[BC] Usefulness of EAS

[Glen Kippel]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Mike McCarthy <towers at mre.com> wrote:
>Then why do you forward anything but perishable mass call to action life
>safety messages?

>AMBER is not one of those messages no matter what anyone says. And that's
>what 99.9% of the non-test and weather related messages are here.

>Don't get me started....

>------------
 
When we were developing our Local Plan, we spent a lot of time discussing whether CAEs ought to be a part of it.  Many of us thought that Amber was not really part of the mission of EAS.  One reason being that to law enforcement, an Amber Alert is an ongoing process which continues until the child is rescued, but for broadcasters it is a brief announcement which interrupts normal programming.  Finally we decided to go with it for PR reasons, so that we wouldn't be perceived as Blue Meanies or something worse.  Sometimes CAEs work.  Sometimes not.  But they are a different animal entirely than TORs, for example.