[EAS] EAS monitoring sources

[Mike McCarthy]

What Robert refers is very much a "have" and narrow class of operation. In
markets with the classic high intensity news environment, there is an
emphasis by those stations to have facilities in place for the inevitable
"big" story. Most of the TV's with news shops here now have fiber into the
major sporting venues, O'Hare's terminals, and Chicago OEMC center among a
few others. But none of the surrounding county EOC's. Even Cook County's
EOC doesn't have anything pre-wired.

HOwever, the vast majority of TV's do not have such a relationship. And in
fact, 80% of the TV licenses in this market don't as they have no news
room or news programming to use such facilities. And I'll bet it's the
same in NYC and LA and all other top 10 markets outside of the O&O's and
bigger stations with new shops.

The "have not" aspect is even more applicable in smaller markets where
staffing resources are thin and technical budgets even thinner with the
looming repack clock getting ready to start ticking.  And that presumes an
EOC and local TV both have fiber into their facilities.

Then there is radio...which is an even thinner line given most stations
now do not have a news person on staff....period. Let alone have someone
to station at an EOC.

So the whole "we'll have someone there" precip is a fallacy in all but a
handful of well equipped and funded stations and locations.  And more
over, that assumption includes the circuit will be there when it's needed.
Which is not a certain thing even when under constant test. Nor will the
back feeds from the various ENG receive sites.

And in the case of a large earthquake and/or tidal wave event, a good
majority of those TV's and/or the links to the EOC, et al could be
compromised.

So that is a terrible assumption to present.

As for two of the three major disasters Robert references (9/11 and Sandy)
neither were short fuse. The whole premise of the EAS is to alert a
suitable call to action message to the unknowing in time for proper
reaction.

In the case of 9/11, there was no known advance knowledge to send a
message. And even afterwards, any EAS message would have been confusing
and hysteria creating. Particularly if an EVI went out for lower
Manhattan.

For Sandy, the event, hazard ramifications, and directives were known well
in advance. Once started, there was no suitable EAS message to send and
would have again created confusion and hysteria.

On the other hand, short fuse warnings where the short notice hazard is
known by an AHJ (tornado, tsunami, avalanche, flash flood, dam breach,
radiation hazard et. al.) are a different class of actionable warnings to
an otherwise unknowing public.

So let's not confuse the events of a micro area which really didn't need
EAS to everything and everywhere else which regularly does and will in the
future. And we can not presume existing non-hardened facilities will work
in any or all events of significance.

MM

On Sun, August 28, 2016 7:43 pm, Sean Donelan wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Aug 2016, Robertm wrote:
>
>> 'Here' is NYC but most people already knew that. I am surprised you
>> asked. However, I suspect most of the larger media markets have similar
>> setups.
>