I watch a lot of late night TV and every two weeks or so I get to see a test from the EBS. The graphics look like Amiga text from 1981. In fact, the two times I heard the system actually being used for real purposes in the last five years (Amber alerts) the voice sounded like they were broadcasting from a tin can on a toy GI Joe walkie talkie.
What gives? The graphics of the terrorist alert meter they show on Fox are crisp and vibrant. Why is the EBS stuck in 1967?
(BTW, when the Emergency Broadcast System switches from those usual test buzzes to a real live voice, it causes a Y-Generation pup like myself to nearly shit my pants… especially when they start off with “This is Colonel xxxxxx xxxxxx of the Massachusetts National Guard”… stupid Cold War era brainwashing… grrr…).
Emergency info does not need to be in high-definition sound and video, so they use simpler gear that’s simpler to maintain. Fox (and everyone else) has small armies of technicians and engineers that keep things tweaked and tuned up daily, but for EBS, pretty much all they need to do is look at it and say “Yup, the light’s on.”
Judging by my experience, I would think that the equipment is past it’s shelf life at this point. KISS (Keep it simple stupid) has it’s limitations. Call me paranoid, but it almost seems like the EBS is purposely antique in nature at this point for whatever reason. If I were running things then the available parts to maintain an emergency broadcasting system would have to fall in line with… ummm… currently available parts… not weird old stuff as simple as it may be. I’d keep the old stuff around as plan B.
Slightly OT - I have a cassette tape from 1984 that has WBCN in Boston airing an EBS message with the announcer speaking with a very heavy Romanian (Dracula) accent.
The radio station where I work is the EAS hub for North Florida. Note that it’s called “Emergency Alert System” now. I get to hear that robotic voice in the equipment room every day, several times. If there’s bad weather, it goes off every few minutes. It’s enough to drive you up the wall. I have to wonder how effective it is, because we have framed the paper EAS message we received a couple of years ago, that said we were under a tsunami alert. And I want to go punch the guy who thought it made perfect sense to include in the thunderstorm warning, “Remember, lightning is one of nature’s number one killers.” No it isn’t, you freakin’ moron. There can only be one number one killer. Everything else is another number.
Back in 1979, I heard a humorous, professional jingle that could be used (don’t know if anyone did), where they sang the intro and extro: “For the next sixty seconds (repeat), this station will conduct (pause) a test (cue the country fiddle) of the Emergency Broadcast System!!! This is only a test!” (insert your own tone here) Then it came back with music so your local announcer could say “If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed…etc.” and they finished it up with a big flourish - “And that concludes our test (fiddle) of the EBS. Did you pass?” I wish I could lay my hands on a copy of it now.
Why not jazz up the simple presentation part also? Why would they optimize the backend and leave the frontend so lame? I am quite confident that the tone system is state of the art. I remember the SD article withthe Van Halen supposition with the tones and all from the first SD book. You don’t forget that sort of teaching.
OK. How much would you like your taxes increased to pay for this.
To replace this perfectly functional equipment with new stuff with fancier graphics, so that the monthly tests will look more “crisp and vibrant”?
Do you think most taxpayers would find that a good use of their tax money?
The fact is that there is no economic incentive for anybody to spend more money on this system, when it is working fine as it is. I think the general principle that applies here is If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
If they really wanted it to sound all retro and cheap they could use Morse Code or semaphore. Imagine driving along and all you get to hear are the swishes being made by semaphore flags. Handy.
Why not get the “news” broadcasts drop all the fancy graphics and jazzed-up presentations and go back to actually presenting actual news. I’ve largely given up on watching television news because the focus has shifted so much away from the message and onto the medium. The EAS is supposed to be providing what you need to know when you need to know it in an emergency situation and for that the simplest, most direct format is most appropriate.
I think people are missing the point. Remember that it’s a system to cope with emergencies. That signal has to get through to the maximum audience through you-name-it.
It’s not in competition with Scrubs and American Idol for your advertising dollar, and required to counteract your ennui through flashy graphics and contemporary lap-dissolves. It’s supposed to be able to get through past EMPs and hurricane-eyewall steady lightning to alert you that the river’s flooding and your house will be under ten feet of water, or that blizzard conditions are moving southeast rapidly and expected to cause ongoing whiteout conditions and severe windchill in your area within the hour. Or that the North Koreans have invaded or that Osama bin Laden has set off dirty bombs in Boston, Omaha, and San Jose. And to get that signal through, no matter what the interference may be.
Heh. As if we need to raise taxes everytime we increase spending. If we want something, we don’t raise taxes, we just borrow money from our grandchildren. Deficits don’t matter!
