nationwide EAS test result on local WMTR AM station

[wa2ise]

Boy did it sound messed up. After the station's "duck farts" (bursts of modem like noises, radio station engineers call it that...) and the older two tone whistles, the audio then cut to a rather noisy message that had lots of crosstalk, as if it was sourced from an AM tuner. You could hear other stations' duck farts and tones under the "this is only a test. Had this been real, the nuke bombs would have vaporized you by now" recording.

[Jeffhs]

I saw the test this afternoon on WKYC-TV, NBC Cleveland. The test sounded no different from any other EAS test local TV and radio stations are required to conduct every month or so.


I receive the daily "TVSpy" television industry newsletter in my email, and today's edition had a short note regarding the national EAS test. No surprises there, but I did wonder about a comment someone made on TVSpy.com regarding the real purpose of the EAS. The person seemed to believe that the system was developed to give the government the authority to shut down all broadcasting -- standard broadcast, FM and television -- at its sole discretion.

I am very sorry, but that is not the purpose of the Emergency Alert System. I put the word "alert" in italics because that word describes exactly why the system was developed -- to alert the American people to natural disasters and, when necessary, national security issues. The EAS is not meant to give the President the power to shut down all commercial broadcasting at the drop of a hat. I recently read of a plan being considered by which the President would have the power to shut down the Internet (the "kill switch") in case of a dire emergency. I do not believe anything ever became of this or ever will, any more than I believe (I do not) that the EAS exists only to give the President unprecedented authority to order every single radio and TV station in the United States of America off the air in the event of a national security emergency; after all, the old EBS and today's EAS do not operate as did Conelrad, which did require all radio and TV stations to leave the air in the event of a Conelrad alert. The only station permitted to remain in operation in the affected area during an emergency was the Conelrad alert station, which operated on 640 or 1240 kHz.

BTW, those short signals that sound for all the world like farts, sent just before the end of EAS tests, that WA2ISE referred to in his post sound almost exactly like packet radio signals or the signals sent over a phone line by a computer modem, and also by packet radio modems. When I had AOL Internet service, I was able to hear these signals over my computer's audio system as they were being sent out over my telephone line, and as well over the speaker in my computer monitor when I was operating amateur packet radio from 1989-99. I don't operate packet any longer (no room in this small apartment for two computer systems) and switched from dial-up Internet service to broadband several years ago; however, my point is that I don't know if broadband Internet uses the same raspy signals as do dial-up modems.

[AUdubon5425]

In New Orleans, there was no audio on the TV (OTA). The "point of entry" station, WWL-AM, was understandable but much like wa2ise described, poor quality. The other AM stations retransmitting WWL's feed were unintelligible.

When the "EAS" was activated over the "EBS" (late 90's?) the FCC mandated that stations feed their signals through the EAS control unit en route to the transmitter, taking away the engineers' control. When I was in radio, the EBS system was totally manual - from what I remember: an alert came over the wire with a codeword, which you physically checked against a monthly list, before switching to the EBS feed. (I seem to remember something about cutting the transmitter on and off twice, but am probably mistaken about that.)

[Jeffhs]

How long has it been since you worked in radio? The tests have not been manually activated since the EAS superseded the EBS in 1996-97. The EAS is completely automated, but as I read in today's edition of TVSpy (http://www.tvspy.com), the automation system needs much work. Many stations across this country, including every single one in the state of Oregon, experienced problems, and viewers in several cities, including Washington, D.C. and Cleveland, reported that the EAS test graphic remained on TV screens for several minutes after the conclusion of the actual test. The TVSpy newsletter also reported that the test's audio was extremely distorted and that several other stations' test tones could be heard beneath the test your local station was conducting. I can vouch for the distortion problem, as the announcement accompanying the EAS test I saw and heard on WKYC-TV in Cleveland was in fact very distorted (overmodulated) and I could hear noise along with other signals besides.

I don't know if EAS tests over Cleveland radio stations were this bad, however, as I only saw the one test on TV. I also found myself wondering how radio stations running completely automated formats (and therefore had only one engineer on duty) ran the test.

You may be thinking of the old Conelrad alert system. The Conelrad tests did require the transmitter to be shut off twice for 15 seconds (audio only; on television this resulted in white noise while the picture remained, and on radio, the signal would disappear completely). This was followed, IIRC, by two warning tones, spaced a few seconds apart; that was followed by an announcement to the effect that "this is a test . . . "

I remember all too well those early Conelrad tests, and in fact will never forget one in particular which ran on a Cleveland TV station in 1963. I was seven years old at the time, and was watching something (I don't recall the program anymore) on TV on a Saturday morning, IIRC. Along came a commercial break, one commercial, and then the old Civil Defense logo (a large blue dot with a white triangle, in the center of which were the letters "CD" in bright red) came on, followed by the test. I nearly jumped out of my skin, as we had a 21" TV which made that symbol look much larger than life. (I shudder to think what that CD symbol would look like on today's 55" and larger flat-panel TVs -- it would more than likely scare young children almost to death!) I went running down the hallway from the front of our house to the back, scared to death that the Russians were going to blow Cleveland and the surrounding area (including the Cleveland suburb in which I lived at the time) right off the map.

Oh, well. At least they did one thing right during the national EAS test: the on-screen graphic stated clearly that "there is no emergency", so at least folks seeing the test would know that this was in fact only a test. NBC Nightly News also mentioned the national EAS test during that evening's newscast, but did not replay the test sequence because, as Brian Williams reported, the government had asked the network not to do so, as any repeat of the test might frighten or outright scare viewers.

I am reminded of a letter someone wrote to the (now defunct) Electronics Illustrated magazine in the late 1960s. The subject was what was then called "hang-on-the-wall" TV (what we know today as flat-panel high-definition television; the sets are in fact wall-mountable), which at that time, of course, was unheard of in American homes. The writer said in his letter (in paraphrase): "Can you imagine the violence in today's television programs magnified to that extent (40-50 inches or larger)? Heck, even a (television) station (test) pattern will frighten our children!" The letter was accompanied by a sketch showing a very young child in a playpen, screaming, as he looked at a test pattern on a 50-inch TV screen hanging on the wall; the pattern was broadcast from a television station (fictitious, no doubt) called "WNVI".

I sometimes wonder how often this happens nowadays, with today's giant flat-panels -- not necessarily test patterns frightening young children, but images from horror movies (such as MeTV's "Svengoolie", broadcast over the cable subchannel on weekends) could scare the living daylights out of today's kids when they see them on a larger-than-life 50"+ flat panel in the living room. Like my experience with the old Civil Defense logo on our old 21" Crosley TV in the early sixties, those kids would probably never forget being scared to death by a horror movie seen on their parents' 60" home theater screen.