[EAS] The way is sounded

[Sean Donelan]

On Thu, 29 Sep 2016, Jeff Staigh wrote:
> MY fidelity issue comes from years and years of complaints of terrible 
> audio coming from LA County EOC, and anyone in this town remembers it 
> month after month for years. We all got very critical because it often 
> couldn't be heard.

Having heard Los Angeles' monthly tests nationwide because a particular 
satellite TV provider uses LA as the source of its monthly tests, I 
understand your complaint. After hearing LA's monthly test, I think 
elected officials should not be allowed to voice monthly test messages; 
and only allowed to voice actual alerts.

> IMO Only, listening to the 'fidelity' yesterday does not denote any 
> urgency whatsoever in what is otherwise a EAN message coming through. 
> Its signature should be sufficiently offset from the program stream 
> that the listener is startled enough by the change of audio enough to 
> listen. Isn't that the point ?

Well... The national test message was deliberately design to be boring. 
In that sense, the test message achieved the goal of being boring.

But the broader point, for an actual alert message, the social scientists 
and research can help balancing being calm versus getting attention. As 
one example, some researchers looked at how Japan's NHK announcers handle 
earthquakes and emergency messages compared to American newscasters. NHK 
announcers were deliberately calm and restrained, while the American 
newscasters were often hyperbolic.

Compared to normal American newscasts, an extremely calm and restrained 
official announcement could be more attention getting just by being so 
different.

> These days even the EAS rat farts are being ignored as they have become 
> common place.

I agree. I think most EAS (or whatever the next-generation alerting 
system is called) signalling should move to out-of-band.  Cue the 
description of what they've done in Washington State ;-)

Although closed circuit tests should be frequent, public tests should be 
less frequent so the public doesn't think its just another test every time
they hear those sounds.