[EAS] FM Enabled Phones to Receive Emergency Messages

[Dan Peek]

Unless I missed someone else posting it, it seems that since this is geo located, that the message should include which station or a link that the phone can follow for its tuner like tapping on a phone number to tune to that station automatically. I travel a lot and if I got a message, I would likely be clueless which station to tune to unless someone told me. 

I think Adrienne hit on the biggest problem saying that we would all have to find a set of corded earphones to act as the antenna.

Our stations are religious and more network repeaters than local content and the local content is not usually live, so in an emergency, our stations would be very poor choices to listen to. 

Dan

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 12:33 AM, Clay Freinwald <k7cr at blarg.net> wrote:
>Some responses -

>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.

>CF- How is Joe Average going to know where to tune that cellphone/radio to
>get the info?  Especially if he is not a regular FM Listener...or if they
>don't know where to find the N/T Stations because they only listen to
>Hip-Hop etc?.    The time it would take him to find a station with the info
>could be lengthy.   Perhaps the solution would be for stations that do have
>public warning info to transmit something that would tell Joe's Cellphone
>where to tune (more complexity)

>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.

>CF - We have a couple N/T FM stations here also (KIRO and KOMO).  My
>question remains - How do you tell Joe which station has the info?...How do
>you do this when you are talking 2 out of 30 stations?

>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.

>CF -This might work in a small market where everyone drops everything and
>runs wall-to-wall coverage.  In this market (Seattle) where it's about 25 by
>75 miles, it would have to be something huge to cause that.   To get all
>stations in this market (#13) to  break format to run information would
>likely require an act of Congress.

>BOTTOM LINE -

>FM on Cell Phones a good idea with a whole lot of work to do to make the
>concept viable, especially in larger markets.

>Clay Freinwald
>Seattle

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