[BC] Usefulness of EAS

[Robert Meuser]

But that is not how the system worked. There were what were called key 
stations that did indeed have direct lines just as the PEP stations they 
later became still do. Other stations were alerted over the air and by 
telephone. This did not just apply to stations on 640 and 1240. Many 
stations usually on other frequencies switched to one of those 
frequencies and were to operate in round robin fashion so no one station 
was on for an extended period, thus defeating radio direction finders.

The purpose was the distribution of information; the same as with EBS 
and later EAS. I suspect if the system had ever been activated it would 
have been a bigger disaster than either of it's successors. At the time, 
it was probably the best practical public alerting solution available.

I worked at a participating station. It had a Rust remote control set up 
for two digit dialing, the first digit selected AM, FM or other 
functions while the second selected a function in the normal manner. A 
number of times the sign on person would confuse which mode they were in 
(first digit) and switch the AM from 630 to 640 instead of activating 
the FM. In the era of analog tuned radios and the fact that 640 was an 
immediate adjacent channel and 640 was virtually empty in those days it 
often stayed on 640 until the CE showed up around 9 AM. Conelrad 
eventually got it's own prefix dial position on the Rust. The other 
station in town on 1290 used a 1KW Raytheon backup TX to do the 1240 
switch rather than modify the 5 KW Collins main. Another nearby station 
was actually on 1240 full time but they would have to be just part of 
the round robin sequence if there had ever been an activation.

Technology gave us EBS, not broadcast technology but ICBM technology. At 
the time there was not really better technology to replace the basic 
Conelrad infrastructure other than making slight improvements in the 
over the air alerting.
EAS is a different situation in that so much more technology was 
available to make the system more effective that those who signed off on 
the system seeming chose to ignore. Practical real world alternative 
have been discussed ad nauseum so I will not waste the bandwidth 
rehashing it all.

On 6/14/12 3:29 PM, RichardBJohnson at comcast.net wrote:
> CONELRAD was quite different. All stations except those on two frequencies would be off the air. The stations on 640 and 1240 had direct lines from the Pentagon and the Chief Engineer (they had those in those days) was to monitor those lines in the case of an emergency. If the Command Center said, turn off the transmitter, you turned off the transmitter. The idea was to shut down everything except a select few since there were only a handful of stations on 640 and 1240. This was to prevent the Russians from homing in on US radio stations. The 640 and 1240 stations would broadcast emergency information from their networks, including wire-line networks. There was no attempt to control information, only to supplement it.
>