[EAS] Pizza Pizza Alert

[Sid Schweiger]

"How close is too close? At what point do listeners no longer think there is some sort of alert being sent to the public?
(Other than Pizza being on sale, or whatever.)

"Suppose someone airs a fire truck siren in a spot and you mistake it for a real one, even though you don't see a fire truck, and being cautious attempt to pull over to the curb, and in doing that cause an accident. Sure that's a bit of a stretch, but short of doing the pull over to the curb, I did hear a fire truck siren that turned out to be part of a radio promo. At first I thought it was the real thing and started checking my mirrors and looking around. Distracted driving? Yes. Distracted by my own choosing? You be the judge. They did fool me once. The better take away was that it was my station's HD2 channel. Says something for the quality of the signal I guess?"

Stop.

Just...stop.

Look at what you're doing.  If you have to parse what listeners might think to this extent, is it really worth it?  Your best bet is not to overthink it...just don't run it.

It's painfully obvious that the ad biz doesn't keep up with current FCC rules, if they're still producing spots with what might be mistaken for EAS programming.  For better or worse, it's now up to the stations and networks to tell them "no, we won't run material that can get us fined."

ISTR the old NAB Code of Good Practice had a prohibition against using sirens or anything else that might be mistaken for an emergency alert of any kind.  Maybe they knew a thing or two back then.