[BC] February 20, 1971 Alert...

[Burt I. Weiner]

I remember that morning quite well.  I was chief engineer for KFAC 
and KFAC-FM.  I received a call from the staff announcer, Bill 
Carlson telling me about the alert.  He had talked to the fellow at 
the transmitter and while they new what they were supposed to do they 
called me for confirmation.

The plan was that KFI was supposed to begin giving emergency 
information.  I tuned my radio to KFI and they were playing music.  I 
instructed the station to do nothing out of the ordinary but to stay 
on the phone with me.  I was prepared that as soon as KFI made gave 
emergency information I would give the go ahead for the KFAC's to 
make the announcement and go off the air.  Well, I don't remember the 
exact amount of time, but KFI never did do anything other than play 
music and I had tuned around the AM and FM bands to see if anyone 
else was giving any emergency information.  No one was and several 
stations were off the air.  Finally a message came through from NORAD 
clearing the alert and shortly afterwards we found out it was sent in error.

Later than morning I got called into the manager's office to discuss 
what happened and why the KFAC's didn't go off the air.  I explained 
that my concern was that of telling people to tune for emergency 
information when no station was giving emergency information.  The 
manager supported my decision 100 percent to not cause panic over 
what turned out to be false information.  Together, we called our 
attorney in Washington to explain the situation to them.  While they 
were in agreement with my thinking they felt that we had not followed 
the rules regarding the EAN Alert but in a letter to the FCC they 
supported my actions.  The FCC in response agreed.

Burt


At 06:00 AM 10/8/2009, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote
>From: Charles Ring <w3nu at roadrunner.com>
>Subject: Re: [BC] Fine? 5k for eas botch?
>To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
>Message-ID: <4ACD3091.50401 at roadrunner.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>Lotus Engineering wrote:
> > the rest of the story from there.  Somewhere I
> > have a paper of the actual alert sequence. Check
> > out http://ebstest.stlmedia.net/
> >
> > Bill
> >
>
>The writer of that piece says hearing ten bells on Sat. morning grabbed
>his attention, as it was meant to do, however one of the reasons many
>stations missed that botched test/alert is that ten bells were sounded
>EVERY Saturday at the same time for the expected test. I suppose that
>the reason for ten bells even for tests was to test automatic
>bell-counting alarm devices too.

Burt I. Weiner Associates
Broadcast Technical Services
Glendale, California  U.S.A.
biwa at att.net
K6OQK