I confess to having listened to the whole two hours. It was like being back in that slice of time, and exciting to hear radio actually respond to an event with staff, an airplane and a whole crew of talented, engaged people.
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Expected format flips in the next few months?
- Thread starter Radiopaw
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I need to correct part of that, David. While KFBK sold the airplane long before I arrived in 2013, they do still have reporters. They work for iHeart's news division (24-7 News) instead of the local station (a change made in April of 2019), but they work in the KFBK newsroom and some of them, including the guy who's currently the regional ND based at KFBK, are people I hired as KFBK reporters before 2019.
Good to know. In other words, like WLW but not like WTAM?
There are carve-outs by region, and I didn't pay that much attention to the other regions, but, for example, the only iHeart newsroom in California that works solely for itself (apart from cooperation in covering breaking news) is KFI. Their news staff are KFI employees.
All other California iHeart radio station news comes from a combination of the 24-7 newsrooms in Sacramento (at KFBK) and in Long Beach (at the Total Traffic offices and studios). The people working in those newsrooms are iHeart employees (corporate, not station).
I've been gone for more than three years now, so there may have been adjustments since.
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The "last man standing" for radio spot news, KCBS, stopped using helicopters several years ago as well. For traffic reports, they're now dependent on Caltrans cameras and user reports via the "phone force". While KCBS still has street reporters, reliance upon cellular networks during a major emergency of this type is a questionable decision. That would be where two-way radios would really demonstrate their value.
I'm going to climb out on a limb here, hoping all the way I will be wrong.
KGO is, for all intents and purposes, dead. KCBS still is going through the motions of being a 24-7 breaking news station, though nobody who listens regularly would mistake it for the KCBS of 1989. And KQED, which probably has the largest news staff in SFBA radio, largely disdains "breaking" news in favor of longer-form, more analytical, and somewhat "woke" journalism, often bundled into podcasts.
If another Loma Prieta happened this afternoon -- or even worse, a >7.0 on the Hayward fault or the San Andreas adjacent to SF -- who is going to react if the transmitter or tower is knocked off air? Again, there's no one home at KGO, figuratively or literally. KQED would need to get an engineer down to Mount San Bruno to fix or jury-rig the station back on the air, which may not be easy if 101 or 280 are damaged.
And KCBS, both their AM and FM plants are in Marin, the FM on Mount Beacon, and the AM in Novato. If, God-forbid, some part of the Golden Gate Bridge came down, who's going to be able to even get there? (Unless an engineer actually lived there, or Audacy was fortunate enough to have someone there for maintenance at that exact moment. Remember, Marin escaped the worst in 1989 by virtue of being in Novato, and the FM was almost 20 years in the future. (Back then, 106.9 was still owned by Family Radio.)
In a major quake, should TV and a significant chunk of cellular get knocked off the air, don't count on radio to be the information provider of last resort. Nobody's gonna be home. Even worse, should the internet get disabled by damage to a facility like the PAIX, all the Millennials and Gen Z'ers that think the world exists at their fingertips are gnna be in for a major surprise. The 2016(?) Napa quake, the one that happened at 2:30 AM on a Sunday morning, was a small taste of what could be to come, and nobody got knocked off the air in that one, it just was at an "inconvenient" time.
Who is the EAS primary for San Francisco now?
KCBS and KFRC-FM (which simulcast 100%).
Reference: http://calalerts.org/documents/calpaws/Attachment-B-California-EAS-Plan.pdf
Thanks. So that makes me think that Audacy can't completely cheap out on transmitter engineers and emergency plans. I know we, at KFBK, had to have backups for backups that on a purely budgetary basis, iHeart would have preferred to do without.
How would the FCC or DHS know? When was the last time EAS was enacted? Are there staffing requirements? I don't think so.
There are weekly tests of the system and the station and at 'BK (at least as of the time that I was there---up until three years ago) we had to provide proof of performance on the tests and there was a strong focus by management on being able to execute----to the point that a mobile emergency studio was under consideration.
But once again, there are no staffing requirements at the transmitter, or anything like that. Yes, you need to have a plan. No, you don't need extra staff, sitting on their hands, waiting for the next quake. The only thing Audacy doesn't want is more full time staff.
Never said that. I was responding to Weiserguy, who said:
And my point is, as EAS primary, they probably have a plan (an engineer who lives in Marin, a helicopter they can access, a motorboat across the San Pablo Bay and up the Petaluma River to the Black John Slough).
I agree. Having a plan isn't a salary with benefits. It's more like insurance.
EAS was activated (not just tested) a number of times in the big storms and potential flooding around New Years Eve, New Years Day and the subsequent couple of weeks. In fact, as I type this (Thurs 3/09, about 3:40 pm PST), the weather's started getting wild, with strong gusts that look to be approaching 50 mph, and between 3-7" of rain prodicted over the next couple of days. I have little doubt EAS will be activated for places like the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Russian River tonight and tomorrow, as they approach (and exceed) flood stage. When we have this kind of weather -- admittedly, not often -- EAS is not just a weekly test of the duck farts.
Read the context of my post. I was asking about the need for transmitter engineers to handle EAS. There aren't any staffing requirements. Local uses of EAS for weather or even Amber alerts are automatic and don't involve extra engineers.
I've had this argument with a number of people over recent years, including perhaps you, and a certain DDS on that other board. If someone want to own a station, they agree to certain obligations. And if you want to operate a news/information station, then those obligations need to exist at a higher level than someone else who only wants to be an over-the-air jukebox, and even that shouldn't exempt you completely.
If you're Audacy and want the higher revenues from an all-news station, that may necessitate satisfying your public interest obligations with staffing that wouldn't be necessary at a station with lesser ambitions. With a sudden, unanticipated quake, you need a plan that's been tested and "fire-drilled" until the bugs, at least the "known knowns", have been worked out of it. With a major storm, you may need to deploy people in advance to cover news and the physical plant, people might otherwise be home, and that you may have to pay overtime to (or provide comp time to in exchange for their extra effort).
Nobody put a gun to David Fields' head and forced Entercom (as it was named then) to acquire the CBS O&O radio stations. (Nobody forced Moonves to sell them either, but that's not the point.) Fields' ambition and greed-to-grow and be a major player seems to be what motivated him. And, IMO, he should not get a pass from the obligations he bought into when he made that deal. Save money somewhere else. Or sell the stations to someone who understands what public interest actually means.
We all know and follow the rules and regulations. Nobody's talking about that. But when the congress passed the Homeland Security Act, the responsibility for emergency action went to local emergency officials. They got all the federal dollars. Radio provides the signal, not the personnel. So yes, radio agrees that when someone enacts an EAS alert, they have access to the signal. That's about where the buck stops.
If you were referring only to EAS testing, then it wasn't obvious. Review the sentences I've highlighted. It comes across as a wider discussion of staffing for potential emergencies, and I don't think anyone expects a station to have staff sitting around on their hands, just in case there's an emergency that day. Nonetheless, apologies if I missed what you meant to say.
And if a station gets an FCC inspection, or if the station hires a broadcaster association free-lance to do a "mock inspection" one of the first things they look at is the EBS test record... both the weekly station-initiated tests and any state or national larger test.
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