[EAS] The Real Cost of Converters

[Adrienne Abbott]

Randy wrote: Some of us noncoms, have to do this the cheapest way we can.

Tight budgets aren't limited to "noncoms"...the economy has affected every
station and dealing with the impact is a matter of priorities. A converter
box buys you three years, and you are betting that your original EAS
equipment is going to continue performing for that period of time while you
continue to feed it printer paper, printer ribbons and other "consumables".
During that time you or your staff will continue to document EAS activities
by hand as you do now and deal with the problems that come up because the
printer got jammed or ran out of paper during a bad storm, as you do now. 

While some converter boxes provide you with some CAP information other
products do not. So you may or may not have all the details of an activation
for an evacuation ordered for a fire or flood or hazardous material
emergency, or the description of the suspect and child in an AMBER Alert,
details you don't have now without CAP messages. But other stations in your
market are getting the full CAP product which will have that detailed
information and more and they'll be capable of repeating that warning or
AMBER Alert on the air and to callers and they'll be able to quickly and
easily put that information on their website, sending it to their text
message subscribers and adding it to their social media, even putting it on
their RDS, while you or your staff are still trying to figure out what the
activation was and who sent it. Just how long do you think people will
continue to listen to your station? And how's it going to look when a
reporter for your local newspaper asks you why your locally-supported,
non-commercial, non-profit, community radio station wasn't able to provide
information about the flood, fire, hazmat spill or AMBER Alert and you have
to explain that you didn't have the information that other stations did
because it cost too much? Do you really want to be doing your next fund
drive with that story in the background?

Commercial or non-commercial, our licenses all say the same thing. The
bottom line is...are you going to serve your community or not?

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