[BC] KWVE redux

[Alan Peterson]

I'm with all of you on this one. 

Cowboy and Alan are correct: a TEST is not the same as a mandatory junior high school assembly - Be there or be punished. It should be a diagnostic method intended to assure the functionality of a device, system or procedure, and to reveal the flaws that require correction. Hence the "crash test" for cars, stationary engine tests for rockets (boom!), and the apocryphal "frozen chicken" test for aircraft windshields. This test failed for being unusually complex in its execution.

If memory serves, wasn't there a "test" of the old EBS system some years ago in New York State where a chain alert started in Manhattan to conclude in Buffalo? And DIDN'T MAKE IT?  That is what *real* tests reveal. If a station is going to be fined for EAS violation, let it be for some wiseass DJ that thought it'd be cool to have his mediocre show heard on every frequency in town and deliberately activated the system to do so. 

KWVE took the right steps following the incident (retraining, rewriting procedures etc) and is right in appealing this. If they lose, I'm sending them a donation to help pay the fine.

-AP