts. Each is a giant version of the sound-output displays which are a feature of high-tech amplifiers on home audio-systems. Coloured columns leap up and down according to the volume in each sound-frequency band. Watching the five screens, you realise that each is dancing to a different drum, offering visual evidence of a separate sound-source.

The boffins told me that each set is tracking one of the BBC's national stations: Radios One, Two, Three, Four, and Fivelive. 'Its a final check,' he said, 'that we have output on each. We can see at a glance if any screen dies.'

As I watched, the third went dead. All the coloured bars returned to base-line and crouched there, inert. 'Oh no!' I said, 'Radio Three doesn't seem to be broadcasting. Maybe there's a technical fault?'

'Unlikely,' he said. 'We have what's called a "silence alarm" on each channel. If the output goes dead for more than a set lapse of time, the alarm sounds. But the period set to trigger the alarm differs from station to station. Radio Three have long pauses, intentionally; so their silence alarm is set at two minutes. We wouldn't want to panic every time a soloist paused to draw breath.'

'And Radio One?' I asked. 'Twenty seconds.'

As he spoke, Radio Three's bars leapt to life. We had, perhaps, witnessed the interval between movements in a Mahler symphony.

And it strikes me that, inbuilt into our unconscious minds, each of us has a set of silence alarms. They vary according to circumstance. When I was a television interviewer on Weekend World, my presenter's silence alarm was about three seconds. If, that is, when my interviewee had finished answering my most recent question, more than a couple of seconds elapsed before I leaped in with my next, my editorial team (and LWT's viewers) would regard me as having been stymied. Lost for words! Straight between the eyes! Fifteen love to the politician.

The corollary was also true. If, after my question, the politician paused more than momentarily, we would mentally chalk up a point in my favour. Stumped! We had 'knocked him back on his heels'. The late Keith Joseph would often pause for what seemed an eternity, the better to think through his reply. He was therefore regarded as a pathetic television performer because he so often appeared `lost for an answer'.

At Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons these days, the silence alarm is about half a second. The slightest pause before Mr Blair answers Mr Major, or Mr Major Mr Blair, brings jeers from the benches opposite. Hesitation is thought to betray indecision.

But near my house in Derbyshire lives a farmer who, living alone, is unused to conversation in which participants are competing for elbow-room. Sometimes, passing me in his tractor to feed his cattle, he will stop, turn off the motor and, acknowledging me, descend to the ground and stand, silently.

He is offering me the chance to speak. If I do not, his silence may last what seems to me - an unconscionable time. My silence alarm is triggered and as often as not I start to gabble, but there is no need. After a while he will speak - and then be content to wait in silence while I consider my reply. He is not senile; he is not eccentric; he is not slow-witted. He simply operates according to different rules. For him, the quality of a response is not judged by the speed with which it is offered.

Are we losing our tolerance for hesitation? Are we - under the whip, perhaps of mass broadcasting where time is money, seconds count and a hundred little ways of giving a pause meaning fail to survive the broadcast medium -- beginning to associate silence with losing control of the situation?