[EAS] Some thoughts

[Clay Freinwald]

In response to Tom -

 Voice is an obsolete means of communication, compared
> with text messaging and cable TV crawls. 

I understand.  However we must acknowledge that we are 
in a world that interconnects text messaging.   EAS is no 
longer just a Broadcaster thing.    We have - Highway Signs, 
and all means of hand-held gizmo's that are now involved 
with the distribution of emergency messages. 

I agree that  Radio is an audio medium and TV is 50% an 
audio or voice distribution system.  

The big imperative here is to have the Voice Message be
the SAME as the Text Message.   This is exactly what we 
are doing here in WaState.   The text message is 'read' by 
the EAS box at the Radio or TV station...at the TV station, 
that SAME text message provides the crawl.  For the first
time both the Crawl and the voice message are providing 
the same information.  Something not possible with the old
legacy EAS.

On the input side - Emergency managers are inputting their 
Emergency Messages into a computer - Using Text.   
We tried and tried to get them to use voice messages for 
close to 15 years and it proved to be extremely frustrating
for a number of reasons - Thankfully we are moving away
from that era.

Time to get on the train Tom !

Clay Freinwald