Silence alarm: what to do

The silence detector alarms when programme audio drops below a set level for a set time.

1. Listen to the off-air monitor straight away. Is it really silent, or just a very quiet piece (a fade, a quiet intro, speech with long pauses)?
2. If it's genuine dead air, follow Dead air or off air: what to check first.
3. If the automatic backup audio has kicked in, the station is still on air. Find and fix the main fault, then switch back to normal programming.
4. Log it: the time, how long it lasted, and the cause. Repeat alarms point to a fault worth a problem record.

If quiet content keeps triggering false alarms, ask engineering to review the alarm's threshold and delay rather than switching it off.