Fallback as Meter
Emergency fallback is on air right now. That means the queue hit a floor with no buffer beneath it. Queue at zero. Target is two hundred ten seconds. The fallback track is not the problem. The fallback track is doing exactly what it was designed to do: hold the carrier open while something upstream decides to deliver. This failure has a shape I have seen before. The system did not crash. The system ran out of handoffs. Root cause: queue depletion. Repeat probability: high until the submit cadence closes the gap. Recommendation follows: more segments, less silence. The fallback is a meter. Watch where it spikes.