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Expected format flips in the next few months?

Weiserguy said:
If you were referring only to EAS testing, then it wasn't obvious.
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Look at the comment about transmitter engineers in specific: the requirement for them was relaxed in the earlier 70s even for directional systems because equipment and monitoring gear was much more stable and reliable. Today, you can leave remote transmitter sites for months if needed with tech person checking it other than via remote metering.

My point is that technology has eliminated many things that were required in the past due to unstable and unreliable gear.

Since stations don't and are not permitted to originate true EAS alerts, all they have to do is have their gear ready to accept them and put them on the air.
Weiserguy said:
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.
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Correct. Radio news staffs today are vastly reduced, since revenues are off over 60% since two decades ago while expenses in some areas have nearly doubled. So what is needed is a plan, even if it involves getting consent from a local TV station that has a good news department to carry their audio... and reconfirming this annually, maybe with a meeting at the TV operation and a few ongoing spots for their news broadcasts...
 
Mark Roberts said:
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.
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In some cases, you're still going to need towers for two-way radios. I had two way radios that were alleged to be good for 20 miles but less then 3 miles from each other and couldn't pick up a damn thing.
 
Weiserguy said:
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.
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If roads are out, I'm sure iheart or Audacy has access to a chopper to fly an engineer to the site. Now they better hope there's room to land somewhere once they get there. Ooops.....never mind. I see someone mentioned a chopper earlier so I'll change my answer to a hot air balloon and hope the wind is blowing in the right direction.
 
TheBigA said:
Testing or actual use. Someone asked if the EAS was activated for the Ohio train derailment. AFAIK it wasn't. Who's fault was that?
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Whoever took charge of the incident should know the EAS procedures. Since the little town has no radio station, the closest would be East Liverpool or Salem. Someone in Columbiana County would have had to activate an alert with evacuation instructions.

It's debatable whether the two AMs and one FM in those other towns even reaches the site of the train incident, and then how many locals listen to the one with a good signal? Maybe the listen to Youngstown or Pittsburgh stations. More effective is a cell phone blast and even autodialing with an alert message.
 
Yabadabado1 said:
If roads are out, I'm sure iheart or Audacy has access to a chopper to fly an engineer to the site. Now they better hope there's room to land somewhere once they get there.
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I don't know of more than a couple of stations today that would even know who to call for a one-time rental chopper. And then, they'd need to have done a credit verification with the service. In the past, stations had traffic reports from the air and could access a chopper. That era is long gone.
 
TheBigA said:
Unless the user is like me and has disabled such notifications.
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Good point. I got tired of alerts for towns 100 miles away in the totally different High Desert, and never got any for local events. So I turned it off.

But with an average of around 8% or less of people listening to radio in peak hours, and dozens of stations accessible in many locations, an EAS alert will miss even more than the phone alerts.
 
TheBigA said:
Testing or actual use. Someone asked if the EAS was activated for the Ohio train derailment. AFAIK it wasn't. Who's fault was that?
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I was out of state when that train derailed. The news stations in Florida basically said "A train crashed in Ohio and it's on fire" and that was the extent of it. Once I got back to Ohio it was like a "Holy Shit!" moment; didn't realize it was that bad. Over 76 miles away from where I was and you have the morons in OUR town claming their water was contaminated [never mind that all the water flows away from our town and towards the Ohio River] and the smoke from the fires was causing them breathing difficulties [The wind blows to the East from our area]. I was like "How the hell did you even graduate elementary school? Do you know ANY science facts at all?"
 
DavidEduardo said:
Good point. I got tired of alerts for towns 100 miles away in the totally different High Desert, and never got any for local events. So I turned it off.

But with an average of around 8% or less of people listening to radio in peak hours, and dozens of stations accessible in many locations, an EAS alert will miss even more than the phone alerts.
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I have disabled my alerts on my phone for much the same reason after being woken up in the middle of the night [well, daytime actually since I'm a vampire and can only sleep once it starts getting light out]. And the fact that they have to put out an Amber Alert, weather alert, etc. 3, 4 or 5 times for the same incident that's taking place way in the southwest of the state when I am in the northeast is flat out nuts. And the fact that they're putting out alerts for just about anything anymore [Warning! A bear was spotted shitting in the woods near the Pennsylvania border. Use caution if you're in the area so as not to step in it.]
 
DavidEduardo said:
I don't know of more than a couple of stations today that would even know who to call for a one-time rental chopper. And then, they'd need to have done a credit verification with the service. In the past, stations had traffic reports from the air and could access a chopper. That era is long gone.
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Since I'm sure the big TV stations have choppers, wonder if they could make a deal with them to get the CE up to the site. Of course they may say "Screw you. We're using our chopper to cover what's going on!"
 
DavidEduardo said:
I don't know of more than a couple of stations today that would even know who to call for a one-time rental chopper. And then, they'd need to have done a credit verification with the service.
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These are all things that were part of our "Plan A, Plan B, Plan C....(all the way to at least "Plan M") contingencies.
 
michael hagerty said:
The stick is in a nice, big field, with an airport next door, and, as I mentioned, a navigable waterway if you wanted to do it by boat.

KCBS-AM San Francisco · Novato, CA 94945
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The airport would be the best option. Helicopter pilots fear towers, since the guy wires are had to see and a wind gust can be disastrous. They are glad to lower an antenna onto the top of a tower from above, as they are in free space. But next to a tower is going to be a deal breaker for most.

Parachutes work, though.
 
TheBigA said:
I love these satellite views. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any cars parked at the transmitter building.
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Why would there be any cars?
 
Yabadabado1 said:
Since I'm sure the big TV stations have choppers, wonder if they could make a deal with them to get the CE up to the site. Of course they may say "Screw you. We're using our chopper to cover what's going on!"
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TV Choppers are rare these days. I think there is only one operating these days in the SF/Oakland/SJ market, shared by the ABC, NBC and CBS stations, and it is operated by a contractor to the TV stations.

Most markets outside the top 20 no longer have a TV news chopper.
 
If y'all read my link yesterday, there wasn't anyone at the KGO transmit site in 1989. They had to use the KGO helicopter to fly their engineer out there to set up Non-D operation.
 
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