[EAS] [BC] What's the point of LP-1s anymore?

[Clay Freinwald]

Following on Mike's recommendation to KISS - 
There is something to be said for Point-Multi-Point Distribution
...Especially knowing there are millions of battery powered vehicular
receivers out there.

The biggest issue, IMHO, is not with the Daisy Chain etc...But it is with
Broadcasters and certainly FCC classifications (Translators, Satellite Fed
stations etc) that are able to ignore anything except Federal level
warnings.    Unfortunately there are very powerful factions that are deathly
opposed to making the distribution of life saving warnings mandatory.
State and Local emergency managers know well that EAS may not air their
warnings.    This is a very sad state of affairs that should be changed.

Clay

-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Botterell,
Arthur at CalOES

We can look at the LP-1 in a couple of different ways, I think.  One is as a
relay, a range-extender.  Another is as a key station that reliably will
carry an alert (and maybe even relevant news and info thereafter).

I mentioned the Virgin Islands earlier.  In 1995 FEMA set up a mini-studio
in its Joint Information Center on St Thomas with an STL over to the LP-1.
>From there we syndicated a series of hourly five-minute "Recovery Radio"
info-casts each morning.  Stations down on St Croix picked it off their EAS
boxes.  We knew it was working when we learned that one St Croix station was
selling adjacencies at premium prices.

Other stations on St Thomas started carrying us spontaneously as they came
back on the air, which was gratifying but didn't really increase our reach.
It was more a community-spirit thing than anything else, I think.   But the
path over to St Croix, forty miles to the south, would have been hard to
replicate.

Grand Forks ND was different.  We started by setting up an alternate studio
(and transmitter) for the UND FM station, which gave us an over-the-air feed
to the other locals, including the LP-1, which wasn't particularly activist.
Having already had some satellite time booked by some forward-leaning sorts
back at HQ, we started doing a camera-in-the-studio treatment of Recovery
Radio, which we flogged to local stations all over the 14-state area over
which most of Grand Fork's population had dispersed.  We got a lot of
positive feedback from the members of the diaspora for giving them a window
into how things were going back home, but it was quite expensive.

Again, that was mostly about the longer-form stuff needed after the initial
alert.  Still, it was nice to be able to construct a regional network on the
fly.  In the local market, as soon as we had one station where folks knew
they could get the info, getting it onto additional stations was less urgent
to us.  Even so, eventually the LP-1 set up  temporary studios at the JIC,
which fortunately was located in the University's rather spacious media
center, right at the edge of the flooded area.

Art

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