[EAS] EAS and CMAS

[Adrienne Abbott]

Responding to Clay and Barry...

Most European radio stations are government controlled or more strictly
regulated than ours so there is a way to "force tune" cell phone users to a
news/information station. I don't think anybody wants to re-visit that kind
of regulation here. I still maintain that most listeners know what stations
have news and will tune to that station if they think the emergency will
affect them and that's the key. If people are car-alarmed by continual
weather warnings that don't affect them then it doesn't matter how they got
the warning and whether or not they have an FM chip in their cell phones.
Superstorm Sandy proved what we learned in Katrina, even in the face of
multiple warnings, some people don't believe they will be affected, don't
care or are just in denial and nothing we can do, even with government
mandated warning systems, will change their behavior. 

Adrienne Abbott
Nevada EAS Chair

At 11:33 PM 1/2/2013, Clay Freinwald wrote:
>... idea of having one or more stations be the 'go to' station for 
>emergency information is a good one...(In this market we have several 
>with full time news operations) the question is how to instruct the
cellphone
>owner that just received the message where to get the follow up info.   

        I'm going to go way out on a limb here and
        suggest that the wheel has already been 
        invented. In Europe, RDS has been
        the answer that works - radios tune to
        the source of information.  

        Of course, "competition" in US radio
        has long made this sort of "tune to the
        information" unusable. 

        Maybe it's time to review?