EAS test a huge fail for me. How about for you?
What peabrain thinks that over the air monitoring of commercial broadcast signals with a national cascade is the way to do issue alerts nowadays? I ACTUALLY HEARD WITH MY OWN EARS some guy in charge of this test (at some level) talk about how useful this would be in various situations, including a massive electrical grid outage. Riiiiight. Everybody is using transistor or car radios that would be able to pick up radio stations broadcasting on generator power I guess? A "simple" yet completely redundant 1) Internet and 2) communications satellite and 3) cell phone based system would be the way to rapidly spread the word nowadays, then relying on any operating stations and websites to re-"broadcast" but nOOOOoooo, the government is continuing to go forward with this stupid 60 year old completely obsolete approach? I was on my computer on the internet and noticed the time and remembered I wanted to see this test, so I ran into the other room to hear it. Not exactly the way a system like this should work, huh? Now, to today's test. It was so completely garbled on both my FiOS-powered cable box and on the radio I had going. Completely unintelligible on the TV, cut off at the very beginning, with just a hint of the newscast on WBZ Radio in the background, also not intelligible. On the radio it had the usual 60 year old sound of an announcer but it was also very fuzzy and barely intelligible. Coupled with overlays and underlays of the various alert tones. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious. And we paid for it. FAIL! Did you hear it? How did it go for you? |
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| I was at work (am still at work..) No TV. No radio. I would be dead. OK - probably an exaggeration  But I agree - those 2 means of communication are NOT the best choices. Also - I watch non-network shows mostly on TV. Stuff like Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, HGTV - did they air this on those too? I only watch network TV for about half an hour in the morning as I get ready for work. |
| So much for the efficacy of the system! Don't worry, I'd revive you with a text message. Maybe a tweet if you're lucky. LOL One of my major complaints with FiOS (and it may be true of all cable companies, I don't know) is that whenever ANY station ANYWHERE near us issues a weekly or monthly EAS test, the cable box (DVR) stops recording, erases all memory (so if you had paused a program, that is lost) and goes into EAS mode. For the past couple of months it has been happening virtually every night and some nights it happened 5 or 6 times. Extremely frustrating. So in my case at least, any EAS test would interrupt the cable station's show. |
| Forgot about it.......and since I'm not one who needs constant stimulation from radio, tv, music, here, etc.........I too would be dead. Peace and quiet has a lot going for it. Of course if you are a conspiracy theorist, this was yet another step in the total take over of our lives by Big Brother. Can you hear me now?.........no and I don't want to. |
| Like Dawn, I'd be radioactive dust as I'm at work. They do pipe a radio station into the factory, but I was in the office all afternoon. I do find it rather odd that they've had this system in place for fifty-some odd years and on the news last night, they said this was the first mandatory nationwide simultaneous test... Did they not think they could do this before or they were convince they couldn't and didn't want to risk the public humiliation? Either way, I really think more folks rely on the internet for news headlines now a days anyway. I know I like to watch the news, but I can't do that at work. I can however sneak a peak at MSN online damn near when ever I want, even at work. I'm with you Ron, epic fail. Vance |
| Believe it or not, the way it works is a station broadcasts the alert, the next station picks it up and broadcasts the alert, and so on and so on until it cascades across the country. I think that original estimates were for this to require hours to make it cross country back in the day. |
we have a emergency test the first wednesday of the month at noon to test tornando sirens and tv alert. I was home today but dont usually have tv on during the day so I missed this one. Oh well, guess I'd be dead with all my sheepie friends. We could all play at the bridge together....  I know this is serious and should be improved but considering our government I dont expect much now a days... |
| I was in my cr with the radio on...Knew the test was coming as they'vbe been broadcasting warnng us...First, it was suppose to happen at 2 pm...I think they were late! It was really like 2:10 or so.. The test was garbled and static and I couldn't understand a word they were saying....God Bless American if we ever need that system to work! Yikes! |
Ron wrote: So much for the efficacy of the system! Don't worry, I'd revive you with a text message. Maybe a tweet if you're lucky. LOL One of my major complaints with FiOS (and it may be true of all cable companies, I don't know) is that whenever ANY station ANYWHERE near us issues a weekly or monthly EAS test, the cable box (DVR) stops recording, erases all memory (so if you had paused a program, that is lost) and goes into EAS mode. For the past couple of months it has been happening virtually every night and some nights it happened 5 or 6 times. Extremely frustrating. So in my case at least, any EAS test would interrupt the cable station's show. I have been so annoyed this last 6 weeks or so because they have been doing this every night and one night it happened 8 times in an hour! It does knock off the DVR and when the test is over it is taking longer and longer to be able to get of C-Span!  I hope now that the BIG national test is done--that they will STOP already! Today's test was a joke! |
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