Emergency Alert System - USA
ricki
Posts: 88 Forum Member
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For the first time ever all radio and tv switched to the USA's Emergency Alert System at 2pm EST for a test.
Just wondered if anyone caught it. Slightly anoracky but wanted to listen and totally forgot.
Can't see anything on YouTube for the tv either.
Any links would be cool.
Thanks.
Just wondered if anyone caught it. Slightly anoracky but wanted to listen and totally forgot.
Can't see anything on YouTube for the tv either.
Any links would be cool.
Thanks.
0
Comments
www.aircheckdownloads.com/KHFI_National_EAS_Test_09Nov11.mp3
Thanks for that. Any tv links anyone?
EDITED: found one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRvbyckci6Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Possibly this was a student announcer as it's a college station and she did sound very young. An interesting event to hear from thousands of miles away though!
Instead of the alarm going out there was 1'38 of dead air followed by the announcer explaining what it's all about (obviously unaware it hadn't actually gone out).
www.aircheckdownloads.com/WCBS_National_EAS_Test_09Nov11.mp3
It's quite chilling when you aren't used to it.
Why is the audio so bad? You'd think they would have the use of a studio.
FCC reg requires stations to test the system and maintain it. However this is the first time ever they have done a full system test on all channels both radio and tv. Loads of pre test videos on YouTube that confirm this. Here's one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3h7QVmGcn4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I think it's a cool idea for a massive land mass like the USA but obviously needed a good test as some issues with some stations have been noted
Could it have gone out on AM, but not HD or the Internet stream that this aircheck was taken from? I find it hard to believe he was totally unaware that it hadn't gone out.
Stations there are generally so hotchpotch and light on information day-to-day that something like this, regulated centrally, is needed. I can't remember hearing a traffic bulletin while in Indiana, for instance, and news bulletins are haphazard at best.
I don't think it'd be so necessary in the UK, where we already have public national and regional broadcasters to give out emergency info.
I'm curious as to the technology behind it. What sends the stations out of programming and into the emergency information, and what's it fed down that has such dreadful audio? Sometimes it echoes, as if it's being relayed from station to station.
Whenever I've heard it in real use, it's been for far more mundane things - flash floods or tornado warnings. They do the beeps, give out a list of counties affected, and then get back to programming. It takes around two minutes.
Not really necessary. We're a small country, well covered by national TV and radio stations - both BBC and commercial - that have appropriate emergency protocols in place.
The US, however, is a huge country with - away from the main cities - a very spread out population that isn't served by a national TV or radio network.
I wrote similar in the other thread on the subject, America has lots of independent stations (many VERY independent and probably think the Federal government are a bunch of communists!).
For years (WWII?) we have had the SB system in the UK where all the transmitters can be fed from the one source. There have been systems in place for years to give out gale and severe weather warnings as well as other public service messages.
One result of WWII was that the Russians were determined that Germany could not be united again to wreak so much havoc, so the Soviet bloc was born, with east and west armed to the teeth with nuclear missiles. Obviously this is not the forum to go into too much detail. Many of us around during the height of the Cold War in the 1960s were too young to appreciate the full implications of what was happening, although for us teenagers, the idea of being under the wrong end of a nuclear missile was fully understood and not an appealing one.
The transistor radio came marching in to our lives. The 1950s models, from UK firms such as Bush and Perdio, were largely designed around valve components, with transistors not valves. The early transistors were germanium, rather than silicon. There were attempts to miniaturise valve equipment by making components such as IF ( intermediate frequency ) transformers, tuning capacitors, loudspeakers, tuning rods and coils smaller, and to do away with mains transformers ( replaced by a large wire-wound resistor like an electric fire element, which meant that the chassis of the radio was not insulated from the mains ).
The adoption of miniaturised valve circuitry for transistor radios didn't work well. Fortunately the Japanese got into the act as the end of the 1950s. The components in their radios were still recognisable, but truly miniaturised, and very tightly packed onto the circuit boards. The goal of the shirt pocket radio was soon reached. The Japanese moved production up to new levels, with assembly being switched to Hong Kong, radios churning out in their thousands for the Western markets.
The popular model at the time was the shirt pocket variety. It ran on a PP3 battery, had 6 transistors, and in relation to this thread, had the American National Defense frequencies marked on the AM dial by little triangles. It obviously fulfilled a need for the American market, in that citizens finally had a portable device to carry around with them, and to be a lifesaver in the event of a missile attack happening. Fortunately it didn't.
The shirt-pocket transistor radios had another benefit in the UK. The offshore radio era was starting when these sets began to flood the UK, priced at six pounds, they were by far cheaper than Bush or Perdio, who went bust. They picked up offshore radio brilliantly, although admittedly we used to tune the IF strips and realign the delicate RF coils on the tiny ferrite rod to peak on our favourite station. But just as the iPod, iPad, iPhone, and MP3 player have revolutionised the way that we get new music nowadays, so in the 1960s those little Hong Kong radios were an important factor in the move to hearing new music from the offshore pirates, the cultural revolution of the 1960s, and in UK radio broadcasting from thenceforth. My favourite jingle from Caroline was ...take a lively companion wherever you go – take a portable radio... which says it all really. At least something positive came out of the Cold War as far as broadcasting was concerned.
http://www.musicradio77.com/wwwboard/messages/390064.html