[BC] Fallout from Unattended Operation

[patrick roberts]

As far as access for emergency personel to get their info out over 
the air, that's why we paid 3,000 dollars for a EAS box.  We the 
broadcaster did our part.  Now it's time for the states to step up 
and MAN their EOCs so the information can be sent out.  Paying a warm 
body 24/7 doesn't equal getting a good area-wide message 
out.  Manning an EOC equipped with a known telephone number that's 
available to the right people and manned by people trained on the 
equipment and proceedures does.   Add a nice statewide distribution 
backbone that doesn't require putting it on broadcast stations just 
to send it other parts of the state and you have a real system that 
can send out information to the part of the state that needs it and 
leave the rest of us alone to keep playing the hits.

Instead we'll get some new 3,000 dollar box to buy and maintain and 
we might have to have to pay some high school kid to eat pizza and 
dump coke in the console at night if we want to stay on the air at 
night.  My guess is some of the very stations that are currently 
really serving the public in smaller markets will just hit the switch 
at 10pm and call it quits until the morning show starts the next 
day.  That way when the big one comes the local community won't even 
have automated warnings to listen to.  Leave it to politicans and the 
Federal Check Cashers to come up with such a great plan.

PR

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Glen Kippel 
<<mailto:glen.kippel at gmail.com>glen.kippel at gmail.com> wrote:

Exactly.  Would the FCC not only require stations to have somebody on duty,
but also require that they know what to do in case of an emergency?  And
besides -- just how many stations broadcasting emergency information does
any given market need, anyway?