[EAS] Fwd: [ChicagolandSkywarn] WEA Enabled Phones to Receive Emergency Messages

[Alan Kline]

Clay, that's a fair question. I'd think that most listeners who are 
savvy enough to know about and use an FM receiver in their phone would 
be likely to know which station is most likely to provide useful info. 
I'll admit, that's a big assumption. But with more news/talk formats 
migrating to FM (Chicago and San Francisco are two that come to mind) it 
may not be as big an assumption as it would have been a few years ago.

I also recall that several Joplin stations, not normally known as news 
outlets, did yeoman's work for days after their tornado getting 
information out to the public. That's where the FM RX would be of 
greatest value.

I agree that it would be nice to have the NWS capability in phones. 
However, the specs I've seen for the Broadcom wifi/Bluetooth/FM chip 
that is so common in smartphones indicates that the FM capability stops 
at 108mHz. Putting the NWS in there would require new chips, and that's 
probably a non-starter at this point.

ak

On 5/16/2012 1:28 PM, Clay Freinwald wrote:
> OK...So I have a cell phone with an FM Radio in it.....In this market we
> have about 30 FM signals...How am I going to know which station will have
> emergency information for my location?
> By the time I tuned through the band the one or two stations that -might -
> break programming to air it was have already done so.
>
> I can understand the advantage of having FM in cell phones, however, there
> is a lot more work to  be done to make this a viable means of providing
> citizens with emergency information.
> Perhaps it would have been smarter to have them able to receive NWR.   At
> least they won't be ignoring life-saving messages so they can play the hits.