[EAS] Tests, tones and technology...

[Adrienne Abbott]

Mike--Just what could you or any broadcaster have done? Once that EAN goes
out, you have no control over your airwaves. That's the way the system is
designed and that's the way it worked. 

We can argue all night long about whether broadcasters, if given the
opportunity to do this ourselves could have done a better job, but that's
not the system we've been given or mandated. Within the constraints of what
we have, the system worked. Now what remains is to find out whether FEMA and
the FCC have the cajones to do what's needed to improve it.
Adrienne

"Radio burps, it cries, it needs to be fed all the time, it requires
constant attention, but we love it." Jim Aaron WGLN 

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Mike McCarthy

All due respect, it was a mess. There are so many problems plaguing the
system that one can throw a dart blind folded and hit something which
needs attention. And broadcasters aren't coming out of this bleach clean
either.  I'm embarrassed to have conveyed the message we did in the manner
it was done. "Broadcast Quality" in this context it was not by any sense
or stretch of the imagination.

We have 9 stations in two states and three operational areas.  Only one
operating area (Rockford, IL.) got the whole voice message out to stations
in that region of the state. And that's a question I need to ask their
technical guy. Who was their source?

Chicago's relayed message was truncated-"muted" about 5 seconds in and ran
silence (with low level cross talk of multiple messages) until the EOM was
sent.  I don't know where the failure occured, but the whole message got
out to some stations. Never the less, if the failure here has occured
within the broadcast network, that's a broadcast problem and a state plan
problem. Not FEMA's, at least directly.

I have recordings of 8 stations across those three areas. Though I haven't
listened to the logger of our Indiana station, that's a tomorrow function,
that station is WAY at the end of a ***long*** chain.  So long that we
have no real choice but to use the INBA's stream off of the state relay
station to get a clean feed for anything coming out of Indy.

If the OTA daisy chain concept doesn't get scrapped as a result of this
blunder of a test, I'm not sure we'll ever see a viable nationwide single
point delivery system to the media short of a public/private partnership
with NPR, the various networks across multiple satellites and distribution
nodes, and station owners standing up and commenting when the FCC puts out
their proposals via NPRM's.

MM