[EAS] EAS and CMAS

[Dale Lamm]

[snip]
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?
[end]

I'll say up front that I'm not familiar with every feature of RDBS in
the USA. The ability to send an RDBS traffic alert and have SOME
receivers auto-tune to your station is intriguing. AFAIK, nobody in our
market makes use of this feature. Some of the FM'ers in our market are
programmed from distant cities and have no local presence except for one
shift per day.

In our market, we are the lead news-talker, unfortunately on a legacy AM
carrier. RDBS is of no use to us on this station.

Since CMAS was activated on my cell provider, I have received one alert,
complete with three "EAS like" attention bursts and a text message
advising me to "check media". What media? The SIM card? My CD
collection? Tomorrow's newspaper? Pretty poor advice, IMO. The three
bursts definitely got my attention, coming from a cell phone.

A suggestion that our engineering department has made to general
management goes something like this...

Soon (if not already) every cell phone customer in our market will begin
receiving alerts advising them of an emergency and a brief message
telling the customer to "check media". We can take advantage of this
confusion by promoting to our listeners the need to tune to our
station(s) when this happens. We will need to be in timely receipt of
the actual CMAS message so that our news department (yes we still have
one of those) can prepare a script for the live on-air talent. With the
winter storm season upon us, followed soon by tornado season, we have an
opportunity to snare extra listeners and cement our position as the news
authority, thanks to CMAS. All we need to do is to educate the
cell-phone carrying public to come to us when the "check media" message
appears.

In short, we see the vague CMAS messages as an opportunity, not
necessarily a defect. Hopefully, other stations in larger markets than
Canton Ohio have already considered doing this.