Seven Second Delay

"Seven Second Delay" is a radio show broadcast on radio station WFMU. It has been hosted by Ken Freedman and Andy Breckman since the early 1990s. Will Baum and David Newgarden were Andy's cohosts of the show previous to Ken but David only did a handful of shows and Will did maybe a dozen at the most. Andy started as host filling in for Chris T's Aerial View (which would later be on Fridays. The show is described as "on air radio stunts." Ken & Andy come up with a typically fairly flimsy concept, normally involving some combination of listeners phoning in and/or prank phone calls, which are comical mostly due to their complete failure.

Many shows of the program have a "fatal flaw," which invalidates the whole concept. For example, during one show it was unclear whether the show was live or prerecorded. Ken persuaded listeners the show was prerecorded and Andy persuaded the listeners the show was live. The fatal flaw was Ken kept quoting a live poll on the website to see whether listeners thought the show was live or not, thus proving it was live and leaving little material for the rest of the show.

Many shows feature competitions between Ken and Andy, as they attempt to keep listeners on hold for the longest time, or invite them to judge their (the hosts') iPod playlists, or judge their merits as parents.

In February 2007, the show received wide attention for a program in which an entry to the "Metropolitan Diary" section of the "New York Times" was faked. The faked entry was submitted to the "Times" by the program's blogmaster, who then lied to the editor who called to fact-check. After the false story ran in the "Times," many blogs mocked the paper for it [ [http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmMyMzJkOTQ1N2EyNzEzYTIzMDc2NTBkNjZiZGIwMmY= National Review Online] ] [ [http://gawker.com/news/wfmu/metropolitan-diary-editor-steamed-at-wfmu-236995.php Gawker] ] , and the "Times" editor called the blogmaster to berate her and threaten her future academic and career prospects. Freedman and Breckman called the editor on the air the next week to apologize (and to correct the error by causing an incident in real life that mirrored the one they had earlier fabricated). Subsequently, the story circulated that the "Times" might, as a result of this incident, cancel the "Metropolitan Diary" altogether. [ [http://gawker.com/news/metropolitan-diary/prank-might-kill-metropolitan-diary-237136.php Gawker again] ]

External links

* [http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/SD Seven Second Delay Homepage & Archives]
* [http://sevenseconddelay.blogspot.com/ Official Seven Second Delay Blog]
* [http://www.maximumfun.org/blog/2008/02/podcast-seven-second-delay-with-ken.html Audio interview with Freedman and Breckman] on public radio program The Sound of Young America

References