Another variation on the lameness involves messages coming over our local cable service (Comcast, if you care). Middle Tennessee is blessed with at least four quality broadcast TV channels as far as weather reporting is concerned. We happen to prefer Channel 2 WKRN since they will interrupt regular programming sooner and stay on with the weather alerts longer than most of the others. On top of that, their StormTracker seems easier to follow than the other channels.
Be that as it may, whenever the weather gets really dangerous, as it tends to several times a year, Comcast will override every broadcast (and not just local TV stations) with some lame-ass, slow-moving and ugly beep-beep-beep thing that takes forever to get to the point. Meanwhile, the tornado may have already torn up your neighborhood, and Channel 2 would have told you that.
Comcast needs to be a bit more selective on which channels get blasted aside for their rinky-dink “alert.”
What I don’t get is when on the radio they say, “This is a test of the EBS…” Then you hear this weird sound, something like the sound effects of a sci-fi movie laser that isn’t working properly.
What exactly are they testing? How does this “test” actually show that their system is working or not? Do they want people to call in and say if it isn’t working? If so, how can we know one way or another? And how do they know what the audience is hearing on the other side of the city?
Every time I hear it, I feel like I should call up the station and say, “Your test didn’t work. Try it again.”
“Honey, get out the broom and knock the North Koreans off the antenna again – the EBS messages are coming in all staticky and they’re about to tell us whether San Jose got voted off the continent!”
It is broke, and yet they are spending millions to upgrade it. The new version is called the Digital Emergency Alert System , and it is being rolled out across the country in 2007.
The bottom line however is that the EAS and EBS systems have never been activated effectively. On two occasions (1971 & 2005), the system was accidentally activated. While the fact that it was possible to do that was a concern, what was most troubling was that many broadcast stations didn’t receive the message and of those who did, the majority ignored it.
Although it was created in 1963, the system has never been used. Not during Katrina. Not on 9/11. Not ever.
The system **should **appear on all channels. The idea is to warn as many people as possible, not just those who happen to be watching the right channels.
Whether the format and timeliness of the messages is sufficient and whether the tests are run appropriately are separate issues.
What I want to know is: what are the requirements for issuing an alert? Whenever there’s an Amber Alert within 200 miles, they activate the system. Back in 2003, though when the largest wildfire in San Diego’s history was burning homes by the hundreds, there wasn’t a single emergency broadcast. Yes, there was local media coverage, but I still wonder why the EAS wasn’t used.
News isn’t a public service, like it once was considered to be. It’s a commercial enterprise.
Remember back when the news announcers (they were all male) had that deep voice and that sound of urgency in their voice (because they smoked 4 packs of Pall Malls a day) and actually reported the news?
Now, there’s no guarantee that what they’re reporting is even true, or that they haven’t slanted it to whatever political opinion the news director happens to have.
**Anyway…**when I was a kid, they would air the EBS tests and there was a clear, strong sounding voice that made the “This is a test…” announcement. Then they would play the tone for 30 seconds or whatever. The tone was distinctive and recognizable. I’d still know it if I heard it.
Now, they have the emergency alert system. It all sounds like it’s being played on a fourth or fifth generation copy of an 8-track tape and then amplified with a broken megaphone. You can barely hear the announcer’s voice sometimes. The tone sounds like what would happen if you took a sledgehammer to an alarm clock and it continued to work. And the computerized voice just sucks…the last time I heard a real EA in the car, I had to turn the radio all the way up and still had to listen to the second repeat of the message to figure out what was happening. The Commodore 64 had a better voice simulation program than that.
I think they could do something a little bit better. They don’t need all the bells and whistles and jingles and fireworks and large breasted women, but at least make it loud and clear enough to understand.
I have to wonder about this too. Using the EAS assumes there’s two things:
Time to detect the problem and disseminate information about it
There’s something we can do about the problem. Put on your ‘conspiracy theory hat’ for this one, but why would the government spin up everyone’s gears and incite a mass panic if there’s nothing they can do?
You know, they’ve got this thing around, but according to that website referenced earlier, have never used it. Granted, the Soviets never lobbed warheads over the pole at us. But given the dire need to protect the President (POTUS), if there was a situation where he’d want to address us all, he couldn’t because he’d be a little tied up: the Secret Service would be hustling his ass onto the nearest National Airborne Ops Ctr. or deep underground into a bunker.
I don’t see the need for the POTUS to address the nation instantly. The EAS is gonna be a tool of the governors or the county officials. Unfortunately, it’s not maintained, but I think that’s a good thing too: do you want the emergency message to have the flashy titles and graphics (beyond maps)? Hell no. Give me the approprite info quickly, and let me act on it. Don’t dazzle me with taglines that say “Killer Tornado: Monster of Death!” Just say, “There’s a tornado in Smith County. Duck and cover!”
Keep it simple, keep it stupid, but keep it low-tech and quick.
Tripler
Man, now I’m having flashbacks of Terminator 3.