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Old 12-16-2017, 08:22 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
<----Zenith C845
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon A. View Post
No kidding. Remember AM radio dials with CONELRAD markings? Anyone who has watched Christine has seen them. I rest my case.
I grew up in the Cold War era and remember very well the Conelrad icons on AM radio dials at 640 and 1240, also the Conelrad tests on radio and TV. One of my best (!) memories of the Cold War era (I'll never forget it!) is seeing a Conelrad test on TV in 1963. I was seven years old and just about jumped out of my skin the first time I saw the Conelrad symbol on our 21" Crosley TV. I did not realize this was only a Conelrad test, not "the real deal", and I ran through the living room down the long hall between there and the back of the house, scared out of my wits that the Russians were going to drop a huge bomb on our area of northeast Ohio and blow us all to kingdom come.

BTW, yes, I have seen the movie "Christine", and the tuning scale on the car's radio did in fact have the CD symbols at 640 and 1240, as did all car and home radios made between 1953 and 1963. I have a Zenith C-845 AM-FM table radio, made in 1960, that has these symbols (actually the letters "CD", not the icons themselves) at 640 and 1240 as well. These markings were placed by law on all AM radio dials so that people would not waste valuable time looking for the local Conelrad alert station when local stations went off the air per FCC regulations in effect at the time.

Another reminder of the Cold War era was a YouTube video of a Conelrad radio test gone awry, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The station was WOWO-1190 and the DJ had just put on a record; suddenly, the sound faded to nothing and a station announcer was heard issuing a Conelrad alert. The alert turned out to have been erroneously broadcast over stations in the Fort Wayne area due to an unfortunate mixup. Do a Google search to see the entire story of this incident, which I am sure anyone who was living in the area at the time will never forget. I live 30 miles outside Cleveland, and grew up in a suburb 15 miles east of the city; however, I don't recall ever hearing any botched Conelrad alerts on local radio stations.

However, in the '70s, someone with a warped sense of humor came up with a musical version of the Conelrad (by then EBS, for Emergency Broadcast System) test, which was later banned and in fact was declared illegal. That the test was sung instead of being read from a script by an announcer was bad enough, but the worst part of that illegal Conelrad test was how it ended: "This concludes this test-----of the Emergency Broadcast System! Did you pass?" I believe that ending, and that the test was made into a singing jingle, was what finally got the jingle banned from American radio, and I don't blame the FCC for doing that, if in fact they did; after all, this was meant to be an emergency alert, meant to be read, not sung, by an announcer. IMO, whomever came up with the idea for this should have been arrested and jailed for attempting to make a mockery of the former Emergency Broadcast System. I'm sure if anyone ever tried to do this with today's Emergency Alert System (EAS), the person would in fact be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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Jeff, WB8NHV

Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.

Last edited by Jeffhs; 12-16-2017 at 08:33 PM.
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