[EAS] Single point entry of CAP messages

[Alex Hartman]

Alan,

I'm in market 16 for TV (Minneapolis). Unfortunately around here, they
do care more about the ratings. When there was a batch of bad weather
last week generating 2 tornadoes in the metro area, almost all TV
broke prime-time programming for real-time weather information. Again,
it's MN, it's what we do... But the backlash the stations got on
facebook and twitter from people was astounding! "Why are you covering
the storms during the season finale of 'Celebrity Apprentice!?'" Stuff
like that. It's amazing how much people care more about "reality" TV
than if their house is going to Oz or not.

But if it's not as threatening, say just some thunderstorms, they put
up a lower third crawl with the weather information. And again, same
goes for AMBER alerts. They'd rather not lose the ratings over a
missing kid, and only a handful of stations do that, some just wait
for the next scheduled newscast. Sad really. Whereas in the radio
world, as i said, has the natural breaks so things like that can be
talked about.

So, yes, TV has it's place as the civic duty, as all broadcasters do.
It just seems to have a different idea of how it should be handled
versus radio or other means of public communication. What is deemed
important enough to break for live coverage, or just to put the scroll
up and give it 10 seconds in the regular newscast.

And yes, i wholeheartedly agree. I hope there are never enough AMBER
alerts to get good at dealing with them.

--
Alex Hartman